“How did all of you get inside my estate?” I asked, striving to keep my tone even.
The women and the man sat in chairs insidemyparlor, as if they not only knew me but my estate.
“Sit,” Tempest told me in a tone that told me she’d do her best to make me obey if I didn’t comply.
Because I couldn’t see any harm in doing as she suggested, and I needed answers, I sunk onto another sofa. She joined me, sitting so close her thigh brushed along mine.
I eased away from her and again, she sent me a look filled with complete devastation.
“I don’t know you,” I said, though I kept my voice gentle. My fated mate was here. We could still build something, though I didn’t know what it might be.
Together, we might finally kill the king.
My gaze swept across the others. “I don’t know any of you, actually. Explain what’s going on.”
Introductions came first. Reyla and Brodine had grown up in a border fortress with Tempest, though I couldn’t imagine how the Lydel heir had ended up there. Airia had worked in the aerie at Bledmire and would bear watching.
Tempest shared how she and I had met months ago, how I’d collared her at the Claiming and trained her, how we’d fallen in love. She’d nearly killed Ivenrail—a detail that stunned me. She finished with how we’d escaped Bledmire the day before and brought me here with them.
How Ivenrail nearly killed me before they fled.
If this was all true, why didn’t I remember?
The one detail that stunned me the most was that Tempest had somehow removed the collar the king snapped around my throat like a noose when I was five. I’d spent years doing all I could to ignore the feel of it squirming beneath my skin.
That feeling was gone, giving me the only reason I could believe her.
Could all of this be true?
“You’restill collared,” I pointed out dryly, tracing my finger across her throat like I wielded a blade.
A shiver tracked through her, and her eyes closed, though only for an instant.
“You obtained collars like this for me, my friends, and Brenna,” Tempest said, explaining who Brenna was, though she now went by the name Layla. My brother was with the king’s new wife?
“You didn’t tell me how you got them,” Tempest said. “But we used them. The new collars remove the Claiming vines and mask that we no longer have them.”
What had I given for such a thing, and why would I do something like this? But if they were no longer collared yet appeared as if they were, they could travel through faerie without giving away that they were free.
And now it appeared Tempest had obtained the same collar for me.
“Where did you get it, little one?” I asked her. Only the Lieges possessed the magic to create collars.
Her gaze slipped from mine. “It doesn’t matter.”
Tipping her chin up with one finger, I studied her face. “It does,” I snapped. “Tell me.”
“Don’t use that tone with me.” She pulled away from my touch.
“What tone is that, little one?” I drawled, enjoying teasing her for some unknown reason. I wanted to get up and walk away from her, but I also wanted to tug her back onto my lap and wrap my arms around her.
Reyla and Airia scowled, and Brodine leaned forward, a low growl rumbling in his chest.
“The kind of tone that says you won’t allow me to refuse you an answer,” she said with a quake in her voice that I knew in my heart was not fear. Her pupils had dilated, and her breaths jerked in and out, making her full breasts press against the inside of her leather tunic. I couldn’t look away.
My tone had aroused her.
Perhaps we had loved each other, though I couldn’t find the feeling inside me no matter how hard I tried.
