He grinned.
My heart stuttered. It was the first time I’d ever seen him do it—truly grin, boyish and bright and unguarded, nothing of the immortal Fae prince in it. Caspian had told me once that he wished I’d smile more, and lying here now I finally understood him. If my smile did to Caspian half of what this grin did to me, no wonder he chased it.
“I’ll take whatever you can give me,” he said.
My body was already pulling toward him again, an ache rising between my thighs, wanting another round we had no business starting.
I laid my head on his chest instead and let the quiet settle over us.
Then something rose between us—a thread of light, fine and new, spinning into being before settling back into us both.
My own magic stirred, deep down where I never let it wake—that old ache, familiar and unwelcome—roused by the pleasure or the bond or both, reaching toward the surface like a diver coming up for air. The demon passenger held its breath, waiting for the opening with ancient hunger, leaning toward that rising power, ready to hitch a ride.
No.
I clamped down on it, shoved the magic back into the dark well, and slammed the lid. My whole body went rigid in Aelindor’s arms with the effort, terrified that if I let it crest, I’d lose myself, the demon would close the gap, and I’d never be only me again.
I would not allow that to happen. Not even for this.
Chapter 34
Drakken
Aball had been arranged in honor of the Haven and New Columbia, a courteous way of saying we’d all dressed up to smile at people we’d sooner gut.
Xander and his envoy of twelve had arrived an hour ahead of the New Columbians. Aelindor, Caspian, and Nikolai met them at the gate with the full warmth of a state welcome. I waited inside, in the Officers Club beside Greymantle, the war hall that squatted closest to the south gate, and let the others play host. Drinks, refreshments, the first careful round of pleasantries, and then the formal sitting once the New Columbian delegation arrived to round out the table.
Xander looked no older than I did, and—irritatingly—he was handsome. Shouldn’t evil have the fucking decency to look the part? Our intel said he was millennia old, but no one had pinned down his bloodline. Ethnically, he read as a mix of European and Persian. All we had was that he was an immortal warlock, and the old stories said a warlock was what you got when a demon bred with a witch.
He stood at Caspian’s height, lanky and graceful, and moved through the room as though he already held the deed to it. Amber eyes—bright, cruel, amused, and missing nothing. A neatgoatee I suspected he kept as a signature, the sort of small vanity a man indulges when he’s had centuries to polish his own legend.
He dressed comfortably but elegantly: a crisp white shirt open at the collar, dark slacks, an officer’s coat cut with more style than anything in our regulation closet. Set him beside Nikolai and Caspian both and he’d out-charm the pair of them without trying. Neither of them would ever concede it. I had no intention of saying it aloud either.
The President of New Columbia came in his wake—a man named Whitmore, somewhere in his forties, elected to his seat the old way. They still ran the bones of the Federal government up north, still swore by the constitution of a country eighty years dead. He wore a black suit, the kind people wore before the Rupture, and he’d brought an envoy of twelve men and women, not one of whom had ever been taught to smile.
We’d agreed the real talks would wait until after the ball: the mutant experiments, the White Witch’s breeding pits, the shape of an alliance between three kingdoms. All of it a polite fiction, and every soul in the room knew it. Our goals didn’t line up and never would. Xander wanted more land for his collection. New Columbia wanted a world where humans ruled and the rest of us learned our place. We wanted the White Witch dead. Three sets of knives under one table.
With any luck, the talks would drag on for three days. Three days was what Operation Nightingale needed—long enough to slip in and slip out.
Max Morning would leave tonight. Without me.
Worry and bitterness warred in my chest. She’d made a mistake cutting me from the team, letting an old grudge skew her judgment. A childish mistake.
And whose fault is the grudge?My dragon snorted down the length of my spine.Stop terrorizing her.
You’re overstating it,I shot back.I’m no terrorist.
Antagonizing her, then,he said.What sane man draws a blade on a woman curled up with a romance novel? You had her flushed and soft and halfway to charmed, and you pulled steel on her. You should have kissed her.
Kiss her? Never.
I am formally distancing myself from you, you crazy son of a bitch,the dragon announced.She knows the difference between us, you realize. She held my face in both her hands. Stroked my snout. She will never once do that for you, and I won’t have you wrecking the good thing growing between her and me.
Wonderful. Just wonderful. He’d conveniently forgotten the months he’d wanted her gone as badly as I had and remembered only his recent career as her devoted lapdog. In that, beast and man are no different: we keep the memories that flatter us and burn the rest. And now my own dragon had talked himself into believing there was a thing between him and Max at all.
Stormglass chandeliers spilledcool light across the floor. The wall tables carried iced wine and dark liquor and small, precise food no soldier had ever cooked. A quartet played something old and stringed and pre-Rupture, the kind of music that sent every immortal in the room quiet and far-eyed for a moment. Officers only. No cadets on the floor, save the handful we’d dressed as servers.
Twenty minutes in, every head in the room turned toward the entrance at once, as if a single string had been drawn taut through all of them.