Page 28 of The Poison Princess and the Lord of Misrule

The mint and sugar are gone, having done nothing to help me sleep. I can’t stop thinking about Sera in the garden. The way the silver moonlight highlighted her beautiful features. The way she looked at me, wicked and daring.

I stare at the ceiling, unable to stop thinking about the sugar melting on her tongue. The way her lips parted for my fingers. How her tongue followed my thumb, lips closing around it. And the taste of her—gods, the brief, brutal moment of tasting her on my thumb.

The fucking warmth where she let her lips close around my finger as if testing me, leaving me in a maddening state I still haven’t recovered from.

Shit.

I drag my hand down my face, my cock hard and aching, begging to be stroked off.

Fuck, sleep is not happening.

I rise from the bed and drag on my black tunic and trousers, then creep into the corridor, the palace breathing around me with the creak of cooling stone. There’s a distant flicker of a torch in its sconce, a guard’s snore from somewhere down the hallway.

I move on muscle memory through the north wing. With the revolt, many of the guards have been summoned to the borders, and I find the door to the garden with ease. I tell myself I’m just going for more mint for my tea. That I’ll walk the grounds for an hour to clear my head and return, try to sleep.

I tell myself a lot of things. All of which are lies.

I’m going in search of her.

The night air is cool when I push through to the garden. The moon hangs low, not quite full. But it’s bright enough to turn the world around me into a charcoal sketch. The small garden is silver and black in the light, the violet petals reminding me of her.

But she’s not here.

I stand at the edge of her row of poisonous plants for a long moment, listening to the soft wind and to my own pulse and to the part of me that whispers terrible, damning things.

The river is just past the eastern wall, through the orchard. I look up at themoon, gauging it.

While she didn’t invite me there directly, she did tell me about it. And I don’t believe Seravyn Morvaine is a woman who shares her secrets lightly.

I walk to the orchard gate and push it open.

The orchard at night is its own enchanted realm. Apple trees leaning toward each other, their branches knotted overhead. The path between them is dappled silver where the moon breaks through the leaves. The smell of fruit and earth and dry grass rises around me with every defiant step. My boots make little sound over the soft ground. A habit from years of practice, stealth honed in my bones.

Somewhere a night bird calls as I move past the trees, a man being pulled. There is no part of this where I have any choice. My feet are taking me, and I’m simply following.

At the sound of moving water, I slow my approach, instinct kicking in. Habit from a thief. I move to the edge of the orchard, where the apple trees thin and the reeds begin, stopping in the shadow of a patch of trees.

And my heart vaults at the sight of her.

The river curves through a clearing, running broad and shallow over a bed of pale stones. The rushing water catches the moonlight exactly the way she described it, like poured silver, molten.

And angels above, she’s there in it.

Sera stands waist-deep in the dark river, her back half-turned to me, her hair loose and wet down her slender pale shoulders. Her white nightdress clings to her body, practically transparent. The fabric molds to every curve, andthe moon is being extremely generous with what it chooses to illuminate.

A pained groan works free from deep in my throat.

I should leave. A decent man would leave. But fuck, the devastating sight of her keeps my feet rooted like the tree I’m leaned against to hold me upright. I have never in my abysmal life made a decision more thoroughly than I make the decision to stay.

My breath has stopped in my chest. My hand finds the trunk of the tree, fingers raking the rough bark, as if needing the sting of pain to sober me.

The reeds are tall here, giving me plenty of shelter. So I can watch her like a damned heathen as she trails her fingers through the surface of the water. She tips her head back, letting the moonlight pour across her throat, down the seductive line of her—chin to clavicle to the shadow of her peaked nipples under the wet silk.

I’m already so gods-damn aroused from just the erotic sight of her, bathing her body beneath the moon like a goddess.

Then my heart all but leaps from my chest when her hand starts to drift. Down her throat. Across her collarbone. Down the ruinous slope of her chest, slow and exploratory. Her palm flattens over her breast through the nightdress, and her head tips back farther.

And I watch. Gods help me, I watch as her lips part on a small, soft sound that the riveralmost swallows.