Madrood shifted forward again, his dark gray lips peeling back to reveal his fangs. He was the largest dragon within the fae realm. The strongest.
And the deadliest.
One look from me, and his lips collapsed back over his teeth. He obeyed no one but the king, but he and I had come to an uneasy truce years ago when he tried to nip me, and I bit back with magic unlike any he’d tasted before in his life.
“I thought you were finished for the day,” I drawled. “What else would you like me to do?”
“Nothing. Leave my presence.”
I merely nodded.
“Prepare your Nullen.” The king’s lips slid back as far as Madrood’s had just been, and I was tempted to use the same trick on Ivenrail, but I deferred. The time was not ripe yet for something like that, though that time was coming.
Oh, how I ached to watch this man die. The moment I’d waited for was snarling offshore, churning with clouds and the thrash of the sea. Soon, it would roar across the fae realm and consume this man. Nothing would ever be the same.
I welcomed the storm with wide open arms.
“Once you’ve located her,” he said with a twist of his thin lips, “I’ll drain her enough that she’ll behave. She can serve in the kitchen or clean rooms after that.”
“She will not serve in the kitchen.”
His head tilted. “Everyone works here.”
Except him. “Didn’t I hear that your fiancé needs staff?”
Tapping his chin, he watched me. I merely lifted one eyebrow.
“Brenna does keep asking me to send her someone. It’s not like we have women just standing around inside the castle, eager to serve her.”
“Tempest would make a good lady-in-waiting.”
“Then see that she does this, assuming she’s able after I’m finished with her.” His lips curled up in a smile that would make every single surviving high lady in faerie quake. “Bring her to my room tonight,” he added. “She’ll be returned to your suite in the morning—or tomorrow afternoon. I might want more than one taste.”
It was all I could do to hold back the growl ripping up my throat. “Tempest. Is. Mine.”
“Nullens belong to no one. Me, if we choose to be picky,son. I insist.” He watched me, and from the way his mouth coiled, he suspected I was holding something back.
I’d spent the last twenty-two years learning how to holdeverythingback.
Here.An image from Drask flashed through my mind. Again, Tempest amazed me. So much power. It would take a delicate touch to bring it to the surface, to train her to wield itlike the blade it must soon be. If the fates were kind, they’d allow me to live long enough to do this for her.
If nothing else, I’d remain close to her for as long as I could. I was always her shield.
Protect,I told the bird.Watch.
I looked up to find Madrood’s speculative gaze on me once more. Creatures were intuitive. Some saw through mind guards to the intentions below.
Did this one?
“I told you that you could have one sip of Tempest’s power,” I said blandly, examining my nails while watching the king as intently as the dragon watched me. “No more.”
“Zayde let me take all I wanted.” Such a petulant bastard.
“I am not Zayde.”
“Yes, you are not Zayde.” Ivenrail snorted with disgust. “And Zayde is not you.”
I’d loved less than a handful of people in my life, and Zayde was one of the few, partly because he’d found a way to keep this wretched fae creature sitting on the Bledmire throne from using him. Mostly because he still saw something good inside me.
