The atmosphere shifted once more.
The air charged and grew sweeter and heady with her arousal.
I’d been thinking about our kiss for the past few days and so had she. Nelle hated I knew she liked it. She more than liked it—she wanted more of us. Yet she refused to admit there was something deeper than wyrm and tamer chemicals. She could deny it all she wanted, but the chemistry sizzling between us could light the entire Keep.
Awareness snapped back into her eyes. The fire of lust winked out, replaced by mortification. She spun away, flustered, unplugging the kettle and setting it back in its spot. Her delicate fingers wrapped around a mug. She was clearly making herself tea, a task she’d had to adapt to doing herself since Penn couldn’t attend to her every need like her staff did back home.
Except…as my gaze slid sideways, there wasn’t the jar of honey I kept for her to sweeten her drink. Only the salt shaker sat on the counter.
What the hells was she up to?
It was the squeak of her feet on the tiles that dragged my gaze down to her tiny toes.
Pine needles and wet leaves were stuck to her dirty bare feet. My jaw ticked, and an itch festered down my spine, urging me to scratch it. I had an irrational need to haul her to the bathroom and shower the mess away. I didn’t even know how she could be out there barefoot this time of the year. It must have been freezing. And somehow it never bothered her enough to wear a pair of shoes.
Deep in thought, she twisted around and put the mug into the sink.
A faint metallic scent tickled my nostrils…blood?
The wraith-wolf’s attention was fixed on Nelle, who braced the heel of her palm upon the granite counter and drummed her fingernails. “Where do you go every day?”
I ducked under the bed’s curved latticed frame and sat on the edge. The mattress dipped beneath my weight as I tugged on my socks, then slid my feet into my new boots and buckled the straps. Angling my head toward her, I said, “Tell me the name of your favorite book and I’ll tell you where I go.”
She rolled her eyes and heaved a bored sigh at my desire to continue our game. Leaning back against the kitchen counter, she folded her arms across her chest. Glancing at the ceiling, she pursed her mouth to the side, thinking about it. There was a glint of cunning that sharpened her features when her gaze slid my way. “Let Me Go by…um,I forget his name…Ishiguro?”
Let Me Go. Much the same as her favorite song, Set Me Free. While the latter had hurt as she’d intended it to, this time the point she was trying to make didn’t. Swiping my thumb across my lower lip, I hid the grin. “Kazuo Ishiguro?”
“Yes, that’s him.” Her smile became cocky. She moved to lean her hip on the counter’s edge, and the skirt of her dress swayedgracefully around her slender calves. “I loved his bookLet Me Go.”
I rose off the bed and strolled lazily around Sage to the kitchen. Standing before her, she craned her head back and didn’t stop me from plucking free a few tiny leaves that had tangled in her hair. I really wanted to wrap my fingers around the nape of her neck, pull her in and kiss the smugness off her pouty lips, instead, I settled for this, “I believe the title of Kazuo Ishiguro’s book isNever Let Me Go.”
The cockiness slipped from her slack features with the knowledge she’d got the name wrong and that it meant something else entirely. Her rage erupted into a fearsome itch all over my body. Shifting further around, I tossed the leaves into the trash bin, and replied to her question, hoping to extinguish her anger. “The catacombs.”
Startled, her pissy mood dampened as she took a step closer, scanning my battle-clad figure. “What are you doing in the catacombs? What are you looking for down there?”
Every morning I met Mela, Petra, and their hunting party, bringing my own team into the catacombs beneath Ascendria. The warren of caves and tunnels was crawling with krekenns, and Petra kept finding fresh trails. Some dead ends. Some plunged deeper into the bowels of the earth. But so far, there’d been no sighting of the nest or the lesser creature either.
Yesterday, while I’d crouched over scuffed prints in the dust, something shifted in the gloom. A scrape of talons on stone. The stale scent of the Uzrek.
A low chuckle rasped down my spine as the Uzrek whispered into my mind—Son of the Wyrm, still spinning your deceit, I see.
The Uzrek had been hunting us as we hunted the elusive Yezekael.
While contemplating what else I wanted to ask Nelle, a ticklish feeling spread down my forearm, and I dragged my fingers along it. I gave the bags behind her a suspicious look. One was flat and obviously empty, but the other seemed full and had its handles knotted together. This was the first time she’d returned from one of her runs with something.
A ruffle of fur caught my attention and I glanced sidelong to watch the wraith-wolf slowly peel his thin black lips away from his fangs, rising to his paws. I suddenly realized there was a musty fur smell tainting the air.
My gaze cut back to the kitchen counter, and my heart pounded faster.
I swore I witnessed the canvas bag move.
“What the hells do you have in there?” I asked, pointing at it.
Nelle’s cheeks rounded with her sweet smile.
I stiffened, recognizing the godsdamned smile. It was the smile of an assassin.
“Oh, just a little gift from me to your brothers,” she replied enigmatically.
