His free hand flexes at his side. He leans down, his breath skimming along my neck as he sucks in a lungful of my scent. “You did. AndPrincess? I know what you were doing in the bath just now. Why your cheeks are such a perfect shade of pink.”
I try to deny it. I try and try and try, but the words won’t come.
“Youwerewaiting for me, weren’t you?” The way his lashes drop makes the question sound faintly dangerous. He traps a lock of my wet hair between two fingers, then sets it aside without brushing my skin. “So tell me. What were you thinking about, in the bath? What were you imagining?”
I force a swallow that feels like gulping down a boulder. “Nothing. I wasn’t imagining anything.”
Another smoky chuckle. “You know you can’t lie to me. The moment I touch you, I’ll see inside that pretty head of yours. See exactly what you were fantasizing about.”
My breath flies faster, my body bracing. But he doesn’t follow through on his threat. He just hovers, staring at my mouth until my lips threaten to catch fire, until the throb inside me becomes unbearable.
“I shouldn’t want you,” I whisper. The words just come out, faint but unmistakable.
His smile tips into something darker. “But you do.”
I pull my dressing gown tighter, the satin adhering to my drenched skin. “Ishouldn’t. You break every one of my rules.”
“Then make new ones.”
The air in my lungs vanishes. It’s not that simple. It’s not?—
“They aren’t even your rules, anyway,” he continues. “Just rules someone else convinced you to follow. Convinced youmattered. But this is Velindra, Princess. There are no goddesses here. No Book to tell you what to do, no expectations. There’s nothing in this room right now except you and me and the fact that youtorturedme today, and now I need to do something about it.” His voice roughens on those last few words. “So. Angry? Or gentle?”
I can’t answer. I can’t even speak. All I can do is quiver, my whole body straining toward him, toward the surrender I crave with every molecule. His scent swirls around me—grapes and frost and winter berries, plus something underneath, a tantalizinghimnessthat threatens to undo me.
I clutch at my pendant, hoping that will save me, that Ishanna willchoosenowto grace me with her attention. That she’ll yank me back from the perilous brink opening beneath my feet.
But the metal remains silent, and in the absence of a counterbalance, I feel myself bending, lured by Amriel’s size and his scent and the sheer gravity he exudes. The mate bond tightens between us, whispering promises, tempting me with all the ecstasy Ravenna and Calen shared at the dinner table.
Amriel’s eyes sweep my face. “You’re thinking too hard,” he says. “As usual.”
“One of us has to,” I breathe.
His look narrows. “No. It’s so simple, Princess. Don’tthink. Just feel. Decide what you want, then let me give it to you.”
I suck in a breath that feels like betrayal, that feels like falling.
What do I want? It fills me to the brim, but it makes no sense.Wemake no sense—the human princess and the fae king, the Aethrolian and the Velindran, the goddess-fearing and the godless. The eternal and the mortal. The predator and the prey, the hunter and the hunted.
He’s everything I’ve been taught to fear. Breaks every law I’ve ever followed.
And yet…he’s also so much more than that. Because he came for me when Ishanna didn’t. He endangered himself for my sake, nearly gave his life. For me. Now I’m only standing here because of him. Still alive, still woven into the fabric of this world, still capable of questioning, offeeling.
Because of him.
None of my rules say anything about that.
Amriel stares into me as if reading the thoughts that form and re-form inside my head. “Well?”
“I want… I want…” I choke on my confession midstream. “Something I’m not supposed to.”
“Supposed to?” He swipes his tongue across his teeth and laughs, his lashes sweeping low. “We’ve gone way beyondsupposed to. We leftsupposed toup on my desk in the solarium.”
Heat laces my veins at the reminder. I tell myself to pull away, then…don’t.
“I’m not evensupposed tobe here,” he continues. “I wasn’tsupposedtoget this angry with you. You weren’tsupposed toshut me out while you were in the labyrinth. You were meant to use your bracelet to talk to me, to let me help you. And I wasn’t supposed to care. At all. But it turns out neither of us is any good at following directions, and in the end,supposed todoesn’t actually matter. So here we are. You decide what happens next.”
A sharp breath skates through my teeth, becausesupposed tois all I have, the only language I’ve ever spoken.Supposed tomeans Ishanna, and Aethrolia, and the priestesshood. Yet even as I reach for my old standbys, they turn flimsy in my hands, dissipating between my fingers like so much smoke.
