Page 10 of Given to the Black King

The king rises.

Everyone in the court lowers their eyes.

I do not.

He comes down the dais steps.

Slowly.

One step. Another.

The claws on his right hand are fully extended, black and curved. He keeps that hand behind his back.

He stops on his side of the line. Close enough that I feel the heat of him across it.

Close enough to see the wet shine along both permanent points.

His gaze fixes on the pulse in my neck. Heat slicks between my thighs before I can stop it.

A sound leaves him.

Not a word. Too low for one. The cat-eyed woman’s head snaps toward him. The king turns away from me so violently his cloak strikes the edge of the dais.

“Out,” he says.

The whole court begins to move.

“Not them.” He points toward an archway without looking back. “Me.”

Then he is gone.

For several breaths, nobody speaks. Callas’s lips have gone gray.

“What did you do?” he asks me.

“Bowed.”

“You stared at him.”

“He stared first.”

The cat-eyed woman laughs.

It is not a friendly sound. She comes toward us while the rest of the court pretends not to watch.

Up close, she wears no jewels except a thin gold ring through one pointed ear. A knife hangs at each hip.

“Envoy,” she says.

“My lady.”

“Vess.” Her gaze moves over my face, pauses at my throat, then shifts to the empty archway. “I dislike titles before breakfast.”

“Is it still breakfast?”

“In this hold, breakfast ends when someone bleeds.”

Perr makes a faint noise behind me. Vess smiles at him. He goes silent.