“None but Imperials and their mates are able to enter Argoph through this portal. Everyone who sees you go in will know you’re mine.”
“Good.” She looked him right in the eye as she said it. “As long as they realize youare mine in return.”
Plunging his hand into her hair, he rasped, “Oh, I don’t think there will be any doubt, little moon. Not after this.”
His kiss was sudden and searing, and over too soon. Lunara heard the gasps, a wave of murmurs in their wake, and didn’t mind that either.
“Come. Time for you to see what all the fuss is about.” He leaned closer. “Maybe find that alcove.”
She was still laughing when they stepped through the spectral fingers of the ether and into the Palace of Argoph.
Lunara stared crosseyeddown the long length of a very elaborate—very sharp—spear, and into the flickering crimson and ebony gaze of who she could only describe as a stone-cold killer.
You could probably blast her halfway across Bordoroth with nothing but your shield.
“Amal, I don’t give a fuck that you’re hisajma.I will feed that to you pointy-end first if you don’t take it away in the next few seconds.”
Even better.
Brand had flown into his rage the second they’d stepped through the portal and found this madness on the other side, ruining his shirt and roaring in her aggressor’s unflinching face.
A warm, rolling chuckle followed Brand’s threat from somewhere beside her, but she was too scared to even dart a glance, lest she be skewered for the offense.
The warrior in front of her oozed a strange, protective hostility. Something about the controlled lunge of her toned body promised that Lunara was safe—as long as she complied. Since the only words out of her mouth had been a rich, guttural,“Not another step,”it would appear this spot on the portal platform, just outside the throne room, was where Lunara lived now.
“I will not.” She—Amal,apparently—narrowed her eyes. “I don’t know her.”
A growl rumbled from Brand’s chest. “She is Lunara the Moonweaver, a Sorcerit of the Evesong, and she’s my bloody damned mate, Amal. I’m not going to ask again.”
“It’s true, we were all there to hear it happen,” Magnus said, chuckling. “How are you, lass? Still terrifying?”
Amal lifted her gaze towards him. “Uncertain, Your Highness. Are you still telling insufferable jokes?”
“Aye. Usually.”
“Then I’m probably still your worst nightmare.”
Magnus only laughed louder. It didn’t escape Lunara’s notice that Vann was entirely silent and not even attempting to defend her like the others.
Taking the threat to her life out of the equation,nightmaredidn’t seem an appropriate description for the breathtaking female before her—especially when one side of her full lips twitched in amusement.
Amusement that fled when Amal focused on Lunara again.
The deep red flecks in her irises were imitated in fine scales across high cheekbones. They flashed with blazing pops of deep ochre and sunny amber against her mahogany skin, disappearing entirely when she shifted slightly out of a patch of light—a perfect match for the beads of gold and fire opal woven into the countless, jaw-length twists of her black hair.
Dressed neck to feet in sensible swaths of oiled leather and midnight linen, she was without a doubt an Arrajnekkatti Rider—the first time Lunara had ever come face-to-face with one, but there was just something about her that sang of sparkling sand and sunlight.
“What proof do you have that you are who they claim you to be?” Amal asked.
“Um…”
“Amalajneera.” Sisters, that voice. Deeply resonant, though the owner spoke softly. “Can you not feel my brother’s marrow entwined with hers?”
Seeing as she knew what Araxis sounded like—and that he didn’t have averyenthusiastic Rider bodyguard—the only one of Brand’s brothers left was Amunkar, Heir to the throne of Bordoroth. Which, made sense. His commanding, restrained tone was very believably that of a future Emperor.
Well, shite.
Amal’s nostrils flared. “She could have tricked him to get to you or your parents. Could be a mind-wielder. Or what ifsheis the shapeshifter, and we are giving her exactly what she’s been working towards all along? The timing is too convenient.”
