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My control wavering, I shot a hand out and gripped her hair. Her mouth opened in a silent “oh,” and I had to hold back a groan. Fuck me, she clearly liked pain. “As I recall, the moment our positions were reversed, you were more than happy to make your own demands, my queen.”
She gasped as our gazes locked. I pulled slightly, forcing her to come up higher on her knees. Shit, I had no excuse for this, yet the air in the room seemed to thicken around us. Her tongue darted out to wet her lips, and my eyes traced the movement.
“And yet,” she breathed, “you have yet to pay any measure of fealty.”
By the fucking gods.
This was too hard. Too much. I had never claimed to be a decent male…but somehow, my mouth moved without conscious thought as I unwound my hand from her hair. “You’re drunk, rebel.”
She smiled, struggling to her feet. “So? I wasn’t when I made the request.”
I groaned audibly, no longer caring to hide how much this was affecting me. “Ask me again in the morning if you still want it. I suspect you won’t. You’ll hate yourself and me in the morning for this, but you’d hate me more if I didn’t tell you to simply go to bed.”
She frowned, looking more sad than angry. “Why should you care?”
I waited several minutes to answer, returning to my chair in the corner so that by the time I did, I was almost certain she’d fallen asleep at last. “Because I would rather my future wife not hate me.”
33
LONNIE
THE CUTTHROAT DISTRICT, INBETWIXT
Aweak stream of sunlight shone through the spotted window, casting long rays over the faded reddish carpet. Shelves upon shelves of books lined the walls, stretching further back than I could see, filling the room with the scent of aged parchment. Before me, tiny glittering specs of dust drifted lazily through the air, swirling and dancing in the sun.
I lay on the floor, my spine cushioned only by the well-worn carpet, and turned the pages of some ancient tome propped on my lap. My own hands looked almost foreign—unfamiliar—long-fingered and pale.
“Find anything, little monster?”
I looked up and was surprised to see Bael sitting on the armchair before me. He had a book of his own open in front of him, resting on my ankles, which were propped in his lap. I thought, perhaps, his hair looked longer than the last time we’d spoken…maybe?
“Not yet,” I heard myself say. “But I’ve barely scratched the surface. The handwriting here is hard to decipher.”
“This is fucking pointless,” another familiar voice said behind me. “At what point do we accept that there’s nothing here?”
I tilted my neck back, looking up at the bottom of Scion’s sharp jaw, set as usual in a tight scowl. My head was cradled in his lap, and despite his obvious annoyance, he absentmindedly played with my hair with one hand, holding his book out to the side with the other.
“Well, of course you would think that,” Bael said, grinning over at Scion. “Forgive us if we don’t take your opinion too seriously.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning,” I said lightly, “that you’re biased, my lord.”
He rolled his eyes. “Stop calling me that.”
My grin was wide enough to rival Bael’s. “Never, my lord.”
“Try this one.”
I looked up as a third male strode toward us out of the stacks, holding a large, leather-bound book. He smiled briefly at me as we made eye contact before glancing down and slamming the book on the table. “There you are,” he said.
“Here I am,” I replied, smiling. “You’ve made us wait an awfully long time, you know.”
He looked confused for a moment. “Actually, I don’t know. Isn’t that strange?”
The dream changed.
Pale moonlight cast a long shadow over the floor of my room in Inbetwixt, and it was only by its glow that I could make out a figure in the corner.
