His eyes danced, and he exhaled the herb again. “He treats you as though you are fragile. As though your crown will break if he taps it too hard.”
“And how should someone treat me?”
He paused a moment, his gaze washing over her. “With respect for the woman you are, not as someone they want you to be. With equality, not as though you should be shielded behind a wall. And as nothing less than the most fearsome woman in all the land.”
She tucked her hair behind her ear and looked down at her hands. “You know, I would have blamed it on the boats if you had sliced his throat,” she told him. “No one would have known it was you.”
His smile met hers as he held out the herb for her to smoke once more. “Relentless,” he mused.
“Mmm…” She fell back on the bed and sighed as she stared at the stars above them. “I grow tired of the fake smiles and false niceties of my brother and all his minions,” she admitted. “Every laugh at meetings, every time they shake one another’s hands… Every time someone tells me I look lovely, I want to ram a knife across their wrists, watch them bleed out on the floor…”
“Graphic,” he said with an inhale of the herb. “If you need help, I’d be happy to oblige.”
She almost laughed. “I have a running game with Lex. Sometimes after really terrible meetings, we talk about who would scream the loudest if we suddenly started a massacre.”
“Ash,” Draven affirmed as she exhaled the smoke into the air. “Definitely Ash.”
“I’m more inclined to think old man Sauder from Scindo would be the loudest.”
“Who does Lex think?” he asked.
She took a long inhale of the herb and grinned. “You.”
His brows raised again. “Me? Really?”
She turned over sideways almost onto her stomach. “She thinks you would scream loudly, and very high-pitched.”
He laughed. “What do you think?”
“I think I would have saved you for last,” she said smoothly, “kicked your ass as I did when we were children.”
He almost choked on the inhale he’d just taken, and his hair fell over his eyes as he shook his head at her. “You got lucky that day.”
“You think so?” she mocked.
He handed her the pipe once more, and she inhaled it deeply, her muscles falling further into the depth of its haze. Talk of fighting made her head spin, and she suddenly remembered the words the man had said to her on the beach.
“The man on the beach that I cornered… he said something weird,” she said then.
Draven frowned. “I didn’t know you cornered one.”
“I did. Asked him who they served.”
“And?”
“He said… ‘Long live King Aeron of Mathis, ruler of Man.’”
Draven took another long draw from the pipe, eyes narrowed just slightly. “Interesting.”
“Any ideas?” she asked.
“None,” he said with a shake of his head. His eyes flickered over her again, and a small smile quirked at the corner of his lips.
“What?” she asked, seeing the amusement in his gaze.
“You… You’re the only person I know capable of making talk of war seducing.”
She smirked. “Tricks, Venari,” she mused with a wink.
