His gaze dropped, and he pulled his feet in closer.
“It started with the shadows around you,” he began, voice soft. “They rose from your seat and your shoulder blades. I thought I just saw smoke from the fire. But then I saw your hands, your shaking… the build-up of ash beneath your fingertips. You lunged at me quicker than I could blink. Your eyes turned gold. Not just the amber they are normally. This was the color of the Sun, of molten fire in a forge. The black streaks ran up your arms and on your neck, spreading as rivers over your skin, stretching under your neck and then up your cheeks. Black around your eyes like battle makeup and nerves. But when you caught Noda’s throat, the flames rose on your arm. They never rose on the hand that had me, just heat.Searingheat. And then you snapped her neck.”
Sweat pooled in her palms as she hunched over her bent knees. She couldn’t remember it. Couldn’t remember what had snapped in her to make her go off. Couldn’t remember what they’d been talking about to make her flee.
“Makes me wonder if you’ve a soft spot for me,” he finalized.
“Do not mistake my not burning you as a kindness,” she growled. “I’m right-handed. Probably funneled into my dominant hand before stretching to the left.”
It was the first whisper of banter that had left her lips in days.
Gail chuckled and grabbed another piece of jerky from the bag. “Eat up,” he told her. “We’ll reach the Noble’s estate tomorrow. I can honestly say I don’t know when you’ll have another full meal.”
“You’re still handing me over to them?”
His head tilted. “Is there a reason why you think I wouldn’t?” he asked.
There was a sincerity in his question, a look in his eyes that told her he was truly asking her to make him reconsider.
“Are you genuinely asking me?”
A heavy sigh escaped him, an audible one that rattled the fire. Gail pushed his hands over his face, something she hadn’t seen him do, and the action of it made her heart still.
“I am,” he finally said, his voice softer.
Nyssa allowed the question to live in her bones, to settle in her ears. She could have pleaded with him, told him she would make a bargain for her life… begged for him not to take her.
But the truth was, Nyssa needed to know what Man was thinking. She needed to see them for herself. She wanted to meet them. She wanted to infiltrate them.
"What possible occupation needs the skill of reading people besides being in the King's court?"
Nadir smiled. "Perhaps a spy, then."
Nyssa straightened her back.
“You will take me to the Noble’s estate tomorrow,” she said firmly.
Gail’s forehead wrinkled with the raise of his surprised brows.
But Nyssa ignored him.
“You’ll take me to the estate,” she continued. “You’ll barter your place at the table and confirm your position in his court.
Gail contemplated her a moment. “Why?”
“Because I believe in keeping my enemies close, Venari,” she said. “I know nothing about these people, and neither do the people I am trying to keep safe. The only way I learn anything is from the inside. So the inside is where I will go.”
Gail’s lips quirked, apparently both amused and impressed by her decision. “You’re more dangerous than anyone realizes,” he decided.
“Funny,” Nyssa said. “That’s what my silly Commander keeps saying about me.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
THEY WOKE BEFORE the sunrise.
Gail was sure it would only take a few hours to finish walking to the camp, and he wanted to arrive before the sun rose too high in the sky—intent on thinking he would be a welcome guest at their dinner table for bringing such a prize.
Something didn't feel right every time Gail would look at her. It was not the same leering and confident gaze he'd watched her with that entire week. Not once did he call her Queen or refer to her fire again. Not once did he make any snide remarks.
