And I wake to be interrogated for it.
“That was a bad idea, Cers.” He shakes his head back and forth, and I hate how much these ridiculous men fight to hold on to the pain in their lives.
But I do get it.
“I’m not telling him to disobey the Prince. I asked him to just…avoid the punishments. I-I hate seeing what it does to Roman, and even if he won’t show it, I know it hurts Zilo. He’s not as unbreakable as he acts.”
A beat of silence thrums between us, and when I look back at him, his gaze isn’t searching. It’s tragic.
“She told us you were beautiful. She didn’t say you were kind,” he whispers.
My heart skips and stutters as it tries to find its pace while I fall into the deep depths of his gaze.
“The witch?” I ask starstruck.
He nods.
“I want to meet her.” I should have met her from the start. She’s the reason I’m here. She should have met me at the fucking door.
“You already did. At the entryway.”
That was the witch?
Oh. Okay. I guess she did meet me at the door. Maybe I’ll calm down a minute.
“She was the eerie face in the darkness…” I try to think it all through, but she just saw me and barely lingered before she left again.
As if ninth-sensing my confusion, Avian says, “She isn’t welcomed in this kingdom. The Prince, he—he would kill her if he saw her.”
“I suppose she might really bring down the mood of this enthusiastic place with her talk of a peaceful future.” I blink away my annoyance at missing my chance to question the Night Witch.
“You’ll see her again,” Avian answers on that I’m-In-Your-Head voice he always seems to have.
“Good,” I say with a tired sigh.
“Now get up. If I have to put up with Zilo’s creepy niceness, then so do you.” He waves his hand in a circularlet’s get on with itsort of way.
My head hits the pillow, and I barely close my eyes for the briefest moment before a big hand is wrapped around my ankle. And then I’m being pulled.
“Dammit, Avian!” I’m jerked through the cold unused sheets all the way to the very edge of the bed where he pauses.
And then jerks once more.
My ass hits the hard floors without so much as a bounce.
I blink up at the man who I thought so highly of since the moment we met. “I thought you were the nice one,” I grumble, my words fanning the long blonde hair that’s tangled in front of my face.
A warm and delicious sound of amusement touches his lips, and I couldn’t be mad at him if I wanted to. And damn do I want to.
He lowers swiftly, balancing on the toes of his boots, and I can’t help the way my attention veers right down to the hard panes of his stomach that are now at eye level with me. He gets good and close.
His fingers lightly push my hair from my face, and I swear he has a third eye.
Shit, now that sounds dirty too.
I hold his pretty, steely eyes, and it’s intimate the way he gazes at me with hardly any space lingering between us. His head dips low, and his smooth jaw skims mine as his mouth grazes the shell of my ear.
“Didn’t anyone warn you? None of us are nice, Cers,” he whispers like dark sex and blinding orgasms.
