Meryn turns and leads me into the living area, but I don’t make it much farther than the door before I stop dead in my tracks.
It’s been three weeks, and she’s apparently still not letting her attendants tidy her room.
The furniture is not even visible at this point; if you didn’t know better, you’d think that the chaise and the chairs were made in a scattered, patchwork fabric. The dining table has disappeared entirely under maps.
“Does anyone at least lift up your piles of chaos and clean underneath them?” I grind out. “Or should we expect that rodents are making their homes here? How long until we need to call for the palace exterminator?”
Meryn lets out an affronted sound. “I get it. I’m a hideous toad, and my room is a squalid pit. Did you want to talk or not?”
My eyes cut to her. She looks like she’s going through a rough patch, but even now, there’s a familiar, challenging fire in her posture. “You’re not a hideous toad.”
“I notice you’re not denying you think I live in a pit. So how would you describeme, then? An ugly sow?”
We’re starting to walk a dangerous line here. “Fishing for compliments, Your Highness?” I deflect.
“Well, when an attractive man says I look like shit, I tend to take him at his word.”
My pulse pounds at her words, but her bravado does nothing to disguise the fact that I hurt her. Fuck. “I apologize for my bluntness. You don’t look like shit. You just look like you haven’t been sleeping.”
Meryn nearly winces and presses her lips together. What is she hiding? “It’s been a very taxing couple of weeks. But I’m fine. So, the nobles?”
“They’ve all come, aside from Rabenfrost. I just arrived with the Volkenfrost contingent. You’ll be pleased to hear that I behaved myself the rest of the trip. No more cousins were sacrificed.”
“Thank you.” Meryn’s face goes a little pink as she asks her next question. “Have you… do you need the tattoo? For that, um, cousin, I mean? I could help with that?”
The color brings some life back to her face, and an uncomfortable warmth builds in my gut. Fuck, she’s pretty when she’s embarrassed.
Something primal starts to break through my tight control. How low can that blush extend? Does it reach all the way down to the tattoo just beneath her breasts?
I give into my hunger, wanting to see how red I can make her.
“Eager to lick me, princess?”
Meryn’s eyes shoot to mine now, wide and unblinking. I don’t even think she realizes she’s doing it, but her pink tongue darts out across her lips. I stare at the shimmering wetness, my blood heating as I imagine her lips and her tongue on me, licking where she’s caused me pain, moving lower to my—
“Meryn!” comes a young voice. Saela’s door creaks open, and the eleven-year-old girl walks into the living area. “Oh, hi, Alpha Stark.”
I take a ragged breath and bow, using the moment to clear my head. What the fuck was I doing? “Princess Saela,” I say to the dirty rug. Take another breath. And then straighten. “It’s nice to see you looking so well.”
Unlike Meryn, the girl looks significantly healthier than the last time I saw her. Her skin tone is back to a typical flush. She seems to have figured out how to manipulate her fangs, because she’s keeping them hidden.
There are no obvious signs she’s anything other than a normal child.
Meryn clears her throat. “Yes, Anassa has been keeping Saela fed regularly. We haven’t found a cure yet, but Aldrich continues his research.”
Saela looks a little embarrassed at this and slinks over to the chaise. She shoves some of Meryn’s clothes to the side and settles herself into it, pulling her knees into her chest.
Meryn watches her sister carefully, sadness lingering. “Saela’s been doing some research of her own,” she says with forced cheer. Saela just nods. “Tell Alpha Stark about it, Sae.”
Sighing, the girl looks up to me. “Have you ever heard of a Goddess Tear?”
I shake my head. “Rings no bells. What is it?”
Meryn crosses the room and sits down next to her sister. “We’re not sure. But the Mother Priestess called the opal in my crown a Goddess Tear and seemed very excited to see it. She said she thought it had been lost to the Siphons.”
Saela pulls a necklace out of her tunic, one that I recognize immediately. The royal heirloom that has been passed down through generations of their family. The gem is sizable, nestled in a delicate gold setting, and seems to give off a faint light from deep in its depths.
“If the opal in Meryn’s crown is a Goddess Tear, maybe this is one, too,” Saela says quietly. “I’ve been trying to understand where the term came from. Maybe it would help us learn some more about our family’s history.”
