Exquisite, wicked mistakes.
And I wanted to learn his secrets, too. Without even thinking about it, I found myself tugging on his shirt, trying to pull it over his head.
He helped, pulling his mouth away from me just long enough to shrug it up and over, then tossing it aside. He had a strap across his chest boasting an entire collection of small, sheathed knifes, and when I reached for the buckle he grabbed my hand.
“That stays on.”
I had no objections to that.
He, however, had plenty of objections to my dress. He tugged at the laces of the over-layer, freeing my breasts from their bindings, and pulled the whole thing down off my shoulders, pushing my dress down to my waist.
I should have been nervous. It was clear where this was heading. But somehow, looking up into Radven’s ravenous gaze, I felt only reckless, wonderfulpower.
He pushed me down onto my back, shifting us so that he loomed over me, then grabbed the bundle of dress around my hips.
“How many people know the secrets of your body beyond this point?” he asked.
He already knew the answer. We both knew he did. But he wanted to hear me say it, and I could feel how confessing it out loud would make it more sinful, somehow.
“Just me,” I said, my voice a breathy whisper.
He dipped his head, letting his lips, then his tongue, then his teeth taste the skin just below my belly button. Then he pulled the dress down my hips.
A strange pulseshivered through the room. At first I thought it was me—some weird effect of essence and lust combined into a new sensation—but then Radven jerked his head up, his eyes suddenly going wide.
And then he leaped up, yanking a knife from the strap across his chest and slashing it through the air.
Something landed on the mattress beside me. I turned my head and found myself looking at the body of a small, winged creature. It was sliced nearly in two, and its iridescent blue blood was soaking into the bed as it twitched and writhed.
I scrambled up into a sitting position. “Whatisthat?” Its rounded body was shimmery like its blood, all shades of blue and green. It looked almost like a beetle—if beetles grew as long as my hand, and had a double-pair of transparent wings like a dragonfly.
“Zhesper drone.” Radven stabbed his blade into the creature’s head, and it gave one final death-twitch and fell still. “Laitha uses them as messengers and spies.”
My body was suddenly cold, and the knot had returned to my stomach. If Laitha was sending spies after us, then…
I didn’t have to voice that thought aloud. Radven was already slipping his shirt over his head.
“Get dressed,” he told me. “We have to go.Now.”
23
Into the Darkness
Ipulledmyclothesup my body, trying to dress myself and make sense of everything at the same time. My skin was still hot and tingly, my heart still beating too quickly, but I had to admit that the strange dead thing on the bed had killed the mood somewhat.
“Does that mean Laitha knows we’re here?” I asked, trying not to look at the growing blue stain on the blanket.
“Possibly.” Radven, now fully clothed, used his knife to push the oozing, iridescent corpse onto his empty dinner plate. “Zhespers share a mind-link with each other, and Laitha is powerful enough to tap into it. She’s trained them to be her eyes and ears. It’s quite possible she saw us through its eyes before I killed it. At the very least, the fact that it was here means she’s looking for us. She has hundreds of zhespers at her command, they’re probably spread out across the countryside.”
He bowed his head over the body, uttering a few words over the dead creature that sounded oddly like a prayer. And then he bent over and slashed the side of the mattress, creating an opening as long as his forearm. Carefully, he pushed the dead zhesper inside, then pulled a small needle and thread out of the little pouch on his belt. In the time it took me to get my breasts back into the bodice of the dress, he’d sown up the mattress again.
“Why did you do that?” I asked, smoothing my hands over my dress. My nerve endings were still sensitive, not ready to admit that the moment for pleasure had passed.
“Some people believe the mind-link still exists even after a zhesper has died.” Radven wiped his knife off on his pants then returned it to the sheath. “I don’t know if that’s true—I’m not powerful enough to link to them—but I’m not taking any chances.”
My next question was one I knew had to be on his mind, too. “If Laitha is sending these zhespers after us, then does that mean Octavian and Alastor—”
“All we know is that Laitha is alive.” His voice had that edge to it again. “We won’t make any assumptions about anything else.”
