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The two chuckled, clasping each other in a hearty embrace. The court looked on, doting at the display of comradery.

Not me, though. I had seen this same scene play out in a simpler arena. I had seen the way two children who secretly hated each other with every molecule in their little bodies would embrace in front of parents who yearned for them to get along. Neither of them willing to be the one who soiled the fantasy of a utopia’s blended family, they would hug and smile fake smiles. I had been both the hugger and the hugged too many times to count, only once was a hug this laced with venom and animosity.

So, the Ard Rí and The Raven secretly hated each other. I could use that to my advantage some day. I tucked that little bit of information into my imaginary file cabinet and watched quietly as the two split apart.

“What have you brought me, Raven?” The two turned to me, and lecherousness seeped into the sky of the King’s eyes. “You always bring me the most beautiful gifts.”

“Fresh, too, Majesty. Rictus had just brought her off his ship—he hadn’t even had a chance to pull her from her kennel before I snatched her from his greedy little hands.”

Our eyes locked again, my lower lid fighting the urge to narrow in a glare as the Ard Rí walked around me, inspecting me like a Christmas ham.

“Rictus? This is Rictus’s work?” The King paused behind me, and I felt the heat of his body too close to my own as his hand weighed the heft of my new breasts.

It was easy not to react since they were not truly my breasts. It was easy to dislodge myself from ownership of the flesh that had been molded into what I was housed in.

“It is, Majesty.”

The slightest hint of anger flitted into those three words. There one second and then gone the next.

A guffaw of amazement and wonder gusted out of the King as his hands wandered the slightly rounded plane of my stomach. “I don’t believe it. He crafts beasts of burden, but this? This is a masterpiece. Have you tasted her yet, Captain?” His fingers were too close to a part of I hadn’t been able to truly divorce myself from. I felt the callouses along the bridge of his palm pressing into the hollows of my hip bones, fingertips playing at the top of my seam as if it were nothing more than a fidget toy.

I wanted to scream, wanted to fight, wanted bite. My teeth itched, and if I were the cat who was cleaning his paws at my ankle, I’d have bent into a hiss.

“If her pussy is as venomous as her tongue, brother, you’re more likely to be dead in your sheets by morning.”

Had I really wanted to claw that woman’s face off? Her intervention saved me from making a fool of myself by attempting to reach for the dagger at the King’s waist. With all the open steel on display on every hip man and woman alike, it would have been suicide.

The Ard Rí spun away from me.

The Raven never lost eye contact with me, and I could see the nearly imperceptible way his muscles unclenched as the King did so. “Is that so, sister?”

I was lost in the forest of his eyes, dancing between fir trees and pines while the Ard Rí and his sister discussed the litany of my sins against them. It didn’t matter to me. They were a thousand miles away, and all that was present was the pooling sunlight between me and The Raven.

I had lovers before, but never had I stood fifteen feet from a man and stared at him as he stared at me and felt my entire body attune to his. I barely knew this man, and everything about him sent my nerves singing with delight and set alarm bells ringing in my mind. From the moment he touched me and I felt my mind and body awash in electricity, sparkling with an effervescent living arc, I hated him. I didn’t want to be sucked into his orbit. I didn’t want him sucked into mine. He stood as an immovable object in the path of Rule #21, and I could not afford to allow that.

Fingers grasped at my chin, brutally ripping my attention away from The Raven, and sky-blue eyes were all that took up the field of my vision. “Did you hear me, you filthy fucking daoire?”

Pain bloomed along my jaw. It dug deep into my flesh and scratched away the enchanted forest that had been before me.

“What?”

“Did he craft its ears poorly, Raven? Did you bring me a defective doll to play with?” He roared directly into my face.

He might be wreathed in the bounty of nature, but his breath smelled like the place where that bounty went to die.

“Jesus, fuck, my guy. Are you at war with toothpaste?”

“What?”

His question was soft, deadly, and was a dagger at my throat that was being encircled by the King’s massive, calloused hands.

“I . . . I said, your breath smells as sweet as your voice.”

I was never great at flattery. I hoped he was too busy trying to cover his ego to allow the easy out to go unaccepted.

A gloved hand extracted me from the King’s grip, the leather of it flexing against my arm. “She talks too much, brother. I didn’t have the magic left after the auction to enforce her tongue lock. You know how these humans are so stupid that, without a tongue lock, they don’t know how to keep their thoughts from spilling out.”

The King looked from The Raven, who was crushing my arm in his leathered grasp and then back to me several times as if measuring his next move.