Page 9

Then he leaned in and inhaled deeply, his nose nearly touching the curve of my neck.

Oh God.

Every rational thought I'd been carefully arranging scattered. Part of me, the trained operative part, screamed that I should be calculating escape routes and defensive maneuvers. But the rest of me was acutely aware of how close his mouth was to my skin. The warmth of his breath ghosting across my throat. The way my body had gone absolutely, treacherously still in response.

His scent hit me with startling force. Leather and pine, rich and masculine, with an underlying note of something wild and elemental, like wind through trees after a rainstorm, clean and electric and impossibly alive. It pulled at something low in my belly that had no business being there, an awareness that sharpened my senses even as it made my knees dangerously unreliable.

This was bad. This was very, very bad.

I stood rigid, nails digging into my palms, fighting the inexplicable pull toward him. The urge to press my face against his chest and breathe him in was so absurd and so specific that I spent five full seconds being horrified by my own brain.

He pulled back slightly, his golden eyes searching my face with an intensity that made me feel stripped bare. "What is your name?"

"Leila," I managed, my voice rougher than I'd intended. "Leila Hunter."

"Where are you from, Leila Hunter?"

"Earth. Charleston, South Carolina." I tried to track where this was going, to understand what he was looking for. Something specific drove his questions, some connection he thought existed.

"Have you ever been to the cliffs of Étretat?"

The question caught me completely off guard. Étretat. I knew that name from a Final Jeopardy question. A town in France, famous for its white chalk cliffs and natural arches. I'd seen pictures in travel magazines and thought it looked beautiful in that dramatic, windswept way that makes you want to stand on the edge and feel small against the vastness of the ocean.

"No," I said. "I've never been to France at all. Why?"

He didn't answer. Instead, he leaned in again, and I felt his breath against my hair as he inhaled once more, slower this time, as if trying to memorize every note of my scent.

"That's rude," I said, the words escaping before I could stop them. My cheeks burned. "You can't just sniff people like that. It's invasive."

He went completely still. Then, to my utter shock, the corner of his mouth twitched. Not quite a smile, more like the ghost of one, there and gone so quickly I might have imagined it. But amusement flickered in his eyes, as if my audacity had surprised him in a way that wasn't entirely unwelcome. By that point, I'd thrown out every behavior protocol Binwee had drilled into me.

"You're right," he said, his voice dropping to something softer, almost contemplative. "Forgive me."

He stepped back, putting a more appropriate distance between us, and I could breathe again. But then he said something that deepened my confusion into unease.

"You're nothing like her."

The words were barely above a whisper, spoken more to himself than to me, but I heard them clearly. There was a weight to them, a history I couldn't begin to understand. Who was her? Someone from his past, clearly. Someone important enough that my presence had triggered this kind of reaction. And then the obvious answer landed in my chest. Was it her? The lady he'd loved and lost?

I wanted to ask. Wanted to demand an explanation for what the hell was happening. But the expression on his face, raw and unguarded for just that one second, made it feel wrong to press. Like I'd stumbled into the middle of something private that had nothing to do with me and everything to do with a grief seven hundred and fifty years old.

He seemed to realize he'd let his mask slip, because in the next instant his face smoothed into something more controlled, more regal. The king reasserting himself over whatever it was I'd just glimpsed underneath.

"This is my cousin, General Sanyra," he said, gesturing to the tall female who'd been watching our exchange with undisguised interest. "She commands my royal guard. And this is Artis, my steward. He'll show you to your quarters in the castle."

An older male stepped forward from the group behind Kavan, not as tall as the others but still imposing, with silver-streaked white hair and eyes that held centuries of quiet observation. He bowed formally, his expression neutral but not unkind.

"Welcome to Argia," Artis said, his voice carrying the measured courtesy of someone who'd spent decades navigating difficult moments with grace. "I trust your journey was comfortable?"

"It was, thank you," I said, grateful for the return to normalcy even though my pulse was still unsteady.

"You must be tired," Kavan said, and there was a finality in his tone that made it clear this wasn't really a question. "Artis will take you to your rooms. We'll discuss the details of your mission over dinner this evening. That will give you time to rest and acclimate."

I wanted to protest. Wanted to say that I was fine, that we could get to work immediately, that I didn't need to be coddled like some delicate flower who couldn't handle a little planetary adjustment. But Binwee's hand on my arm was a subtle warning, and I remembered what she'd said about Drakhoni customs, about respecting hierarchy and not pushing too hard too fast.

"That's very considerate, Your Majesty," I said, managing to keep the frustration out of my voice. "We appreciate your hospitality."

Kavan's eyes met mine one last time, and something moved through them. Regret, maybe, or confusion. Then he turned and walked away, Sanyra falling into step beside him, leaving me standing there with Binwee, our guards, and the elderly steward, who looked at me with an expression that suggested he'd seen far stranger things in his long life than a human managing to unsettle his king within thirty seconds of meeting him.