AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“If she works for Madame…” I protest.
Zaina scoffs, grabbing her cloak from the stand and pulling it around herself in a graceful motion.
“You didn’t think there was a single risk to being the enforcer of the most hated woman in the kingdom?”
I think of my tiny, violent wife, incapacitating an entire bar full of slavers before setting it on fire, and I nearly laugh out loud.
“She certainly hasn’t had a problem surviving this long,” I remark.
Zaina shoots me another scathing glance. “You’re an imbecile. You have no idea what she has survived or how close she has come to not surviving. You have no idea what she’s up against. Honestly, the list of things you do manage to comprehend seems to grow shorter by the moment.”
“Zaina,” Einar chides gently, then says something low in Jokithan.
I don’t catch every word, but I gather it’s a defense of me. It’s appreciated, but I’m more focused on what she said. Or rather, what it indicated.You have no idea what she’s up against.
“You think Madame is hurting her. Why?”
If Einar’s little talk had any effect at all on her, she doesn’t show it. “Did you honestly think she could just admit to being the vigilante and walk away unscathed?”
Accusation laces her tone, and it grates at the edges of my rapidly declining temper.
“Then maybe you should have thought of that before you let her think you were dead. What did you think was going to happen when you took your reckless-as-hell sister and added grief into the mix?”
She rears back like I’ve struck her, and Khijhana growls.
Zaina shakes her head, backing away. “I don’t have time for this. I have to go.”
Her voice is empty, and I would almost feel guilty except that she has hurled no small number of insults in my direction. She moves toward the balcony, but Einar stops her again, this time with an arm around her waist. He spins her to face him, tilting her chin up.
“Come back to me,” he orders, his gaze never wavering from hers.
“Always,” she tells him with quiet assurance.
He gathers her in his arms, placing his lips against her forehead, and I look away from the intimate moment. It’s a glaring contrast to the relationship I currently share with a woman who poisons my whiskey and sneaks out of our bedroom in the middle of the night.
So I’m not entirely sure why I’m so dead set on going after her, but my mouth opens before Zaina has entirely extricated herself from the king’s grasp.
“I’m coming with you.”
She doesn’t pause to consider it. “The hell you are.”
“All right, then I guess I’ll just stroll up to the Delmara Estate myself.” It’s an empty threat, and probably a dangerous one, but I am nothing if not adept at bluffing.
“That would get you both killed, and I will eliminate you myself before I let you risk her life that way.” There’s nothing in her tone but a cold certainty.
As dangerous as Aika is, I wonder if Zaina is not, in her own way, the more lethal of the two.
That doesn’t stop me, though. “I know my way around my city.”
Einar speaks up in Jokithan again.It’s his right.
Zaina looks like she badly wants to argue, but instead lets out a huff of air. She slides a veil over her head that only reveals her furious caramel-colored eyes, then finally speaks.
“Fine. But if you interfere at all, I will feed you to Khijhana.” Her words are clipped and full of promise.
I could swear the giant cat smiles at the threat.
What exactly is she planning that she thinks I’ll interfere with?
