He’d used it in that moment because he couldn’t trust his own lips to form coherent words.
Her voice had caressed his mind as she’d arched a brow, beautiful and scarred. “And why is that?”
Perhaps it was the way fighting her made his blood burn, or perhaps it was the strength of training that made him feelaliveagain, like he hadn’t inmonthssince he’d been pulled from the battlefield.
She saw him as strong, a formidable foe, when everyone else thought him weak.
So, he’d been brave last night.
Brave...and utterly foolish.
In the torchlit darkness, in the flashing light of the war, Arawn had leaned close enough that he almosthadtasted her. His lips grazed her ear as he whispered, “Win this fight, and I’ll tell you.”
Thank the gods she hadn’t won.
No, the moment his body was away from hers, the tension uncoiled. The clarity reeled back into his head, and he’d knocked the sword from her grasp as if she were a true enemy.
Then he’d fled the room like it was on fire.
Ezer might be the death of him.
She was dragging things out of him.
She was turning him into a thing ofwantandneedinstead of a Crown Prince who thrived upon control.
But when it came to her...
Control had gone out the window long ago.
He was falling, from the second he saw how boldly she’d faced Six for the very first time.
He was falling faster than he thought himself able, for she was a force that Arawn hadneverseen.
Because she wasn’t like Soraya at all.
She did not want him.
She did not need him.
She didn’t evenlikehim, most days.
And that scared the hell out of him, even more than the penance he might pay if he ever gave in to his feelings.
Because he wanted to bewantedby her.
She was the greatest challenge he’d ever been faced with.
The stone in his pocket finally began to cool, as if she’d set it down, abandoned it, wherever she was—the dormitory? The bathhouse, steam kissing her skin, barely hiding the parts of her that?—
“Prince?”
He blinked and realized every member of the War Table was staring at him.
Wrong! It’s all wrong,he told himself, as he shoved thoughts ofEzer away.You are a Sacred child of the Five, and you will not give in to the desires of your flesh.
But it had already gone past that.
Now he felt a longing for her, soul deep...the kind he hadn’t felt in forever. And maybe notever,because she wasn’t claimed by any man.
