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“You should not be here.”

Her voice was sharp as a blade. Not the cool, soft thing I expected from her wraith-like coloring.

“Nor should you,” I countered, my hand going to the handle of the axe sheathed at my side. I couldn’t murder an elemental in the woods, a stone’s throw from the goldstone palace.

I’d done more killing for less, a voice whispered.

Her brow softened, revealing more of those eyes. Mesmerizing, the same color as the waters around Eilean Gayl. Beautiful, but not a hint of glowing cerulean ringing the irises. I hoped my own were similarly unchanged.

But as I looked her over more closely for any clue as to her identity, any advantage, I was less certain. Her gown hung on her as if by magic. Maybe it was, though it would be a wasteful expenditure. But she was elemental; perhaps they had no care for such costs. Besides, a body like that was a weapon all its own.

She took a step to the side, circling the edge of the clearing. I mirrored her, maintaining the distance between us.

With each movement, the translucent folds of her pewter gown shifted, revealing the generous curve of a hip or toned calf. I could easily imagine them wrapped around me. I tightened my hold on my mind, willing my eyes not to give me away. Sex was transactional at best. But with only hours separating me from the elemental queen, such a transaction was unwise.

I would not risk angering my betrothed before I even met her.

But the female before me, her breasts swaying with each measured step, had clearly been sent by the Ancestors to test me. Maybe after the joining, when an heir had been produced and peace secured in Annwyn, the queen and I would have the freedom for our own dalliances.

The inhale of her chest drew my eyes up a second before she spoke: “Are all of your kind so rude?”

Not amenable to my interest, then.

“Only when threatened,” I said, wondering what I might learn from her response.

Her tongue slid slowly over her bottom lip. She was pleased to think me threatened by her. There were two blades sheathed on either side of her wide hips. I’d assumed them decorative, given the bejeweled scabbards glittering with amorite. But from the casual way one of her hands landed on her hip, making a show of toying with the bare skin above her navel, moving into a better position for curling around a hilt, I realized I’d assumed wrong.

“You are a long way from your delegation, terrestrial,” she said, scraping an idle fingernail over one rounded hilt.

“How do you know where my delegation is?” We’d seen no sign of elemental scouts.

But more powerful elementals could carry away sounds and scents on the wind, masking their presence. I was already calculating how to reorganize my guards when she spoke again.

“The fowl in the sky are circling. Unusual for this time of year. Unless they aren’t birds at all,” she said, followed by another idle motion, this time a shrug.

She was very good at maintaining a ruse of casualness, as if she was not at all concerned by the information she gleaned or divulged. But I ought to expect no less and assume more from every elemental I met. Already, a headache was forming at the base of my skull at the prospect.

It would be easier to live up to my name than to play these games. My hand curled around the axe handle at the prospect.

She’d vex me no more, if her head was separated from her body.

“I am scouting ahead. Our leader wishes to know how long before we reach Baylaur,” I said.

Still, she showed no fear. Her long fingers were unapologetically curled around the hilt of one dagger. Apparently, she thought that would be enough to fell me. How easy it would be, to cut my way through this treacherous court, if they were all as pridefully presumptuous as this female.

Her bow shaped lips pursed, she didn’t pull her weapon from its scabbard. Amusement glinted in her eyes as she stepped to the side. Her fingers curled around a branch, pulling it with her to reveal what lay just beyond the clearing.

There it was.

The goldstone palace gleamed in the falling light, the towers transformed to a glittering burnt umber amidst the undulating sides of the Effren Valley.

“Aren’t you going to remark upon its beauty?” she asked. The hollowness in her voice drew my eyes away from the glittering palace and back to the cypher before me.

A beautiful female, but all fae were. Comfortable with weapons, though scantily armed and dressed like a courtier rather than a guard. Aggressive about my presence, but there was derision in her voice when she spoke of her home.

I cocked my head to the side, strands of dark hair falling across my vision. But I didn’t flinch to brush them away. “Who are you?”

She dropped the branch, letting it snap into place. It streaked across her cheek, but she didn’t move even as it left an angry red scratch over her pale skin.