"Actually does, doesn't it?" Dorian replied. He turned his attention back to the woman. “Why are you out here hunting us? Alone, might I add. And in the northern part of the Forest of Darkness. What are you? Soldier? Bounty hunter? Mercenary?”
“I am no one to most,” she replied. “But bringing you back means securing my rank as the leader of our militia. I’ll not have you take that away from me.”
Dorian caught Corbin's gaze again. "Ambitious," Corbin uttered.
"I think I'm in love," Dorian returned.
She didn’t respond except with a stare that told him he was doing a great job of annoying her.
Dorian huffed, feeling his lips twist upwards at the corner. “Did you expect me to go quietly?”
“It would be nice.”
“You know... As much as I wouldloveto feel your hands hauling me over the Hills back to Scindo, I’m afraid I’ll have to pass,” he said with a shrug. “Mountains are calling. You understand.”
She looked lazily up at him, her full bowed lips twisting with an almost bored expression. “Don’t try me, Prince.”
He grinned. “Or what?”
Corbin threw a rope around her throat.
She didn’t hesitate. Her knife jammed into Corbin’s leg, and she whipped him over her shoulder. Corbin landed with a thud on his back, his groan echoing.
"Getting your ass kicked, Second," Dorian muttered. "Tiny bit embarrassing."
"Fuck off," Corbin grunted from the ground.
“Is that it then?" she cut in, stepping over Corbin. "Promised Prince depending on his Second to try and strangle me instead of taking me on himself?”
“I could take you myself, but I don’t know that that would be a fair fight,” Dorian replied.
She laughed aloud. “Perhaps we should find out.”
Dorian felt his core warm, his fingertips tingling as the fire grew in his eyes. The warmth settled in his palm.
He could see it.
Him taking her long, beautiful neck in his hand, pouring fire over her skin, blistering her in navy embers... But the thought of watching that brightness leave her eyes made him stay on his spot.
He pulled his sword from his belt instead and allowed flames to only grow from that one hand down the blade. Eyes black, streaks of ash steady on his right arm...
It should have widened her gaze. It should have made her weight shift.
But she stood firm, the only flinch being when her hand tightened around the hilt of her dagger in readiness.
"Oh look," she uttered, head tilting. "It's thefire Prince."
Not exactly the words of character he was looking for. The termPrinceseethed from her lips as an insult, as though she saw him as weak, of little power and consequence... An opponent unworthy of her taking him down.
She was mocking him.
Dorian let his fire recede as he pushed the tip of his sword into the ground, hands resting on the pommel. He couldn’t work out the tug in his stomach as his gaze poured over her figure again. The way the leather pants she wore fit snug around her curves, the leather corset cinched in her waist. He dared to think what her thick thighs would feel like wrapped around his head, how his hands would dig into her soft flesh as though it were saving him from the darkness consuming his thoughts. The knives strapped to her thigh and the sword around her waist made his heart thud. He’d never seen such a Dreamer woman strapped to the guild with leather and iron. And she certainlywasa Dreamer. He could see the feathered wing markings etched into her shoulders at her neck, the point of her ears through her silver and black hair. See the luminescent glow bouncing off her vibrant tawny skin despite the fog of the wood around them.
“What’s your name?” he asked finally.
“Reverie,” she answered shortly. “Reverie Asherdoe.”
He frowned at the surname. “Asherdoe? You’re related to the Scindo twins?”
