Page 82 of Taken By Shadows

Distantly, I wondered how I would ever go back to the simple cottons and leathers once I left here.

“I know you’re there.” His voice carried through the carved wood. “We can’t have this conversation with a door between us.”

Gossamer curtains swayed in the cool breeze of the night through the unlatched doors to the garden as I entered the study.

“You managed to speak to me just fine the other day through a door. A locked one.” The thoughts of his manacles around me, his body pressed to mine, the heat that glowed between us, seared into my mind as I saw him. I hadn’t seen him since the Cage. He was free, entirely unbound, and something about that sent a ripple through me. I couldn’t pin the emotion that caused that ripple. Fear? Relief? ... Desire?

Kaed chuckled low in his throat, as though he might have actually found something funny.

He sat at his desk, papers and ink fanned out like he’d just been tending to them. He looked like a careless rogue sprawled after a conquest.

I swallowed deeply and was suddenly thirsty. His navy tunic was cut to expose the top of his chest and hug his abdomen.

I restrained a groan inside me.

Could he not just be unattractive for once instead of lounging across his desk like a dinner spread? He’d looked like something I could have devoured that night at the garden party, wrapped in leather and eyes draped in paint. Like something from a fantasy tale.

But tonight. Tonight, he looked lethal.

Perhaps I was just delirious from hunger, but I was now waging a war inside myself as I tried not to nibble on my bottom lip.

“We found nothing today,” I began as a distraction for myself. It wasn’t entirely true. I’d found Eryk on the balcony. And I had found his comments to be … unusual. I didn’t bother telling Kaed any of that, though.

I hated that I needed to redirect myself from the way he looked by bringing up the dower tomes we’d read through today.

Without speaking, he walked to the front of the desk and leaned back on it. In his hand was a thick piece of parchment, seal broken.

He held it up. “Hart found nothing in the Western Corner.”

I didn’t know why Kaed felt the need to tell me about Hart. About the safety of my home. But I was grateful.

“Oh?” I tried to sound casual.

Was that good or bad news for me? I was still the only source Kaed had. And he hadn’t tried to take that from me.

He flicked his fingers, and the missive vanished into darkness, consumed by his shadows as his eyes became downcast.

I gaped at the display of magic, but I tried to focus on what he’d said. “What is it?” Unease washed through me like a fever.

Kaed’s eyes snapped up, and their blue fire crashed into me. “Hart won’t stop searching for the faebane. Not if he thinks it’s out there.” He let the meaning of the words fill the room.

“I told you there was nothing in the library.” I shifted under the heat of his stare.

Kaed said nothing for a moment, and I became hyperaware of how alone I was with him as his shadows began pouring from him, darkening the space between us.

“He’s requested the source from me. Directly,” Kaed finished with deliberate slowness.

We watched each other then. Would he take it from me? Would I break if he tried?

But I couldn’t find the fear in me that should be there when I stared at Kaed.

“I can only delay my response to him for so long before he comes to me himself.”

Kaed wouldn’t force me? Not even now, when his brother and his father were probing directly for the answer?

I swallowed past the tension around my neck.

Silence spilled between us as Kaed’s shadows retreated at his command.