As expected, he couldn’t resist the challenge. The darkening of his eyes told me as much.
“You will, by the time we’re finished here.”
Ahh, Terran. It was almost too easy.
“Aye?”
He closed the gap between us.
“I will have you begging before this game is through, Lyra. Do not test me on this.”
“Begging? For what? An audience with your father?”
He smelled like the land. Like strength and warrior. A heady combination for someone who could respect his power, even if it was a danger to me and my people.
When his hand shot out, I didn’t stop him. It was not the first time Terran had touched me, his finger lifting my chin to meet his gaze. But it was the first time in many years, and never in a conversation such as this one.
A dangerous game, indeed.
“I am impervious to temptation, Lyra. Especially when I’m being manipulated.”
I leaned in, just enough to feel the tension coil between us.
“Then ’tis a good thing I’m not trying to tempt you.”
His hand dropped, but Terran didn’t step away. We were close. Too close. If anyone walked past, they would think something was happening between us, but Terran didn’t seem worried. Instead, he held his ground.
If I were sensible, I would have stepped back. Terran smelled of rain-cooled stone and the metal tang of his magic. I could map his tells now: the way his jaw tightened when he swallowed a truth; the way power gathered at his left hand first; the way his gaze dropped to my mouth when he was about to say something he should not.
I had been trained to exploit weakness. The trouble was learning where his ended and mine began.
“Why are you here, Lyra?”
I stepped back, my senses already heightened with the threat of Gyoria all around me. An unsettledness I’d expected, but even so…
“To speak to your father.”
“Speak to me instead.”
I gestured behind him, the entrance still flanked by guards. The corridor open for any to walk past. “We’re too exposed.”
I didn’t drop my gaze until Terran turned from me. Without another word, he walked out, as quickly as he’d come, saying something to one of the guards and then stalking away, his strides taking him quickly out of my view.
Prince Terran leaving without a proper fare-thee-well was unsurprising, but it stung nonetheless.
“Come with me,” one of the guards said.
I expelled a breath, my shoulders untensing for the first time since I’d heard Terran’s voice. Where we were going, I had no notion. But wherever it was, only one thing mattered. And it wasn’t my feelings, however misguided they might be, about Kael’s brother and son of Aetherian’s greatest enemy.
5
TERRAN
“Why is she here?”
My father wasted little time questioning me. The moment I walked into the throne room where he’d just finished doling out both rewards and punishments to villagers who revered, and were terrified of their king, he began his interrogation.
Unlike my brother, I disliked the cavernous and cold throne room. He saw the floor, carved from a single block of dark stone, embedded with bloodstone and onyx, as a symbol of the power and wonders of Gyoria.
