“I didn’t force her to do anything!”
“You brought out your littlebox, didn’t you?” she said through the slaps.
Dorian hesitated as she also paused. “Maybe.”
Aydra slapped him again, but she couldn’t stop a small smile from finding its way to her lips. And before she knew it, she was tearing up from holding in laughter.
She could see his teeth and a grin through his arms that were still wrapped over his face, and she grabbed those arms and pulled them down, making him emit a laugh that reminded her of him ten years earlier. She couldn’t help chuckling herself.
“You’re such a shit, Dorian,” she said as she released him.
“You know, you all say that to me as though I should be ashamed of it,” he said. “I take it as a compliment.”
Aydra readjusted her dress and held out a hand to help him up. He took it, and as he stood, he pushed the sleeve back. There were red marks on her wrists from the belts the night before, and his brow raised.
“Looks like I’m not the only one who got out the box last night,” he teased.
In the firelight of the wall, she noticed the shadow of a bruise around his neck, and Aydra reached up to tilt his chin back.
“The collar…” She patted his cheek in a teasing manner, then squeezed his cheeks between her fingers, tugging his head side-to-side. “I hope you were hergood boyby the end of it. Tell me your knees hurt from all that begging.”
“Ugh,” Dorian groaned mockingly. “So muchpain,” he bantered, and Aydra rolled her eyes.
Draven, Bala, and Nyssa made it all the way to the Chamber floor before being stopped by Willow. The woman had rounded the hall in a leisurely manner until she spotted Nyssa walking with the Venari, and she had then stormed up to them in a fury.
“Nyssari!” Willow called out before grabbing Nyssa by the arm and pulling her forward.
A tenseness took Draven by surprise as he felt himself stepping forward between them at the sight of Willow grabbing her, but Nyssa wrenched herself free before he could do it for her.
“Let me go,” Nyssa snapped. She huffed and stepped back, raising her chin as Willow’s wild eyes looked back and forth between her and the Venari.
“Is there something I can do for you, Willow?” Nyssa asked, crossing her arms over her chest.
Willow’s nostrils flared with her annoyed huff. “You will speak with me,” she demanded. “In private.”
Nyssa looked like she might argue, her frustration seeming to grow so great that Draven swore she was shaking. He began to reach out for her, but Bala beat him to it. She placed a soft hand on Nyssa’s elbow, to which Nyssa only gave her friend a shielded glance over her shoulder, and then Nyssa fell in step behind Willow.
For a moment, Draven considered getting closer to them as they huddled at the far end of the hall; however, the look on Bala’s face caught him off guard.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, thinking it was about Nyssa and Willow.
Bala looked around his shoulder to Nyssa, who was obviously stifling her rising anger at being pulled aside as though she were doing something wrong. But Bala seemed to be satisfied that Nyssa could not hear, and she turned to Draven again.
“There’s something wrong with Rhaif,” Bala said in a low voice.
Draven tensed, slowing as he rounded in front of her. “Did he say something to you yesterday?” The mere thought of the coward even looking at his Second after he’d held her on her knees in the Forest made his fists clench. “What was it?—“ Wind circled them. “What—“
“He didn’t say anything to me,” she assured him. “It was the way Dorian reacted when Rhaif called to speak with the Princess.”
Draven relaxed slightly, but his stomach knotted as he remembered Aydra so upset over something with Rhaif the day the pair had arrived. “What happened?” he asked.
“Dorian didn’t want her talking to him, but Nyssa told me earlier that Rhaif calls on her once a week for the Council meetings, so it is not out of the ordinary for them to speak. But Dorian… his form rose when she left with Bard.”
Draven looked around them, eyes darting to Nyssa and then back down the hall, where guards watched them with nervous gazes.
“There’s something wrong here,” he said solemnly. “Something none of them want the rest of our world to know. These white walls… they’re hiding secrets. As they always have.” He glanced down at her just as Nyssa started back their way. “Watch the youngers backs as well as yours. You can trust them.”
Nyssa was obviously fighting to keep her frustrations down when she reached them. Whatever Willow had said had evidently irked her. She forced a huff of a breath out and smiled forcefully between the Venari pair.
