Page 93 of Shadowborne: Reckoning

God, he made me sick. “Are you following me?” I asked flatly. “What are you doing here?”

His brows rose skeptically. “That’s my room behind you—but you knew that.”

I didn’t answer him.

He smirked again.

Then he said, “You look good, Brenny,” in a quiet rasp that used to make my heart sing, and now made my bowels clench.

I narrowed my gaze at him and didn’t move closer. “I don’t answer to that name anymore.”

“I think you will, though,” he said, then his tongue slipped up to just barely flicker under his lip and disappeared again.

Fear sang in my chest, a shrill alarm that sent my senses to high alert. But I caught it. Caught my body’s tension and my heart’s pounding and made myself breathe.

My brothers did things I couldn’t do. And I was here to do things they couldn’t.

Like distract Ruin fucking Galdec from finding my brother searching his room.

I took a deep breath and let my head sink back far enough to look down my nose at him. “I did know it was your room,” I admitted. “I’ve been trying to catch you for days.”

“I’m sure you have.” His smile curled higher on the right, a lopsided grin that used to make me ache. Now it turned my stomach. I nodded.

“God, you really have grown more arrogant, haven’t you?”

He shrugged. “Is it arrogance when it’s true?”

I huffed as if I was laughing, then looked up and down the hallway, always keeping him in my peripheral vision in case he moved quickly.

There was several feet of carpet between us, and I needed to close that space. So, I let my arms fall to my sides and started towards him, leaning in and whispering as I closed the gap. “I have a message for you.”

“Oh?”

I nodded, then looked at his chest and hesitated with one hand raised, as if to touch him.

The truth was, I knew the form of that chest. Knew its warmth. Where it was firm, and where soft. Knew the lines between muscle and where the bone stood proud. I knew the sound of that heart—beating quickly with want, or slowly in the languid rest after release. I knew the sound of laughter in that chest. Also, my name. And the low rasp of desire.

I wished I didn’t. I wished I couldn’t conjure any of it.

And when I forced myself to lay my palm softly at the center of that broad chest and slide it up, towards his neck, it made me want to grip his throat and stop his breath

And when he caught my wrist, stopping my progress, I smiled.

But my heart pounded. I was in skirts. And I didn’t have a blade.

And Voski was in his room.

His eyes flashed and his smile gained an edge. “What are you doing, Brenny?”

I glanced over his shoulder and he took the bait, snapping his head around to look for the sneak. In the same second I grabbed his cravat with the other hand and twisted, tightening it around his neck so that he gave a strangled grunt and grabbed for both my arms in a hold I knew he could use to flip me.

“If you harm me, I will scream,” I hissed. He froze, but didn’t break the grip. “And we both know when I do, the entire castle will come running. They’ll all want to know why the great Furyknight would attack a woman in the halls of the castle. I suspect Donavyn would have answers for them.”

His eyes narrowed to slits, but his face was turning a bright red and his voice rasped with the effort to breathe because of my grip on his tie. “What the hell are you—”

“I don’t give two shits if Donavyn believes you’re loyal to the crown—I do not. I don’t believe you’re hunting a mole, and I’m more than happy for this entire kingdom to learn the truth about your perverted ass. So, hear me, Ruin: Donavyn may have honor, but I’m just a simple woman, ruled by her emotions. I will burn this mission to the ground if it means making sure you’re revealed for what you truly are. Donavyn’s honor be damned.”

Ruin choked once, but his grip on my wrist was so tight I was starting to lose feeling. I wouldn’t be able to restrict his air for much longer.