Then she turned her full attention to the king. “Tell me,” she said, moving closer, “what you seek from this visit.” He spoke of trade, of shared borders, of bandits in the passes. She listened, nodding, adjusting her posture so that each time he looked at her, his gaze would find a new line to admire: the angle of her neck, the dip of her waist, the swell of her hip beneath velvet.
At one point, as she stepped past him to pour wine, she let her hand trail—just so—across the front of his breeches. His breath skipped. “Careful, Your Majesty,” he said, an edge of amusement in his voice. “Your servants might talk.”
“They talk no matter what I do,” Liora said lightly, handing him a goblet. Her fingers brushed his as he took it. “I’ve learned to give them something worth whispering about.” She leaned in to whisper something in his ear—something about the long winter nights and how easily two kingdoms might keep each other warm. The exact words mattered less than the warmth of her breath, the scent of her perfume luring his nose closer. His free hand settled on her waist, then slid a fraction lower.
Across the hall, in the doorway of the throne room, Hunter paused. He had been on his way to report a minor skirmish on the eastern road. The steward had told him the queen was with the visiting king and he’d almost turned back, not wanting to interrupt political business. But a movement in the corner of his eye had caught his attention. Liora’s gown, a flicker of the visiting king’s fur cloak, their proximity by the stained-glass window. He stood in the shadow of the arch, half-concealed by a pillar, and watched. Watched Liora laugh and tilt her head back so that her throat was exposed in that way he remembered. Watched her hand sweep casually down the front of the foreign king’s tunic, lingering over the bulge that had not been there a moment before. Watched the king’s fingers flex on her waist.
Rage rose in him so fast it made his vision narrow. It was not that he believed she owed him fidelity. Years and miles andblood lay between the day he’d slit Wilhelm’s throat and this moment. He had no illusions anymore about what Liora was capable of, or what she wanted. But some stubborn, painful part of him had still clung to the idea that what they had shared—that tangled mix of lust and loyalty and misplaced worship—had been real. That she had not simply replaced him with the next man who could bring her more soldiers, more gold, more land. He had been a fool. His hand clenched into a fist at his side.
In the side chamber, Liora’s laughter floated faintly through the half-open door, bright and practiced. Hunter could not hear the words, but he had heard that tone often enough to imagine them. He did not barge in. He did not make a scene. For all his turmoil, he was still a soldier, and soldiers knew how to withdraw. He turned on his heel and stalked away down the corridor, boots ringing on stone.
Chapter five
Blue Eyes and Beating Hearts
Hunter’sthoughtschurnedashe went—memories of her body under his, of her lustrous hair sweeping his bare chest, her bountiful breasts in his hands, of the sweet taste of her lips on his. Virility in his body rose and intertwined with rage as those memories of love were quickly followed by memories of the blood on her skin, of the way she had sent him away like discarded armor, of his new realization that she never felt the same about him. And here she was again, using the same tactics, the same arch of the spine, the same tilt of the mouth, on another man. By the time he pushed open the side door that led to the stables, his jaw ached from clenching it.
He crossed the straw-strewn floor in long strides, heading for his horse’s stall. His horse, a plain brown gelding with a white star on its forehead, tossed its head and shifted restlessly in the stall as Hunter approached. Animals always seemed to sense when their riders carried lightning under their skin. The animal lifted its head, sensing his agitation. “Easy,” Hunter demanded. “Easy, I said, goddammit.”
His hands shook as he reached for the bridle. With each heartbeat, the image of Liora’s fingers on that man’s lap grew sharper. The idea of her lying under someone else, arching and gasping and whispering those same words—his vision went red around the edges. He yanked the bridle too hard. His horse tossed its head, whites of its eyes showing, hooves clattering on the planks.
“Stand still, you stupid beast!” Hunter snapped, slamming a palm against the horse’s shoulder. The horse jigged sideways, bumping the stall wall, knocking Hunter back. His temper flared.
From outside the stables, Grimm approached, Snow White astride. They had finished stretching their legs for the day and she was ready to retire to the library when she noticed commotion inside the stables.
Then she saw the way Hunter drew his arm back, hand open, yelling, as if to strike again, this time on the frightened horse’s face.
“No!” Snow White cried with a sudden gulp of air.
At that very moment a knight appeared—the boy from the king’s processional—he jumped towards Hunter, grabbing his wrist from behind to stop the attack.
The young knight was dressed plainly—white riding coat, metal armor—but everything about him marked rank: the quality of the fabric, the shine of his armor, the easy balance in his stature, the way he’d moved without hesitation into the path of Hunter’s anger.
“Unhand me,” Hunter growled, low and dangerous.
The boy didn’t flinch. “Gladly,” he said, “so long as you leave this stable at once.”
For a heartbeat, silence. Hunter’s ears burned. He yanked his arm free more roughly than strictly necessary and steppedback from the gelding, who seized the opportunity to plant all four hooves as far from both men as possible.
Hunter reached for his sword. Before he could summon a cutting reply, he became aware of Snow White watching them from Grimm’s back. He froze, his hand stinging from the impact. He couldn't look at the horse. He couldn't look at the girl. Shame, hot and acidic, flooded his throat, and he turned on his heel.
But her eyes were wide, not with disgust now but with something like fascination. The young man must have felt her gaze as well, because he turned. For a moment, the world in the stable seemed to narrow to the space between them.
He lifted his hand slightly, palm open, in a gesture halfway between greeting and reassurance. “Apologies,” he said to her, as if this were his mess to atone for. “We came in loud.”
Snow White swallowed. Her heart, which had been beating fast with worry for the gelding, stuttered for an entirely different reason now. Up close, she could see wheat-blonde hair and clear blue eyes that seemed, in that moment, to see only her and nothing else. His mouth was strong and soft at the same time—a mouth that would, she realized with a kind of dizzy horror, be very easy to imagine on hers.
“I…” she began, then stopped because the words in her chest were all tangled. “Thank you,” she managed at last, nodding toward the brown horse. “For… for that.”
He smiled, and it hit her like a physical thing. Not a practiced smirk, not an oily grin, but something open and a little embarrassed, as if he didn’t quite know what to do with his own face. “Couldn’t just stand by,” he said. “He wasn’t doing anything wrong.” He nodded at the gelding. “Only feeding off of his rider’s energy.”
Snow White’s lips twitched. “People shouldn’t hurt animals,” she said quietly.
“I agree,” he replied, and something in the way he said it made her feel as if they’d just discovered a secret language. “We have to be their voice, since they cannot speak for themselves.”
For a second, the sounds of the stable faded—the stamping horses, the distant wind—leaving only the drum of her own pulse. It wasn’t just that he was handsome; she had seen handsome lords before, parading through the great hall. It was the way he lookedather, notthroughher. Most people looked at her and saw a problem, an object, or a ghost of the queen. He looked at her and saw… a girl. A girl who liked horses.
“Are you all right?” the young man asked, brows raised as he looked up at her. “He didn’t scare your horse?”
