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“Princess!”

Power. Dominance. So commanding and guttural that she couldn’t ignore it.

Maia jolted like Etziel had stabbed her, but it was reality that harmed her this time, digging its claws and ripping her out of the nightmare and back into… well, the nightmare of her cell.

She heaved for air, gasping like she’d been suffocating. Instinct had her slapping a hand to her stomach to try and hold her ruined flesh together, to keep her organs on the inside. They fell out once; the healer had to stuff them back in.

“You were dreaming,” a ragged voice rumbled through the space, into her ears, into her soul. Maia realised she was shaking, realised there were hands on her shoulders where she’d fallen asleep on the hard stone. They tensed, pulling her up until she sat with her back against the wall, seeing the cell butnotseeing it. She was still in the cell with Etziel. Her hands shook violently. She hauled air into her lungs, but it didn’t help.

“Look at me.” Breathless dominance, with a whisper of panic. Maia’s eyes snapped up and she stared at the fierce expression of the fae man in front of her. She catalogued his features, using each detail like a raft in a storm. Tanned skin stretched over rough planes and slopes, speckled with scars. A once-broken nose with a little bump in the bridge. A strong jaw covered in bristles of dark facial hair that hinted he might be brunette if he had hair. Eyes the deep, secretive colour of forests left to wilderness. Long, pointed ears with a chunk taken out of the left one. She’d never noticed that before. It grounded her, meant some of the air reached her lungs. His was a face hewn from brutality and survival, a fighter’s face, mean and stern. The antithesis of softness. Annoyingly masculine. Appealing in a way that pissed her off.

“Bastard,” she grunted, her own voice as gruff and gravelly as Bryon’s.

“I woke you from a nightmare, and you’re insulting me?”

“Just let me have this one,” she muttered, processing how it felt to be in a body that wasn’t wracked with pain, wasn’t gutted and pouring vital blood. His hands lightened on her shoulders, and Maia found her fangs snapping at him in warning, a snarl in the back of her throat she refused to interpret.

Don’t you fucking dare let go.

He resumed his grip, and neither of them acknowledged the way his thumbs stroked her shoulders, just once. The spiky panic released her; she sank back against the wall, focusing on her breathing.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked in a quieter voice than she’d heard before.

“Do you want me to cut your dick off?”

“With what knife?”

She held up her fingernails, the tips sharpened to points.

“Trying to get your hands on me, princess?” he asked with a deadly little smirk. Goddamn, she hadn’t expected him toflirt.

“Nails would hurt a lot more than a knife.”

“I don’t doubt it. What did you dream of?”

“Saints, you’re a busybody,” she grumbled, slanting a look at him as he knelt before her, his hands on her shoulders because she’d practically begged for them to stay there. She remembered his patience and stubbornness earlier that day, the way he’d forcefully ripped her out of the darkness where she’d been drowning. “It’s a recurring nightmare and none of your damn business.”

Maia pretended not to see the arched eyebrow, convinced herself he couldn’t possibly be hinting that she was his business because of a certain bond.

“Unless you wanna open up about your own trauma, don’t expect me to confess mine.”

His smirk deepened. She didn’t like that one bit. Liked it even less when he leaned closer, fangs bared. “Try me.”

She wanted to try him in a different manner of the word, but she already had five mates and one of those was a raging dick who’d abandoned them to be murdered by a saints' circle. Fuck Isak. Not literally. She wouldn’t touch that diseased cock if someone paid her.

“You’re in my personal space,” she remarked, his scent swirling into her lungs, soothing woody cedar and fragrant rosemary banishing the memory of apples and blood.

“Yeah. What are you gonna do about that, princess?”

She gave him alook.What was up with him today? He’d been… supportive, and reassuring, and almostnicein his gruff, battle-hardened way. “Has your mind finally broken under the weight of that enormous ego of yours?”

She saw the retort he almost formed—it caught like sun on verdant leaves, making his eyes twinkle. He didn’t speak the words, but Maia noticed and heat crept up her ears. She was sure his ego wasn’t the only enormous thing about him.

“Something you wanna say, old man?”

“Keep your mouth shut, princess.”

Maia grinned. She didn’t mean to, hadn’t thought shecouldwith the darkness of her nightmare clinging to her, raking up every memory she had of that bloodstained dungeon and Ismene’s pet torturer. Just like Maia was her pet manipulator. Her grin fell.