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“Don’t what?”
My heart was thundering, and I wasn’t sure why. We were on the edge of…something, and I only wanted to know what. I took another step closer.
His hand whipped out too fast and gripped my throat, right over the spot where he’d bitten me. A spark of excitement, of arousal, shot through me, and I didn’t resist when he backed me up against the wall of the stairs. “Don’t look at me like that. Don’t get so fucking close that I can smell you. I don’t want to think about you or hear your voice. Just stay the fuck away from me.”
I glanced up, meeting his too-intense gaze. “You are the one who cannot seem to stop yourself from capturing me, my lord.”
His eyes met mine for half a second, hungry, filled with a violent intensity, and then he crashed his mouth down on mine. His hands tangled in my hair as he kissed me almost angrily, like it was the last thing he ever wanted to do.
I could taste the desperation on his lips, the longing and need coming from him in waves as his body pressed against mine.
I whimpered against his mouth and opened for him, biting down hard on his lip, and he moved against me. He responded in equal measure, and pain sparked on the tip of my tongue, but I reveled in it, moving my hands to grab onto his shirt, clinging for dear life.
The kiss seemed to last an eternity until abruptly, he pulled away. His breathing was uneven and ragged as mine as he pushed away from me slightly.
I panted. “I’m not sure what I did to make you so angry, but—”
“You nearly died.”
I had nothing to say before he turned and fled down the stairs, disappearing out of sight.
* * *
Sometime later,I made a second attempt at descending the stairs to the main room of the inn.
Now, I was dressed, and most everyone else was awake. It was both my growling stomach and the need to move on that pulled me from my room.
Stepping off the bottom stair, I immediately made my way over to Iola. “How did you sleep?”
She looked up at me from where she was stirring something resembling porridge over the fire. “Fine. The beds here are larger than in the servants’ quarters.”
I smiled weakly. That they were, and yet I hadn’t thought about it. Was it a good thing or a shame that I was starting to lose some of my bitterness and comparisons to my old life? “I’m sure we will find you a better bed eventually,” I said. “Though, not immediately.”
“Where are we going?” Iola asked. “Aftermath?”
Several others looked up at that. Thalia and Aine sat by the fire, with Gwydion slightly apart from them. Elfwyn had not yet come downstairs, which was good, I supposed, as she was too young to be considered in the discussion. Bael moved to stand behind me, while Scion did not move from his position near the wall.
“Aftermath,” Aine scoffed. “Should we not make our way to Nevermore?”
“Or at the very least to Overcast,” Thalia said. “Raewyn and Auberon are there, as well as my parents.”
Admittedly, speaking to Raewyn was on my list of priorities, but not yet. Not immediately.
I’d told Bael about not only my trip with Scion but the conversation with Ambrose Dullahan last night, and while I didn’t want to share my opinion with the others, he was in agreement that no matter what we did, we’d likely be running into the web he’d cast for us.
Cross had said it best: we couldn’t outmaneuver a seer when he was always ten steps ahead, one to the side, and somehow came out behind us.
Scion and I had already learned that, chasing him all the way through Inbetwixt, when now that I thought about it, I had met him under the cover of darkness. In my dream.
So, since we could not possibly chase him down, the only thing to do was behave as we would normally—whatever passed for normal in the entirely abnormal situation.
“I am not going to Nevermore. There is no point now since Ambrose took the crown, anyway.”
“He can’t do that,” Gwydion snapped.
“Evidently, he can,” Scion said quietly, with no inflection behind it.
I looked up at him and found that he was not meeting my gaze. Or, for that matter, anyone’s. The formerly haughty, too-perfect prince seemed to have been shaken, and the mark across his face was like a badge of his shifting identity.
