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“Yes, well, I still don’t want my immortal to kiss me until I’ve wiped my nose.”
He cast a cleaning spell on her face and kissed her. He gave her soft, comforting brushes of his lips, but she kissed him harder. It was the fierce, protective kiss of a Hesperine who needed to reassure herself her Grace was safe. He opened his mouth to her, reveling in it. When she came up for air, his fangs were throbbing.
“I’m all right,” he soothed,
“I’m afraid I put us in more danger tonight,” she confessed. “There’s something I need to tell you. I didn’t have time to talk with you before I had to make a decision.”
Lio winced. “Yes, Tenebra seems to have that affect. We are all learning to trust one another’s judgment. Or trying to.”
“Please try to understand. I had to tell Sabina about us.”
It wasn’t her declaration, but the worry he sensed in her that gave Lio pause. “You didn’t want her to know?”
“No. The number of people who know about us keeps growing and with it, the risk. If we ever lost her support and she chose Flavian’s side, then he would find out.”
Lio tilted her chin up and kissed her again, until she melted into him and shifted on his lap in ways he enjoyed. “Let him find out.”
“Lio, no,” she said, breathless, her lips swollen from his kiss. “Flavian must never find out.”
“You don’t want him to know my love is not one-sided?”
“Of course I want him to know. I want to shout it from the highest tower of this castle. But I mustn’t. He doesn’t even understand that you love me. He only thinks you want me, and that is dangerous enough. If he knows what we want, what motivates us, he has power over us. Now Sabina does, too.”
“What did she do to put you in that position?”
“It was the only way I could convince her to support us at the Council.”
Lio drew back. “She returned with us tonight because you told her about us?”
“I had to win her trust. Prove my good intentions. Telling her I’m in love with you was the only way.”
“That’s why you told her?”
Cassia slid off his lap, kneeling just out of reach. “Oh, no. You don’t agree.”
A silence fell between them, not one of their comfortable ones.
Lio drew his knee up, resting his arm across it. “Perhaps I’m misinterpreting the encounter, but it seems as if you deliberately gave her that power over us—to produce the desired political outcome.”
“No, my reasons weren’t that mercenary. Everyone in Tenebra is convinced I’m either a calculating politician or a divine virgin. I humanized myself in her eyes.”
Unsure if his feelings were justified, Lio wrestled with his next words. “There are other things you could have told her to change her opinion of you. Tell me if I’m wrong, but…I get the impression you bartered knowledge of our love to her. For her partisanship at the Council.”
“How is this different from when Eudias found out? We had no chance to talk about that before you enlisted his help with the betrothal. That just as effectively cultivated his support, and he could just as easily use it against us.”
“That’s not why I told him. I…confided in him. I feel that it’s safe for Eudias to know.”
“Telling him for emotional reasons could be even more dangerous.”
“I know him, Cassia. He won’t betray us.”
Her gaze dropped. “I do not disagree that he is less likely to betray us than Sabina.”
“That is not why I’m unhappy with her knowing. If you had confided in her as a friend, that would feel different to me. It wouldn’t have made our love a piece in the game.”
He didn’t raise his voice. He tried to be rational about his reaction and keep their Oath by explaining it to her. But the hurt throbbing between them was as powerful as if they were shouting.
“I would never use you that way,” Cassia said.
