The rational part of Einar wanted me to choose him of my own free will. But the dragon inside him wanted to stake his claim, and to make sure everyone knew I belonged to him.
I wasn’t sure whether that turned me on or frightened me.
“Is it the same for you?” I asked, touching the invisible mark on my shoulder again. “Have you been feeling these same… urges… the entire time we’ve known each other?”
“I’ve been doing my best to block out the bond,” he told me. “If I allowed myself to truly feel the pull between us, I wouldn't be able to keep my hands off you. But sometimes, when I’m tired or when my guard is down, the connection opens up. Like that night in the cave, when I kissed you in my sleep.” He glanced away, looking chagrined. “I still feel guilty about that.”
“You shouldn’t.”
Surprise flashed in his eyes as they snapped back to my face. “Why not?”
“Because I wanted it,” I said, shocking both of us as the bold truth slipped from my lips. “I couldn’t accept that at the time, so I lashed out at you. But I did want it, Einar. I always have.”
He grabbed my face and kissed me then, and I threw caution into the wind, wrapping my entire body around him and opening my heart to him. He growled his approval, his tongue sweeping past my parted lips to lick into my mouth, and I moaned at the taste of him. Fire swept through my body, igniting at my fingertips, but Einar didn’t seem to care that I was singeing holes through the back of his shirt. He grabbed the back of my neck and angled my head to the side, deepening the kiss until my head was spinning, until my entire world reduced to the taste and scent of him, to the fusion of our mouths and the press of our bodies.
I trailed my hands down his back to slide them up the back of his shirt, but he broke the kiss before I could make contact with his skin.
“Not yet,” he murmured, pressing his forehead against mine. “If you start down that road, I’ll have you up against that statue with your clothes burned off before you can blink.”
“And what if that’s what I want?” I challenged, my chest heaving. I clenched the edge of the bench as he got to his feet, clamping against the urge to launch myself at him and make him finish what he started.
Something feral flickered in Einar’s gaze. “You know what you have to do if that’s what you want, but you’re not ready.” He closed his teeth around my bottom lip and gave it a wicked tug, then pulled away with a wink. “Come find me when you are.”
He sauntered back into the castle, leaving me with curses on my stinging lip and a maelstrom of emotion churning in my heart. Because I did know—if I wanted Einar, I had to claim him fully, bodyandsoul.
But if I did that now, I would lose Lady Axlya’s support, and my chances of completing the ritual would go up in smoke.
And that wasn’t worth the risk, no matter how much my body screamed otherwise.
23
Leap
The next two days at Angtun were torturous for Leap. Uncle Oren ordered Mavlyn and Leap to be put in separate rooms and kept under guard round the clock. They only allowed them to leave their quarters for short, supervised walks around the palace grounds, and never at the same time.
Leap knew why his uncle had done this—he didn’t want the two of them conspiring to escape or undermine him, and he also wanted to punish Leap. He supposed he couldn’t blame Uncle Oren—he had abandoned his house and family for a life of crime—but that didn’t make this forced isolation any less miserable. The only bright spot in all of this was that his isolation meant that Ryker couldn’t harass him. The bastard hadn’t even tried to visit Leap, which he suspected was on Uncle Oren’s orders as well.
He probably thinks that’s part of the punishment too,Leap thought, rolling his eyes as he turned the page of the book in his lap. Reading wasn’t exactly his favorite pastime, but the small collection of books on the shelf next to the fireplace was his only source of entertainment. This particular book was a treatise on the twelve wind spirits, which Leap was already familiar with, though he’d long since given up praying to them. He’d done so every night when he’d first come to Angtun, begging for them to bring his parents back. And while it had been an unreasonable request in retrospect, the fact that he’d only been given misery was proof enough that the wind spirits didn’t give two squalls about him.
As far as Leap was concerned, he was on his own. Friends or no friends, in the end, the only person you could count on was yourself.
A knock on the door interrupted Leap from his musings, and he looked up to see Gale, the lightning rider who’d brought him and Mavlyn to Angtun, walk in.
“Time for my afternoon walk?” Leap asked, swinging his legs off the bed. “Have you got my leash ready?”
“Actually, Lord Oren sent me to fetch you,” Gale quipped, not missing a beat. He mimed looping his hand around a leash and made a tugging motion toward the door. “He wants you to join him for tea.”
“Tea?” Leap echoed, immediately suspicious. Uncle Oren didn’t do ‘tea’, and especially not with Leap. He searched the lightning rider’s face for any sign that this was a joke, but the male seemed dead serious. “Did he say why?”
“No… but I can guess.” Gale said. He opened the door wide and ushered for Leap to get going. “Come on now, boy. We don’t want to keep him waiting.”
Gale disappeared into the hallway, and Leap hurried after him. “What do you mean, ‘I can guess’?” he demanded as he followed Gale into the spiral staircase just a few steps from his door. They had placed him in one of the many tower rooms, this one fitted with iron bars on the windows so he couldn’t escape even if he found a way to get his shackles off. “What do you know?”
“You know I can’t tell you that.” The stairs bottomed out into the palace’s central courtyard, which had been converted into a maze-like garden. The tall hedges offered plenty of privacy for clandestine meetings and conversations, but they also offered an additional layer of protection should anyone attempt to infiltrate the castle. If a person didn’t know which paths led to which of the many towers, and they couldn’t fly, they would have a hard time figuring out where to go.
Leap knew based on the path that Gale picked that the lightning rider was leading him to the west tower, which was where Uncle Oren kept his apartments. That meant this was going to be a private luncheon, rather than one where his advisors and other members of court were present. That in itself was no cause for alarm, but based on the set of Gale’s shoulders and the ominous way he’d spoken, Leap sensed his fortunes were about to take a turn for the worse.
As Leap expected, Gale led him into Uncle Oren’s withdrawing room. His uncle waited for him in one of the wing-backed chairs clustered near the fireplace, a tea service laid out on the table before him, but Leap barely noticed. His attention zeroed in on Ryker, who sat in the chair next to his father. Both males had uncharacteristically solemn looks on their faces—in fact, Uncle Oren looked downright grim—but Leap didn’t miss the almost gleeful look that flashed in Ryker’s eyes when he’d walked into the room.