“I know that you’re parched.” I rose, my foot throbbing all the way to the bistro table. “It’s a bottle imported from Sagittarius. A favorite of yours.” No response. I was doing far too much of the talking. Something wasn’t right. “Why don’t you get comfortable on the bed, and I’ll?—”
“Why don’t you tell me your name?”
The bottle uncorked easily, given Allory had it recorked. I turned to face him with two glasses of wine in hand. “I am what everyone knows me to be. Whatyouknow me to be. The Black Rose.”
I drew near him, finding him a few inches taller than myself, and noted his cutting physique. Broad shoulders squared in my direction. Never had I beheld a man so prominent, so striking—masked or not. Allory and others’ words of his looks did not do the king justice.
It was a shame he had such a dishonorable personality.
I extended a wineglass to him. He didn’t take it. I set it on the table beside the bed and tried another approach. With my palm flattened against his chest, I guided him backwards.
His eyes snapped down, and he cocked his head. I doubted Thusiah handled the king this way, but I was growing desperate. With a dark, arched brow, he sank onto the bed. Leaning back into the pillows, he cut his gaze to mine in anticipation for what I’d do next. He appeared… amused. As if he found this dynamiccomical.
The clock was ticking. He needed to taste my skin or drink the damned wine. If that meant shoving it down his sculpted throat…Stars, help me. I ambled closer, climbing up to straddle my legs on either side of his lap. The sheer fabric of my skirt draped over his thighs. I lowered my pelvis onto his, sucking in a breath.
He wasn’t hard.
Not even close.
My hips rolled in a way that once drove Kole crazy. “Does this feel good?”
He smiled coldly. “I can’t feel anything, sweetheart.”
“Then perhaps you should remove your gloves.” I guided his hands to my thighs and the jewelry that sparkled there. “For a more… intimate touch.”
I suppressed a groan as he maintained an impenetrable level of detachment. I dragged my curls up his torso until my lips hovered over his. The music from the hall, the pressures of what I had to do, all came to a staggering halt as I gazed directly into his eyes.
All Chosens had eyes as unnaturally bright as their talisman that they drew power from. It was well known that they could be identified by their luminescent eyes. Allory made it clear that King Zephyr’s would be subdued, yet still a shade of agate blue.
This man’s eyes were a startlingly deep, transfixing shade of yellow-orange like gold. Like that of a citrine or topaz. I racked my brain for what territory such a stone belonged to.
“Something wrong?” he prompted.
“Nothing, just… your eyes… They’re not blue.”
Heavy silence followed.
I focused on his scarf and lifted it quickly. Strangely, he didn’t protest. Where a golden neckband with the blue agate stone should have been, his neck was pale and bare. A chain attached to a quartz stone dangled down his chest. Faint white lines connected between a smattering of starlike formations marked his throat down to his collarbones.
His glyphs. Up close, they were more beautiful than rumors described. I could only imagine how celestial they appeared when they glowed with power.
It dawned on me then. His glyphs meant hewasindeed a Chosen, but… the agate stone wasn’t here. I lifted his black curls dangling over his brows. Phases of the moon were etched across his forehead.
Panic seized me. He merely watched, stoic and silent, as I demanded, “You’re not the king, are you?”
Not waiting for a response, I scrambled from his lap. In a movement so fast I scarcely knew what was happening, he was on his feet, cupping the back of my head. With our chests flushed, he tugged on my hair and poured a glass of wine from the bedside table into my mouth.
I screamed as he covered my lips and turned me effortlessly so that he wrapped around me from behind. I kicked and thrashed while he pinned in place. His free hand squeezed my cheeks, and the laced wine trickled down my throat.
Chapter 19
Raithe
I should have knownfrom the moment I saved her in the street that she was the Black Rose.
I’d missed her performance the night prior, too busy scouting escape routes for when I captured the Black Rose. I’d kept my ass firmly planted in the main hall afterwards. When I finally glimpsed her on stage tonight, she struck me as familiar. The hues of her dark hair jogged my memory, but I knew for sure when she broke words to me in this suite. Guardians never forgot a voice.
I thought my intuition had guided me to Jere that day, but it was this woman all along.
