Her face was flushed, her lips parted, like she couldn’t quite believe the words on the page.
Unacceptable.
And yet my cock throbbed, straining against the front of my uniform, hot and furious and entirely unconcerned with what was or wasn’t acceptable.
She was lost in it. Gone. Dead to the grim little world still grinding on around her. A few of the women I’d taken to bed had told me what books like that did to them. I never listened. I had no interest in the daily weather inside a woman’s head. I wanted a warm body and an appetite to match mine, and the more I knew about what went on behind her eyes, the faster the wanting died. Some had even offered to read me the filthy parts first, like I needed priming. Ridiculous. A fuck was a fuck. It had nothing to do with what sat in anyone’s chest.
And here was Max fucking Morning, reading the same trash.
An idea lit up in me, mean and bright.
I drew myebony broadsword from the sheath across my back and charged her.
Her survival instinct kicked in just in time, but I was already on her in a blur, my blade up—for the scare of it, nothing more.
Her midnight eyes flooded deep sapphire and blew wide in fear and alarm.
“What the fuck, you psycho?” she yelped.
No one had dared to call me that.
The paperback dropped from her shaking hand, and she ducked low, faster than I’d expected. Her Coldiron armguard poured off her wrist and reshaped at a speed the eye couldn’ttrack. Two daggers shot up and caught my blade between them, locking it dead.
Still crouched, she swept a leg and cracked her heel into my chin. The girl had real strength in her; the hit rang through my teeth and down into bone.
I sprang back, laughing, and in one clean motion sheathed the broadsword like I’d never pulled it.
Rage blazing in her eyes, she came up off the floor and pressed a dagger flat to my throat. No other woman alive could have managed it, but Max stood only an inch or two under me.
I looked her over, lazy, unbothered. I didn’t step back. I didn’t push the blade away. She wasn’t backing off either. We held there, locked, eye to eye.
Dragon! Dragon!
The Coldiron in her daggers announced me at volume. My own armguard flared hot in answer, the metal recognizing itself across the room.
Should we murder the dragon?Her Coldiron consulted her, gleeful about it. Vicious little metal.
Her eyes flickered. She was talking it down. I caught the shape of it without hearing the words. My armguard vibrated, something between alarm and outrage.
He’s mine,it protested, indignant.Blood bond has been made. His pain belongs to me. I shall defend him.
The air had gone cold with a specific chill that came off her loaded daggers. My armguard held only a drop of Coldiron, as Aelindor had explained. The daggers were loaded with the DarkVeil variety, the kind she’d carried back from inside that place. The difference in weight was something you felt in your teeth.
Max stepped back half a pace, watching the blades as much as me, uncertain whether the DarkVeil Coldiron would move without her command.
“No,” she said, and swirled the twin daggers once.
They flowed together, melted back into a bracer, and flew home to her forearm. The cold lifted.
I wouldn’t say it out loud, but watching her work the metal was something. The fluid control, the speed, the precision, the way it answered her like it had opinions and was exercising them. I’d seen a lot of weapons work in a lot of wars. Never like this.
All four of us wore an armguard now, but none of us could command it or change its shape. Our Coldiron could shield against another Coldiron weapon, block a Coldiron blade. She’d explained as much to the others before I got back.
After the archdemon sent two Coldiron arrows toward Aelindor, arrows that would have killed my big brother if she hadn’t thrown herself into their path, she’d decided the heirs needed protecting. She’d folded me onto that list because of the other three, most likely. Even so, something in my chest gave an inch it hadn’t given in a long time.
The rage in her eyes hadn’t cooled. My mock charge had lit it, and it was still burning, hot enough that she was fighting not to shake with it.
Every male instinct I had wanted to drag her into my arms. The cold part of my head, the part that had kept me alive this long, told me not to make a fool of myself.