Blessed moons.
“I’m sure he exaggerated, as he is sometimes wont to do.” She managed to keep her voice from shaking, though it was a near thing.
“You’ve met Nyri and Hedda,” he said, gesturing to both. “The hairier, uglier version of Hedda brooding in the back is her twin, Faldir. How the Sisters could get it so right with one, and so damned wrong with the other is outside my understanding.”
Faldir really was the male version of his sister. A head taller, though, and rugged where she was gorgeous. Lunara tried not to stare at the twisting scar running down one side of his handsome face, puckering the corner of his lips, but all she could think was that his healer had done a piss-poor job of it.
“Kindly fuck off, Your Highness,” Faldir rumbled, turning to Lunara and offering a nod. “A pleasure, my lady.”
“She doesn’t like being called that,” Nyri hissed, elbowing Faldir in the ribs. “She prefers Lunara because she’s not special.”
“Nyriadne!” Hedda scolded. “Mind yourself.”
“No one of note—her words!” Nyri threw both her hands up. “For saving Bal, I would have called her Supreme Majesty of the Cosmos if she wanted, but she said to call her Lunara.”
“It’s true,” Lunara said, a smile tugging at her. “On all counts.”
Gathering her courage, she turned towards the Demon King and froze, heat creeping up her cheeks.
The fact that he was shirtless, flaunting the broad expanse of his chest, would’ve had just about anyone blushing.
It was the other male she hadn’t realized was there who snatched her senses away, though.
Again.
When did it get so warm in here?
The Demon was huge, only slightly shorter than the Imperial Wolflord Magnus, and just as muscular. Black horns rose from long auburn waves, sweeping out and back, and curving into wicked, out-turned points. His full, wide lips were slightly parted within a neat beard, and she could just see the straight edge of his teeth with a hint of fangs.
Her extremely brief interaction with him had not been warped by time or imagination, and seeing him again only solidified her first impression.
He was, without a doubt, the single most breathtaking male she’d ever laid eyes on.
Don’t even go there. Are you out of your mind? Think!
If everyone else was whotheywere, then the male who’d stopped her from smacking into the floor…
Bleeding stars and arses.
Brandir aht Bordoroth, Blessed of Straelon, High Ambassador and Fourth Imperial Son of Alwyn and Fionerys—all grown up, and nothinglike the gangly youth from the last Imperial portrait she’d seen.
Of course you had to go and latch on to that one. Off limits doesn’t even begin?—
Someone coughed. The gravelly sound wrenched her back to reality and out of her gawking, and Lunara recoiled as the spell broke.
She should say something, anything, but it was sinking in that they’d just found her drooling on the tabletop, oblivious, and every manner she’d ever learned fell right out of her head.
Sweet, merciful, Sisters. Just hurl yourself away and into the Veil already.
Why bother, when death by embarrassment was already a real possibility?
“Welcome, Lunara, to the Montrealm,” the Demon King said, pressing a hand to his chest with a nod. “Forgive me for being so direct, but Nyri didn’t reveal much. How fares Baldrir?”
Only then did she notice the dark circles under his eyes, the red rimming them. It softened the worst of her self-centered misgivings. They probably didn’t give a shite where she took her naps when all their focus was on their family member.
A lesson she might have been able to learn and internalize long ago if she wasn’t so damned terrified of being found out all the time.
“Physically, he is healed, Your Majesty. I can’t speak to the state of his mind, but his body is whole.”
