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“Eloping is still an option,” Jak offered into the ensuing and fraught silence, dark eyes meeting hers with promise that made her shiver. If she gave the word, he absolutely would make good on his sensual threat to abduct her. Jak’s penchant for introducing games into their sex play shouldn’t have surprised her, given his love of gambling, competitions, and wagers of all varieties, but she’d never expected sex to be… fun. At the same time, he overwhelmed her senses and freed her fantasies, allowing her to be thoroughly uninhibited. Given that she’d spent her life before Jak being as closed off and careful as possible, that was purely miraculous.
“No, elopement is not an option,” Ami corrected smugly. “Even Essla—and Rayfe and Andi, too—will have to admit thatgiving offense to the Dasnarian royal family at this juncture would be worse than any difficulties that might arise in the moment.”
Her mother looked so self-satisfied, so perfectly unruffled, that Stella did something she rarely did: she reached out actively with her empathy and assessed her mother’s emotional and mental state. Indeed, Ami wasn’t concerned in the least. The two littlest fingers of Stella’s left hand twitched, confirming just how much Stella had let her mother get to her, and she tucked that hand under her thigh, ruthlessly sitting on it. Jak tipped his head slightly, likely noticing the movement, as he noticed every cursed thing with that too-sharp gaze.
Her mother studied her, too, dreamy twilight-violet eyes sparkling with gimlet intelligence. “Don’t poke around in my head, Nilly darling. I raised you better than that.”
Stella swiftly covered her surprise—at that and at her mother’s surge of satisfaction at having caught her out. Though Ami loudly proclaimed herself to be nonmagical, she was still half-Tala herself. Stella had heard the stories plenty of times about how Ami had developed the ability to scent magic while she was pregnant with Stella and Astar. Now Stella wondered how much of that ability had truly faded, as Ami had led people to believe.
Ash might be wondering that very thing, also, as he eyed his wife thoughtfully.
“I apologize, Mother,” Stella said. “I’m just wondering what you’re up to.”
Ami widened her eyes in the practiced appearance of wounded innocence, her red-gold lashes fluttering helplessly around the limpid pools of stricken twilight. “What I’mup to? I’mup togiving my eldest daughter and her fiancée, a hero of the realm—whether anyone will publicly acknowledge that or not—the royal wedding they deserve. Why can’t it be that simple, that generous, and heartfelt?”
“Because I know you, Mother,” Stella growled, left little fingers twitching. She was regressing to childhood by the day and, at this rate, would soon be tempted to strip off her clothes and run around the castle naked like the rebellious toddler she’d once been, shapeshifting to a form they couldn’t catch when anyone came too close. Jak nudged her foot under the table, lifting one brow in question.
“Yes, Nilly, of course.” Ami simpered at her daughter. “Now, don’t you worry a bit about your auntie Essla. I know how to handle her. You need to get your beauty rest. You have shadows under your eyes and your skin looks dry. Are you using those skin cremes I gave you?”
“Of course,” Stella lied with a smile, trying to look dewy fresh. The truth was, she tended to forget about the cremes, but if she did have shadows, it was because of the strain of living in Castle Windroven with all those minds and emotions beating on her all the time.
Still she couldn’t say that because her mother would worry even more. All her life, Stella had been treated as fragile and liable to collapse into a faint if drained or pressured too much. It didn’t help that shehadcollapsed. More than once. Being on the quest with their friends, being with Jak, Stella had begun to feel strong and resilient. She’d learned to fight with daggers and to use her sorcery as a weapon. She’d survived terrible ordeals. She could survive living in an enormous castle with people.
Ami narrowed her eyes. “Don’t lie to me, missy. I know when you—”
“All right,” Jak said, standing and nimbly stepping around the table to ease Stella’s chair away from it, offering her a hand to rise. “Apologies for interrupting, Your Highness, but I agreethat Stella needs her rest. I’ll see to it that she uses the face cremes.”
“See here, young Jakral—” Ami began, but Ash preempted her.
“Goodnight and thank you,” Ash said over her, giving Stella a wink and a jerk of his head toward the door.
Jak drew Stella’s hand through the crook of his arm and practically dragged her out of the room. Fuming, Stella tried to snatch her hand away, but he held on firmly. “Maybe I don’t want to be put to bed,” she gritted out.Like a child.She had her pride.
He slid her a darkly amused glance. “I bet I could change your mind.”
“Not this time. My mother has completely ruined my mood.”
His brows climbed. “That sounded very much like a challenge. Shall we make it an actual bet?”
Uh oh.Stella had yet to win a bet with Jak. He was too good at stacking the deck. Still, after losing that argument with her mother, Stella was unwilling to back down. Besides, she knew her own mind and sex was the last thing on it. “Fine. But don’t pout when you lose.”
He had the nerve to laugh, the sensual, confident chuckle brushing over her nerves, a number of salacious images parading prominently across his mind. She pretended not to notice.
“One turn of the quarter-hourglass,” he said in a low voice, for her ears alone, as they made their way to their chambers at the top of the tallest tower, one of the few places in the castle that gave her sufficient psychic distance from the babble of minds. “I get to do whatever I like to you. If I haven’t made you come by the time the sands run out, you win.”
Moranu take her, she was already losing her breath. The image he crisply imagined of her naked and tied to the big four-poster bed, crying out in a rictus of pleasure, did not help. She steeled her resolve and her voice. “What do I get if I win?”
“What do you want?” He asked the question seriously, cocking his head and studying her, all playfulness gone. “If you could name anything in all the world that you want most at this moment, what would it be?”
She didn’t know. She wanted to feel like she had on the quest, though without the terror and other awful parts. It made no sense that she longed for the days of that adventure, especially given how wrenching it had all been, but it a strange way she missed it deeply. There had been a freedom to that life. She felt trapped inside this castle—one she’d always loved—and she’d found herself thinking often of her aunt Andi and her stories of prowling the ramparts during the Siege of Windroven, scheming of a way to get outside to where Rayfe waited for her. But Stella wasn’t under siege and her true love was inside with her, so what was her problem?
“My star,” Jak said quietly, “if you can’t answer that question easily, then—”
“I’ll take a favor to be named later,” she said, cutting off that path of conversation.
He raised a wicked, dark brow. “It’s not sound gambling practice to agree to such a vague prize. The stakes might end up being far too high.”
“Don’t you trust me?” she asked, trying for her mother’s extravagantly innocent mien.
