Total pages in book: 124
Estimated words: 115347 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 577(@200wpm)___ 461(@250wpm)___ 384(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 115347 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 577(@200wpm)___ 461(@250wpm)___ 384(@300wpm)
“How dare you,” she spit up at him, her freckles stark. Water droplets clung to her lashes. How adorably bedraggled.
“Do not blame me for this, Red. It’s your fault. Had you bathed earlier, this wouldn’t be necessary.” Let her suffer a bit. Perhaps she’d do as he expected next time. “Now,” he said, pulling the desk chair to the side of the tub and sitting. “We will talk.”
“You’re right. We will.” She met his gaze without reservation. “Tell me how you can flitter, but I cannot.”
“So you’ve tried and failed.” A statement, not a question. Now, at least, he knew she possessed the ability; not every fae did.
“Of course I have. Many times.”
Her honesty snuffed out any lingering flames of anger. “As you can venture only where I allow you, you don’t need the ability to flitter. No,” he said when she opened her mouth to respond. “No more questions from you. Only answers.”
“Try to pry them out of me. Be my guest.” Her teeth chattered. “Believe me, I can be silent far longer than most.”
“How did you kill the trees?” he asked. He hadn’t changed his mind: she’d lied. She must have.
She humphed at him. “This again?”
This always. “Why did they safeguard you?”
Silence reigned as she rested her cheek against her knees and batted her lashes at him.
Unwilling to capitulate, he forged ahead. “Before, you mentioned the reason you arrived in my camp doesn’t concern me. If not me, who?”
More silence. Terser.
“Did a human raise you?” Sometimes her speech patterns threw him.
Nothing.
A muscle jumped in his jaw. Since his crowning, few beings had defied him. Only belua and trolls, really. Usually, the skin-peeling was enough to ensure cooperation. He wasn’t sure how to proceed with Red.
Perhaps she would be willing to negotiate for protection. “Are you Kaysar’s enemy? Did you do something to earn his wrath?” No one else took exception to innocuous actions more than Kaysar the Unhinged One.
The color—the vitality—drained from her cheeks. For once, she averted her gaze. “What makes you think that?”
“Did you?” he insisted.
A sheen of tears glassed her irises, and her bottom lip trembled. She nodded. “I did. Very much so.”
As he’d suspected. He disregarded the tightening in his chest. “Tell me what you did to him, and I might be inclined to aid you.”
With an angry swipe of her eyes, she snapped, “Why don’t you come in here and make me?”
Okay. Commands and coercion were getting him nowhere. He was ashamed to admit it, but he wasn’t opposed to bribery. “Tell me, and I will protect you. From Kaysar, and from any belua.”
Her mouth opened. Closed. She gulped. “You can defend me from beings as powerful as Kaysar the Unhinged One and...belua?”
“I can,” he boasted, confident. The trees must have held her prisoner.
Another lick of her lips. “How?”
No need to mention his ability to tame beasts. Few knew. Oh, they witnessed the results of his glamara, but they didn’t understand the how or why of it, and he preferred it that way. He had a single weakness—something beasts could use to subdue him, if ever they discovered it. Therefore, he planned to take his secret to the grave.
“I can,” he repeated. “There’s nothing more you need to know.”
She traced a fingertip over the surface of the water. “You say you can, but why should I believe you?”
“Shall I hunt a belua now, and bring you its head?”
“No need to go to such extremes,” she told him with a brittle smile. “A simple battle plan will suffice.”
“First, it’s no extreme. Belua are monsters who terrorize my people, and the death of one would cause great celebration. Second, you’ll get my assurance, nothing more. I have fought—and will always fight—to the death to protect anyone under my care.”
She stiffened, saying, “Good to know.” Gradually, she relaxed in the tub. No, relaxed wasn’t the right word. She brooded, all sharp edges and cold calculation. “If I do it, if I tell you what you wish to know, you’ll vow to defend me and my family, always and forever, from every threat, no matter what?”
He wasn’t the only one willing to give bribery a try. But “always and forever” was a long time. Too long. And yet...
It wasn’t dread he experienced at the idea. “I will vow to defend you and you alone from any threat until Kaysar and his bride are dead. After that, we’ll have to renegotiate as necessary.”
She gulped with more force. A reaction he couldn’t interpret. “Does that mean you’ll keep me by your side every minute of every day, no matter what you’re doing? You must. If we part, you can’t guard me as promised.”
A thrum of eagerness almost swayed him to her cause. But agree to such unrelenting terms? He could not. “I will assign others to act as your shield whenever I’m otherwise occupied.”