So, he leaned into it.
If she wanted to play, he wouldplay.
“I find the best threats are handwritten ones, Raphonminder,” he said. “And if I recall...you sent me a threat back.” He raised a dark brow, daring himself to be brave as she looked down at him. “Did you miss me, Ezer?”
“Like a knife to my brain,” she said.
Oh,she was good. She didn’t even miss a godsdamned beat.
He relished it.
“And in case you’re wondering, I’ve haltered the raphon.Thattask is done, so you can hold off on whatever hellish punishment you had in mind for me. We won’t be needing it today.”
Punishment.
He almost laughed, until he remembered they were still in the middle of a dangerous dance. A beautiful one.
If only she knew, how he would have given her all the gold in the Citadel, would have given her kingdoms and crowns if he could, for what she meant to him in his dreams.
He’d have every second of them come to reality soon enough.
But...until then...
“A shame,” Kinlear said, feigning disappointment with a deep sigh. “It would have been...quite artistic, the way it would have made you bleed.”
She didn’t buy it for a second.
Maybe he was losing his touch.
“There was never a punishment to begin with, was there?” she asked.
He shrugged, though it ached his tired shoulders. “I guess we’ll never know.”
And for the next several moments, they just stared at each other, as if sizing one another up.
You’re beautiful,he wanted to say.And you don’t even have a godsdamned clue, do you? If only you knew how much you make my heart race, how dizzy I get when I’m near you, how utterly panicked my thoughts become, because someday, Ezer...we’ll share a love that entire armies could never shake.
There was no denying their connection in the darkness, by the Acolyte’s door.
But...no.
He couldn’t say any of that to her, not yet. He was still a strange. Not even yet a friend. He was a prince who’d pushed her into a cage with a raphon, for the gods’ sake –you’re a fool, Kinlear Laroux,he told himself.
And she?
She waseverything.
Everything and more.
What if Arawn thinks so, too?
That obnoxious little thought had come from a voice that sounded, again, eerily like his monster. He hated it. He’d killed it and yet the ghost of it still came back to haunt him.
“I hear the magic and combat lessons are going...well,” Kinlear said, testing the waters. “Despite the instructor’s shortcomings.”
Ezer glowered at him. “You’re wasting his time and mine, sending me there.”
“I didn’t realize magic is a waste, Raphonminder.”
