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What was she trying to provoke?

Obviously, it was a useless effort on her part. He knew his duty well, and his goals were set in stone. He would never allow such absurd and childish teasing to distract him. Still, he found himself turning the question of her motives over and over in his thoughts at night … and then dreaming horrifyingly intense, shocking scenarios where he pinned her down on his bed to force her to finally answer all of his questions, while she laughed shamelessly up at him and then …

No! He would not remember those dreams. Even Gerard couldn’t exert control over his own subconscious while he slept. He could only resist lingering over those reprehensible fantasies in the light of day.

So it wasn’t a surprise when he awoke in pitch darkness, aching with unforgivable heat once again. Damn it, why couldn’t he ever get her out of his mind for long? And why did his sleeping mind somehow turn her ceaseless, mocking torment into irrational temptation?

Only yesterday, he’d come face-to-face with the fae queen on a snowy battlefield where she’d stood, barefoot and reckless, allied with two other powerful, independent queens in open defiance of the Empire. It had taken all of Gerard’s diplomatic efforts, combined with those of Estarion’s surprisingly pacifistic Archduke and the icily calculating Queen of Nornne, to prevent a war that none of them actually wanted … and Lorelei’s impudent provocations had come dangerously close to evoking a personal reaction that Gerard couldn’t afford.

Perhaps he should have expected her to invade his dreams afterwards.

This time, mimicking real life, he’d dreamed that he was sleeping on the thin cot in the small, plain tent he always used for marching with his troops. When the decadent, unmistakable scent of her perfume had awakened his dream-self, he’d stiffened, his eyes snapping open … and found the notorious Siren of Balravia smiling mischievously down at him, lit in the darkness of his tent by a circle of golden fae lights that danced around them both, enclosing the two of them in a warm, intimate circle.

“Shh, darling.” She tipped one palm to scatter shimmering silver dust across the exposed skin of his face and throat before he could rise. “There’s no need for you to wake or worry now. I’m taking care of absolutely everything.”

Even his dream-self knew that was patently absurd. Between the troops he commanded, the dangerously narcissistic Emperor he served, the perilously shifting streams of politics, and the endless weight of his own family legacy, Gerard always had to worry. It was his responsibility and the choice he had made and … and …

And yet …

As the silver dust settled and melted into his skin, warm, irresistible lassitude overcame him, and he found his eyes falling inexorably shut. Lorelei’s small, soft fingertips stroked lightly across his cheek, leaving tingling trails of sensation in their wake, and despite everything, his rational objections sank too deep to be rediscovered.

It was only a dream, after all. No one could blame him for taking pleasure in a dream. Only a dream …

And he reminded himself of that, again and again, for several agonizing moments after he woke, spread-eagled and panting, his senses still full of that aggravating scent of roses and his body burning with a heat he utterly refused to identify.

Enough! His mind still fogged with sleep, Gerard set his teeth together and turned to roll out of bed for his usual, punishing round of morning calisthenics. They were designed specifically to expel all such distracting nonsense from his head …

But the moment he tried to move, he found himself tethered by strangely soft—yet implacable—chains that fastened across his chest, his arms, and his ankles to hold him firmly in place, splayed out across a wide, soft mattress.

Was he still dreaming after all? This wasn’t his thin, hard traveling cot. And how could the air feel so luxuriantly warm in the middle of a snowy mountain pass?

Gods above. He sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth as the outrageous truth finally hit him.

No wonder he could still smell roses!

“Queen Lorelei.” It was a snarl of disbelieving fury—and the most uncontrolled outburst he’d allowed himself in decades.

Rainbow sparkles erupted in the darkness before him as if he had uttered an invitation.

“Finally!” The Queen of Balravia burst out of one of her fiendishly unstoppable fae portals, clothed in a low-cut, gauzy, gold concoction and beaming triumphantly. As she emerged, the blanketing darkness lifted from the room around them to reveal a large, airy bedchamber wallpapered in shades of forest green and lit by midday sunlight. There must have been a window somewhere to allow in so much light, but the full force of Gerard’s attention was fixed on the fae queen’s deceptively lovely face. She clasped her hands as if with rapture under her pointed chin and regarded him from the floor beyond his prison-bed, her periwinkle-blue eyes glinting with mischief. “I thought you’d never wake up, sleepyhead. I’ve been waiting for ages!”

He could not allow himself to lose control and bellow, no matter what the provocation. But it took all of the willpower he’d learned across his lifetime to keep his voice steady and uninflected. “That, Your Majesty, would be because when you kidnapped me from my tent in the middle of a full Imperial army encampment, you laid an illicit sleeping spell upon me. The number of international laws you have just flagrantly broken—”

“Oh, that was just a tiny little enchantment, not a spell. Honestly!” Rolling her eyes, she flicked one dimpled hand in dismissal. “If that was all that was keeping you asleep, you would have woken up hours ago, as I’d expected. No, I think you must have been exhausted, poor thing. You do work yourself terribly hard, don’t you, running around every day, trying to satisfy all of Otto’s demands? Really, you ought to be thanking me right now for whisking you away on this lovely vacation.”

“Vacation,” Gerard repeated flatly. Incredulity mingled with righteous outrage—a reaction that had become intimately familiar across the past seven years of their acquaintance.

Was she actually trying to drive him into madness? Had that been her plan for him all along?

As she glided towards him, the shimmering golden fabric of her gown brushed softly against the sides of the bed, and he found himself intensely, unavoidably aware of his own position, splayed across the silken covers of the mattress and bound by impossible chains of flowers. He’d already felt their magical implacability; he wouldn’t humiliate himself by fighting against them now and failing under her delighted gaze.

Thank all the gods that it had been too cold in his tent last night to sleep unclothed. He was still missing his polished boots, vest, cravat, and uniform coat, but at least his chest and outstretched arms were fully covered by a long-sleeved, high-collared cotton shirt, and his legs were safely sheathed in woolen trousers.

There was no actual, practical possibility that he could feel the heat of her lingering gaze through those layers.

But there was one certain truth he’d understood about the Fae Queen of Balravia from the moment of their first meeting: She excelled at throwing her opponents off their guard. So Gerard used decades of experience to separate himself, now, from the weaker impulses of his body and gaze up at her with the unaffected demeanor he’d perfected long ago. “I wonder, Your Majesty: What do your good friends and allies, the Queens of Nornne and Kitvaria, think of this supposed vacation you’ve arranged without my permission? Did they agree to this political decision?”

Queen Lorelei didn’t flinch, of course. Her shields were far too polished for that—and despite what the rest of the continent might imagine, Gerard had understood for years that she was more dangerously clever and less emotionally driven than she wished any of her enemies to realize. He had been teaching himself her tells for years, though, so he savored the brief flicker of her sparkling eyelashes despite the condescending curl of her lips an instant later. “My dear general,” she purred, “I know you’re on vacation, but surely you haven’t already forgotten the rules of successful political alliances? We Queens of Villainy would hardly have chosen to band together in the first place if we couldn’t trust each other to keep the details of our private meetings private.”