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Understanding crashed down onto me as the first raindrops began to fall.

There it was—after all this time, the plan. Her plan. The thing she’d held so close to her chest. She’d become a cupbearer for the royal council so she could listen in, study them, deduce who was to blame. She’d given up control of her kingdom so she could not only avenge her brother, but find the traitor in their midst, who was a danger still.

She was everything I’d suspected.

And more. So much fucking more.

I wondered if she’d acknowledged it to herself, if she even realized it. That this was not just a quest to avenge Arthur, but to protect Annwyn after all. The kingdoms of the fae would not be safe until she discovered who was responsible.

My hands landed on her waist, tightening.

Veyka twisted in my arms, lifting her eyes to meet mine. I didn’t hear the rest of the conversation, though I noted the glasses being set down and footsteps and a door. But my eyes were on Veyka, on those clear blue eyes of hers that at times seemed so impossibly young, but right this moment were ageless and deep. Understanding flickered in the inches between us, so intense she tore her eyes away from the force of it.

The voices disappeared. We were alone, pressed together from shoulder to hip.

I leaned down, my lips brushing against the pointed shell of her ear. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

I heard her loud swallow. “You hated me.”

I grazed my canines along her hairline. “What makes you think I don’t, still?”

She shifted her hips so that the rounded cheeks of her bottom caressed my cock, hard and needy through my tight-fitting trousers. Her implication was clear enough, though we both knew that hate and fucking had plenty to say to one another.

“You’re not my enemy,” she said softly. “I don’t know what you are.”

Truth, between us. Finally.

Veyka jerked her ear out of reach, even as she ground her hips back against me.

“Incorrigible tease,” I huffed, summoning the vines of ivy once more.

Our feet touched down on the smaller balcony, still one level down and three over from my own. I paused for half a breath, to listen and check that the connected rooms were still unoccupied. The rain was increasing steadily, masking sounds. But we were alone, for now at least.

What I wanted wouldn’t take long.

I shoved Veyka up against the wall, fell to my knees, and feasted.

53

VEYKA

As Arran slid into place beside me, I remembered the way he’d slid his tongue over my navel.

As he flashed me a smile that was equal parts menace and lust, I remembered the nip of his canines on the lips of my pussy.

How I was going to survive this dinner with Roksana without throwing him down on the table was a question I’d been asking myself ever since I’d asked him along.

There didn’t seem to be much use in keeping him out of the machinations anymore. He’d seen and heard it all. Maybe he would notice some thread that I had missed. He was also a convenient distraction. If I felt Roksana getting too close, pushing too hard, I knew just which words to send my Brutal Prince into a fit of temper.

If he knew the same about me… well, I wasn’t going to think too hard about that. Not just then.

Roksana’s apartments were located in the older part of the goldstone palace, built more than seven thousand years ago before the Great War. The suites were huge, ten or more rooms each with sweeping balconies that faced outward over the Effren Valley.

Arthur had offered me one of these suites when I first emerged from the water gardens. As a demure servant admitted us, I could almost hear Arthur’s offer in my ear.Choose whichever one you like. Nothing is too grand for the Princess of Peace. I’d argued back that it was idiotic for a newly crowned king to kick one of his highest-ranking courtiers out of their apartments. Though, I knew he’d have been happy to do it.

However, making enemies had not been on my list of ways to spend my newfound freedom. I selected my smaller but still lovely suite, on the opposite side of the palace. What would I have done with ten rooms, anyway? Besides, my apartments had the added benefit of being on the complete other side of the palace from my mother.

Though even from my bed, I’d still imagined I heard her pounding on the door Arthur had sealed, trapping her in her wing. For months, the nightmare had haunted me. Until Arthur died and a worse one came along to replace it.