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Gods, the way he’d changed the subject and the moment he chose to…
I loved this man.
I would always love him.
Counting the beats between each breath, I opened my eyes. “That’s nice…” I cleared my throat. “That’s nice of him. Which is kind of strange, isn’t it? Rhain being nice.”
Ash arched a brow. “Rhain is known as one of the kindest gods in the Shadowlands.”
“I’ll have to take your word for that.” My eyes widened when I saw an icy hardness creeping into his features. Shit. “I mean, Rhain had a reason not to be all that welcoming toward me.”
“I’m not sure I agree with that.”
“Rhain is loyal to you—”
Eather seeped from behind his pupils, stirring the energy inside me. “He is loyal to you,” he stated in a low growl. “His Queen.”
“Okay, he is loyal to both of us,” I amended, half-afraid for Rhain’s safety. The other half of me was, well, kind of aroused by Ash’s protectiveness. “But before, he was loyal to you. And since I had been planning to kill you, his initial response to me was completely understandable.”
Ash said nothing to that, but I could practically see him plotting out his next…conversation with Rhain.
“Don’t say anything to him about it,” I stated.
“I won’t.”
“I’m serious. If he still harbors any ill feelings toward me,”—which I truly didn’t think he did—“or if anyone does, I will handle it. I need to. Especially if I’m going to be their Queen.”
“If?” Ash chuckled. “Liessa, you are their Queen.”
My stomach dipped. Gods, I was having a really hard time processing that.
“You’re right, though. You need to handle it,” he said as he picked up my hand. “I won’t say anything. “
“Wow,” I murmured, surprised.
“But if you handling it doesn’t actually handle it? And they still show you disrespect?” Wisps of eather churned through his eyes. “I will fucking destroy them.”
I blinked.
“No matter who they are,” he promised.
My lips twitched. I didn’t think smiling would help, nor would telling him that his fierceness when it came to me had to be more potent than radek wine. For once, I listened to that voice of reason.
“Speaking of Rhain,” I said after a moment. “Thought projection? That’s a nifty talent of his I was completely unaware of.”
“Many don’t know he can do that. You weren’t told about—”
“There was no reason for me to know then,” I interjected, understanding that sharing that kind of knowledge with me, who in the past had sought to betray Ash and hadn’t shown much interest in ruling the Shadowlands alongside him, would’ve been a risk. “So, all those times I could’ve sworn Rhain was communicating with you, even though I didn’t hear him speak, he was?”
One side of Ash’s lips quirked. “He probably was.”
Smiling, I watched him trail his finger along the golden swirl.
The imprint.
The direction of my thoughts immediately shifted as it occurred to me that perhaps it wasn’t me who had blessed our union. Maybe it had been the Fates. Or perhaps it happened because we were mates of the heart.
And maybe…maybe the fact that such a thing was real, meant that what I believed about my parents was also true. It explained why the agony of my father’s loss embittered my mother so deeply and how their union was important since it brought me into—I gasped, my head jerking up.
