I stop in place and inhale, lifting my hands to my chest and easing them back down as I exhale. I do this ten times before my teeth start grinding against one another.
This isn’t working.
I fling my arms down and fall back to pacing. Thanks to Abely, I’m starving, which only enrages me further. How dare he come to her room and beg like some kind of victim? And while she was in her nightdress, no less. My nostrils flare. I could track his scent right now if I wanted. The smell of fear was thick on him. I could follow that…seize him in my jaws, and—
“I am king,” I say aloud to the urge. Like a disgruntled cat, my first form curls into grumbling submission withinme. I can’t remember the last time I’ve had to remind it of its master.
I’m too close to her; that’s why my control is slipping. I can smell her scent still lingering on my skin, a heady mix of jasmine and vanilla that reminds me of the glossy festival cakes street vendors sell for the Andrames shower.
I love those cakes. I want one right now. I want it slathered in icing that glistens like her skin did in the setting sun yesterday. I want to trace each glowing line with my mouth, each shining inch of—
I let out a groan and grab at my hair.
How does anyone survive this madness?
Snarling to myself, I charge from the room. The guards by her door flick their eyes my way but wisely stay in position. All of them but one. This one slips behind me like a shadow.
“On her,” I growl over my shoulder.
He keeps following.
I wait until we’re alone in a back corridor before swinging around, teeth bared, scales itching to rise. “What don’t you understand about that order?”
Rally doesn’t blink. “Princess Serah is well-guarded,” he says in a maddeningly rational voice. “You’re dangerous right now.”
I seize the neck of his shirt. “I would never harm her, you—”
“Dangerous toyourself,” Rally clarifies.
My jaw clenches. I endure his infuriating calm as long as I can stomach before flinging him off.
“Why did you let Abely in her room?” I demand.
“Ty did.”
“And why did Ty see fit to let the minister into my betrothed’s bedchamber?”
A trace of uncertainty crosses his face. “He didn’t. He let Abely into her parlor and told him to wait there.”
“And tell me, Rally,” I say, my voice nearing a hiss, “did Abely wait there?”
My guard and most trusted comrade, my oldest friend, meets my glare with an insufficient degree of fear few would dare. “No.”
“No!” I begin pacing once more, the close quarters only piling fuel on my fury. “He had the audacity to crawl into his future queen’s room, to grovel like a wyrm on her floor before she was even dressed.”
“He would never have hurt her, Soren.”
“Of course not,” I spit. Abely is like a second father to him and Ty. I know that. “But the—the…” I fight for the right word to encompass the error. “—improprietyof it.”
If she thought Tirenth uncouth before, she’ll think us barbarous by now. Her mother would sneer and call us all beasts, the tyrannical old bat.
“It was wrong of him,” Rally says. The heel of his boot scrapes at the floor. “My understanding is he was in fear for his life.”
“As he should have been,” I roar.
A single, prolonged blink is all the surprise Rally shows. I turn from him and press my forehead against the stone wall. Half a minute passes.
“He didn’t tell her anything, Rally,” I say. “Nothing. He was too busy marinating himself in spirits.”
