“All stealth guards are in position and—”
“It’s not enough,” I snarl.
My subjects are safe here. Of this, I have no doubt. But the princess? Someone wanted to take her badly enough to brave an attempt in my own palace. Now she’s in the open with nothing between her and another attack but a tent.
Rally pauses, his eyes never shifting from their straightforward position. “Tell me what you need.”
I sneak a glance at the princess. Eyes shut, she sits cross-legged on the bare sand amongst a huddle of attendants fanning her, sponging her skin with cool water, delivering bites of chilled fruit. I watch a slice of orange graze her lips with teeth-grinding envy.
What I need is for everyone to leave. I need her to be safe. I need her with me and me alone because apparently, even Tirenth’s most elite guards can’t keep her secure in her room.
I shove my hands in my hair. “I don’t know.”
Word that the princess found water spread like dragonflame, and now the whole kingdom has turned out to see her. A human queen-to-be was already a curiosity. Now, she’s a spectacle, and all I want to do is spirit her away to some hidden cave, wrap myself around her, and never let her out of my clutches.
No, I tell my first form with a deep breath through my infuriatingly small human nostrils,this is why she’s here. She’s here to find water, and she has.
But did it have to bethen? Right when I was going to taste those lips I’ve been panting over since the night I first—
“If your wish is to have the crowd removed,” Rally says, breaking through my grousing, “we’ll see it done.”
I rub my face and try to focus on the scratch of sand against my skin. “You know it isn’t.”
My subjects have come to see her, yes, but more than that, they’re desperate to see water. Water is life, and water has been scarce. A good ruler wouldn’t deny them that sight.
“You’ve assured them there will be enough?” I say. “I won’t tolerate disorder.”
He inclines his head. “Yes, every guard has been informed.” I start to respond before he adds, “More importantly, Marta has taken charge of spreading the word.”
“Good.” No one disseminates information faster than a female. “Please thank her for me.”
I squint out at the dying sun, then turn my eye back on the princess, her brows drawn together in concentration. She’s been at this for hours. Surely, she doesn’t intend to keep going past sundown. She looses a sigh as one of her attendants blots her forehead.
“What are they saying about her?” I ask.
Rally crosses his arms over his chest. “That she will turn our desert into a paradise. That you are a wise king for bringing her.”
“Do they believe we’re fated?”
“Some.”
“And the others?”
Rally glances at me from the corner of his eye. “Anyone who is a danger to her will be addressed.”
A growl rises to my throat. “Don’t play games with me.”
“I’m not. You know what they say, Soren—that she’s human. That she has no right to rule here.”
I’m distracted from my rage by yet another sigh from the princess, this one brought on by someone adjusting an errant lock of her hair.
“She’s tired, and the attendants are distracting her,” Rally says.
“What? How do you know that?”
He answers my bafflement with a grin. “I’m married.” He claps me on the shoulder. “You’ll learn.”
I don’t know how anyone could learn to decipher all that from a sigh. Nevertheless, she does look tired.
