Page 10

Story: A Fire in the Sky

They began to disperse, the lord regent reminding them that a grand feast awaited. Dryhten’s warriors looked well pleased, and I wondered why he still appeared so sullen. He’d gotten his way. Should he not be smiling like the others? Tension feathered the skin of his jaw, and he sent one more glance over his shoulder to the painting—tome.

I stiffened and shook my head.

No, no, no. Keep walking, brute.

As though I’d uttered the words aloud, I pressed my fingers to my mouth to stifle any sound that might slip free.

He could not have heard my thought, and yet those flashing eyes of his narrowed. Across the distance, they were impossible to read, but I felt his suspicion as keenly as the edge of a blade pressing at my throat. His broad chest lifted on an inhalation I somehow heard—felt—and then he turned away, disappearing from the room.

I sagged back against the wall, bowing my head and dropping my hand from my mouth with a shudder of relief. Several minutes passed before I felt composed enough to move. I did not relish returning through the labyrinth of passages snaking through the palace, all manner of creepy-crawly things for company. It was a long, winding walk in the damp dark to the salon where my mother and her ladies liked to do their needlework. I lifted the latch, deciding to take the quickest exit.

With a push, the painting swung out like a door, and I stepped down into the room, my slippers sinking into the rug covering the stone floor.

The Great Hall would be crowded with revelers, eating, drinking, dancing in time to the troubadours assembled especially for this night. The Penterran court never needed a reason to celebrate, but the arrival of our special guests would result in long hours of carousing. No one would have noticed that I was missing yet. I had to find my sisters and warn them. I had to speak to Mama. Perhaps she could sway her husband. Perhaps I could approach Stig, and he could talk to his father. I knew he would be on my side.

Turning, I made certain the painting was back in place with no hint that it had been disturbed. Satisfied, I turned around and walked directly into a wall. A hard wall with arms and hands that came up around me. A wall that possessed a deep, growling voice. “I see this palace comes equipped with spies.”

The Beast.

Instantly, I was assailed by the scent that I had noted earlier in the Great Hall. I was awash with it—with him. My nostrils flared. Wind and earth and horseflesh. And that indefinable something else.

Heat rippled over me, igniting my skin. I arched against the great slab of him, against pulsing, immovable muscle. I pushed my palms into his solid chest, desperate to break free.

I was fire. My entire body warmed at the contact, and fear clawed at my throat.

His eyes weren’t narrow slits any longer. They blasted me, wide and alert, battle ready. This close, without a hazy barrier between us, I could see they were the color of frost, pale gray with a ring of darker blue. Gratification gleamed there. He’d sensed I was behind that painting, and now he’d caught me.

“I am not a spy,” I said in a raspy voice I did not even recognize as my own.

“No? Who are you, then?” Those eyes roamed my face and my flame-red hair. His gaze lingered on my hair. The unusual color featured largely in the torments of my childhood, when children of the court would call attention to it as a visible reminder that I was truly not one of them—that I was not arealprincess, just a straytaken in by a generous king and a queen with a soft heart. “Whatare you?”

What wasI? What washe?

His eyes absorbed me in a way no one ever had before. I was largely overlooked in the palace. Except when a whipping was required or when someone felt like ridiculing me for my ungainly height or my unfortunate hair or my dubious parentage.

Then the brute lifted a hand.

I flinched.

He paused, his eyes communicating something to me. I could not say what, but I eased slightly. He waited a moment longer and then brought his big hand closer, touching a lock of my hair, rubbing it between his fingers gently, experimentally.

I felt a rumble then, and realized it was inexplicably coming from me, from my chest.

He released my hair. It fell back against my neck in a whisper, and the iron bands of his arms came back around me, circling tighter, bringing me closer. My fingers flexed against his leather tunic like a kitten kneading its paws, unable to resist, unablenotto move and explore.

“The question is... do you spy for yourself or someone else?”

Moments passed before I could speak. “I am... no one.”

He made a sound: part laugh, part growl. “Oh, sweetheart, you’re someone...something.”

I shivered despite the heat engulfing me.

He was no longer a distant figure across a crowded room. No longer someone obscured by a veiled painting. He was here and real and pulsing against me. His hair wasn’t just dark. It was tar black, flashing blue and purple as a raven’s wing where the light from the nearby wall sconce struck it. I could distinguish the deep blue ring around his pale eyes. Admire the impossibly thick fan of lashes. And his mouth. By God... his mouth. His bottom lip was full and wide, deceptively lush for a man that was all hardness and brutality.

Blinking, I shook my head as though shaking myself free of aspell. This man was simply different. That was it. That was what entranced me so. With his big body and too-long hair and searing eyes, he was not like the men of the palace, and that fascinated me.

And terrified me.