“I believe they kept the older parts of the castle for themselves. The walls might still retain some protective enchantment. The guard who showed me here says it’s for refugees, and they rarely stay too long.” Vale’s lips turned down as he spoke.
“Refugees from what?”
“That, I don’t know. But there are plenty of rooms, indicating that, perhaps, many families from the same town or village—or even a city—stayed here?”
Vale showed me to a space where the rebels had set baskets of bread and cheese for us to snack on before the official mealtime gathering in the dining hall. As we’d been fed while in cages and had expended little energy, I wasn’t hungry, so we moved on. He showed me the first three rooms, all with two beds. The fourth was the smallest, with one single bed and a rickety wooden altar to the dead gods in the corner. Rynni had slipped into it before us and claimed that room. Solitary as ever.
The fifth and last room had only one bed, one much smaller than Vale and I were used to sleeping in, but after days of sleeping in ice shelters, it looked blissful. Though I had little reason to trust the rebels, I also did not think they’d put us in this place if they wished to harm us. For now, we were safe.
“This is ours.” I spun in the bare room. “Do you think they’ll bring our things?”
I was missing my sword and my mother’s jewels. If they didn’t offer to return both, I’d be having words with the rebels.
“I think they will. No doubt they were examining our items.”
“Well, having a proper place to sleep—together, at that, is some progress. To be honest, it surprises me that they’d keep us all together, guards at the door or no.”
“Don’t be surprised. They used a whisperer on me.”
I sucked in a breath. The reason he’d not spoken before the others emerged. “Oh.”
“There’s no reason for them to doubt me. What the whisperer read in my mind lined up with what Anna said.”
“What about your mother and brother?”
“She knows about that. She’ll tell no one.”
My eyebrows knitted together. “You’re sure?”
“She has a valid reason not to and said she wouldn’t, so I’m choosing to trust her. I have no other options.”
True. When we fled Frostveil in the dead of night, neither of us had possessed the clarity of mind to snatch up flasks of the Mind Rönd potion that protected fae from most whisperers. Even if we had, we would have run out by now. If Vale was confident with this whisperer knowing his secrets, then I would trust his judgment.
“That makes us a pair,” I said. “My secrets are also known to all now.”
He extended his arms and wrapped them around me. His hands slithered to my arse and pulled me close, his intent as clear as the hungry gleam that sparked in his eyes.Vale was done with catching up. He wanted to feel me after being apart for days. “Surely notallyour secrets.”
“You’re right,” I spoke offhandedly, as if my heart had not begun to race at our closeness. “Some are not even known to you.”
“Is that a challenge, my mate?”
I tilted my chin up. “You know what? I think it might be.”
“Challenge accepted.” He scooped me up, and my toes curled in my boots as he strode to the bed and placed me there, lovingly, tenderly.
“Now,” Vale pulled back and took his time as he examined me, his warm brown eyes lingering over my every curve and valley. “Where might I begin to find these secrets?”
My hand drifted to my breasts, grazed across them. Though I wore traveling clothes and not the gowns with plunging necklines that I’d become used to at court, one would never guess that Vale preferred one style over the other.
He looked like a male desperate to drink, to indulge,to ravage.And I was more than happy to oblige his every whim.
“A favored spot,” he stepped closer, began untying the top of my tunic, then easing me upward, he shimmied it off. The band I wore around my breasts followed quickly, leaving only the ribbon of spider silk wrappings around my waistline. The ribbons were enchanted onto our bodies, so I did not try to remove them.
“Fates, Neve. If I go to the afterworld on this night, I’ll have gone out happy.” And with that, he bent and took onenipple between his lips, his deft hand teasing the other. Tugging. Twisting. Flicking.
My eyes fluttered closed as pleasure washed over me, and my hands lodged themselves in Vale’s long, dark hair, sometimes gravitating toward the shaved under portion that had grown out slightly during our travels.
Vale moved his mouth to the other nipple. “So far, no secrets I have not already discovered, but I must be thorough in my assessments.”
