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Positioning myself just around the corner from the long corridor she’d use to reach her chambers, or mine, I leaned casually against the wall and pretended to examine my own fingernails until she appeared—and drew to a sharp halt when I spoke.
“Did it go well? Do we retain your approval?” I drawled.
Her lips thinned and she shot a look over her shoulder, down the long hall, toward Breckon’s guards posted outside Grace’s room.
“You are not supposed to be visible yet,” she hissed, striding past me, grasping my elbow and pulling me with her. She did an admirable job at keeping her chin high and haughty so that, even in my grand clothes, I’d appear to be in service to her.
“Perhaps you’ve forgotten our earlier conversation,” I murmured as she gripped my forearm in her talons and steered me down the next hallway to a set of shadowy stairs that would bring us out one level down and near her rooms. “I will no longer wait for you to finish weaving your web. Grace is mine, and I will not allow that fucker to—”
“You also said you wished for my help, to take her without fanfare!” she muttered. We passed several servants and staff, though none of them looked closely at me. But she waited until we were inside her rooms and she’d ordered the servants out to speak again, rounding on me the moment the door closed behind the last of them. “You cannot simply walk the halls if you don’t wish to be revealed!”
“You were with Grace,” I snarled. “Breckon may underestimate your ruthlessness, Mother, but I do not. I won’t allow you to steal her.”
“I merely assessed her!”
“I told you, the baby is mine—”
“Not for pregnancy, you idiot,” she snapped. “I assessed her suitability as your Pair. I needed to speak to her without you present to hold her in thrall. She comes from an old family, Vane. We can’t be certain there was no plot from her parents—”
“I found her in the woods, Mother. There was hardly—”
“I’ll admit the dragons lend credence to the story of a fated Pair—we’ll definitely use that when the time is right. But…” She smiled slyly.
When she mentioned the dragons, I’d frozen before I could remind myself not to react. And she’d noticed.
I cursed. Of course she’d known. I’d suspected she’d already known. So why did this revelation feel like a blow?
I met her eyes. Her chin was low. She peered up at me from under perfectly shaped brows, her mouth slightly open.
“You haven’t mentioned the dragons before,” I muttered.
“Neither did you.”
I shrugged.
So did she.
We both knew the dragons’ magic, as she would term it, outstripped her own. She would see them as an asset if they could be controlled, and a threat if they could not.
“Is she truly a rider?” she asked quietly. “Or merely an adventurous woman with an appetite for men in leather?”
“She hasn’t had enough time to be more than a woman caught in the winds of fate,” I snapped. “Breckon tore her away before we’d done more than teach her how to ride a launch.”
“Not you, though,” she said calmly. “You’ve had plenty of time.”
“I was in pursuit of a woman I wanted—”
“You are a sworn Furyknight in the employ of the Queen.”
“No, Mother. I’m not,” I said emphatically—delighted that I didn’t have to lie. Because I knew she’d see it. “Trust nothing Breckon says. Ask your little friends and traitors. They’ll tell you.”
She stared silently, that way she had that could be so unnerving. But I held her gaze and merely waited. I was telling the truth—no matter how sad it made me. Let her test me. I would pass.
When she finally turned from me and began to speak, it was as if the exchange hadn’t even occurred.
“If I’m to aid you in walking safely from here with her, the baby, and the Dominus mark, then I need to be certain she has the strength to stand at your side when pressure is applied by our… challengers.”
She knew that would get my attention. I didn’t let my expression change, but folded my arms, staring her down when she glanced at me over her shoulder.
