Page 173 of Taken By Shadows

“The threat is gone.”

“You just said you want to watch for his accomplice, and you’re saying there’s no threat to your life?”

His shadows swirled around me. I should have learned to fear them, but all I felt was … safe.

“You can’t leave a party right after Huxley and Eryk do. It’s too suspicious. Someone in there might know this was planned or at least knew Eryk would make a move to provoke you. We have to act as though everything is normal.”

Jaw flexed, Kaed flattened his lips into a thin line.

I was right. And he knew it. And I’m not sure he liked that he wasn’t.

Kaed placed his hands on my hips, then pulled me into him. He was impossibly close, and I forgot everything that had come before this moment.

“What are you doing? We need to go back inside.”

His hand came to push my chin up gently. “I did warn you. If you did anything to jeopardise your safety tonight, there would be consequences.”

I swallowed, and my body shivered deliciously despite the terror that had just flooded it. His touch washed away the memories of what I’d just endured with such ease that it should have worried me.

I had no idea what those consequences were, but my mind swam with the memory of straining against the velvet ropes of his shadows, his touch on me … inside me …

I wanted to know exactly what those consequences were.

A thrill skirted through me that was an intoxicating mix of adrenaline and excitement at his threat.

Somehow, my earlier discomfort at his games had been washed away by the soothing remedy of having him near me. Even if it meant nothing to him, it was difficult for my body not to find comfort in his.

“You will have to wait,” I breathed onto his lips that were poised over mine. “First, bring me back to this party.”

He growled at that. “You’re very demanding for someone who is already in trouble.” His hips swayed a little, and I matched their movement as he pressed himself to me.

Kaed finally let me go and walked us back to the party. To my own dismay, I stumbled with my footing more than once, but he steadied me.

I caught the look in his eyes that threatened to pick me up and take me home right now.

“I’m fine,” I emphasised for the hundredth time tonight. “Just … stay close?” I said as I opened the glass door back into a rush of sounds, music and the warm air of the glasshouse.

Chapter fifty-four

The ferns tickled as we passed them, weaving through the crowd. No one seemed to have noticed our absence, and no one paid any attention to our return. There was no one out of place or looking for us. Or even Eryk, it seemed. Maybe I was wrong, and there wasn’t anyone working with Eryk to move on the council.

The music was still playing, and it filled the glass chamber like we were part of some sort of magical music device—a fae glass but to contain music, not light.

Back in the close embrace of the hothouse, it was easier to forget what had just happened.

But someone beside us let out a flurry of magical sparks as they drank and laughed with their friends. I flinched in response. Their magic was a warm magenta. Not yellow.

Clearly, I was not completely fine after Huxley’s attack.

And Eryk’s betrayal.

I had thought the worst thing he could do was coerce me into kissing him. And I wish I’d been right about that.

Kaed must have noticed my shoulders go rigid, because the next moment he was behind me, his chest to my back, his lips on the back of my hair. “We can leave,” he whispered.

I shook my head. “No. I’m fine.”

Kaed waited as I took a few breaths and I willed myself to believe it.