I snarl in frustration.
To my amazement, Bale snarls back. His jaw tight, he comes at me with fevered speed, forcing me backward until one boot splashes into the water. He keeps pushing, and I step back again, sliding on silt-covered stones. Cold water seeps into my boots. Gritting my teeth, I push in the other direction, but he shoves back with strength that far outmatches mine. He follows up with a strike I barely block. My feet slip, and I lose my balance on the uneven surface. Panic zips through me as I fall, crashing into the frigid shallows on my backside.
The shock of ice-cold water slows me down, and I barely lurch sideways in time to avoid Bale’s blade. It slices the water as I hook a leg around his knee and bring him down with me. His splash sends freezing water over me, but I don’t pause this time and pounce, maneuvering on top of him. The triumph of putting my blade to his throat lasts only a split second before he throws me off him, pushes me down, and straddles me.
I gasp, barely keeping my head above water. His expression dark, his eyes on fire, Bale holds both my shoulders in a steely grip so I can’t use my blades and pushes me under the surface.
I stare up at him through clear lake water. The sunny blue sky beyond him mocks me. The look on his face doesn’t. He holds me under until I start thrashing. I scream his name, the little air I have left bubbling out of me.
He scoots back and hauls on my arms, pulling my upper body free.
Bent at the waist with Bale still pinning my legs, I drag in a huge breath, my lungs aching.
He pulls me closer, lowers his head, and whispers against my neck, “And you’re dead.”
Arousal snaps through me, jerking a tight, hot ribbon of sensation from my chest to between my legs. Cold lake, warm breath. Hard hands, soft lips. Goose bumps sprout all over me. “Then why am I still here?” I ask roughly.
He draws back, his amber eyes brighter than Cealastra’s star in the night sky. They hold me enthralled, and I wish I could fight their spell on me with feet and fists and blades, just like I fight everything else. “Because you would’ve killed fifteen of them before they got anywhere near you or your warbirds.”
“Twenty,” I counter sharply.
A slow smile spreads across his face, warming me like sunshine on my skin. I stare at the way his lips move. He’s always so stern and reserved. His smiles are as powerful as an eclipse—and almost as rare. I swallow, a fire kindling inside me despite the glacial lake.
Bale’s expression abruptly shutters, and he releases me, rising to splash up the shore. Disappointment hits me as I lurch to my feet. And relief. Bale leaving my personal space feels like a star dying inside me, the heat and power snuffing out.
I shake off sensations I wish I didn’t feel and desires I’m too smart to give in to, and grope around with icy hands for my dropped blades. As soon as I have them, I follow him out of the lake.
The others surround me, offering cloaks and extra tunics and cutting off my view of Bale. My teeth chatter as the autumn breeze pins my wet clothing to my skin, and for once, it’s not so bad being the youngest who everyone coddles.
CHAPTER NINE
BALE
You’d think someone who’d lived for nearly six hundred years and ruled a kingdom for most of them would be smarter than this. But who am I kidding? The only time I was ever able to ignore Idallia was when she was a child. I didn’t lay eyes on her again until she turned up at the Drayke School of Fire and Flight, fully grown and already quicker and smarter than everyone else.
It came as no surprise that Rita and Gerard of Glarraden got rid of her the second they could. They were only in it for the money and too caught up in themselves to notice the incandescent force they were hiding. That was the point, although I didn’t realize at the time that my choice would have such a lasting impact on Idallia, or how it would bind her to her birds. At least I ensured a legal adoption went through so she would inherit their house, the land, and the gold.
And that she’d be a true Torridaigan.
I summon Stuart to my study before dinner. I usually eat alone, but I think I might join the team after Stuart and I finish. He arrives, his graying hair damp at the temples from the long climb to the top of Drayke Mountain.
I offer him one of the chairs in front of the gently crackling fire. “I should’ve gone to the sorcerers’ level instead of making you come all the way up here,” I say apologetically as I sit across from him. It seems like only yesterday that Stuart was bounding up the stairs.
He waves a hand. “I’m still spry enough, and I have to keep in shape for my wife. Sybil enjoys my youthful vigor.”
I outright laugh for the first time in ages. Stuart has already passed the half-century mark and looks twice as old as I do, but I wouldn’t discount him in a fight—especially a magical one.
“Have you made progress on the neck protection for Idallia that I asked for?” I pour us both mugs of dragon’s brew. I rarely imbibe, but the sparring match with Idallia earlier rattled me—and not only because she almost skewered me a few times. I can still smell her—sunshine and ice—and maybe something else. She smelled…excited. Aroused. Especially in the lake.
Heat surges inside me, and I inhale the frothy scent of the brew and take a sip, chasing the fire from my throat.
Violence can bring out lust in people. I’ve smelled it on her before. It’s probably just that.
“I’m working on a torque she can wear around her neck. It won’t protect her whole throat, but if a vampire fang touches it, the fang will disintegrate and never grow back.”
I lift impressed brows. “No fangs mean no feeding the way they like.”
“Those vampires will still consume blood, but they’ll never be able to steal directly from a vein again.” Stuart holds his mug without drinking. “The torque is new and unproven, but if it works, we could try producing them in larger quantities and handing them out to people, starting with the border towns in the northeast.”
