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“Where have you been staying the last two days?” he asked, breaking the strange silence between them. She’d barely realized her heart hammered in her chest, completely mesmerized by his smoldering expression and acute focus. The shift from jokester to interrogator threw her off her guard.

“Um.” She cleared the knot from her throat and whirled her hand around, unable to hold his probing gaze. “I, um, have been keeping to the alleys. Trying to keep my head down.”

“And essentially starving to death.” His eyes could have burned straight through the cloak and her skin to the core of her body. He let out a sharp sigh. “Come. You’ll soon get yourself killed on these streets. They weren’t pretty ten years ago, and have only worsened. Scoundrels and thieves scour these parts like sharks, and a woman alone and weak is a target for any hungry monster.”

She bristled at the cut. “I amnotweak.”

Caspian stilled her hand when she moved to throw off her hood. He clicked his tongue in warning, his gaze shifting to a group of men as they walked by. The men tipped their heads in silent acknowledgement, and Caspian returned the gesture, following them with his eyes until they were almost a block away.

His expression hardened and his eyes bored into hers. “You are far from appearances, princess. If you catch my drift. Do not draw attention to yourself. Now, since I dare not leave you on the streets, I invite you to my home. You can have a hearty meal and a warm bed, fresh clothes, anything you so wish.”

Aria fell into those azure eyes, the flicker of deep sea and the inhuman stretch of his pupils before they rounded out again. A whisper of the old Caspian, the merman who had been her closest friend. Her confidant. Something fluttered in her belly as his grip loosened from her forearm and his bare fingers brushed across her knuckles. A familiar tingle slid over her skin, one he always seemed to ignite.

One she never paid heed to. Until now.

“Or you can argue with me and run away, forcing me to leave you to your personal doings.”

She glanced down at their fingers, his thumb tracing her palm while he held her hand with surprising tenderness. She nodded, nostalgia sweeping over her and cinching something inside her. The burn, similar to when she was forced into this human form underwater, spread from the center of her chest…

“Breathe,” Caspian whispered.

Aria gulped in a lungful of air, the world spinning. Gods, this was not how she planned to deal with her current situation.

“Okay,” she whispered back.

His lips quirked in a quick half-grin before he straightened to his full height, a head taller than she. The air around her instantly warmed and a sense of security folded over her shoulders. How much of that sensation was magic? One of the many secrets he confided to her all those years ago. His magic was something altogether rare and powerful, might even rival her mother’s.

She blinked and tilted her head, clarity cutting through the mist of her mind. “Did you kill those men?”

His lips widened into a smile and his brows lifted. “Oh, princess. Not proper conversation for a lady, or the streets. I imagined you smarter than finding it necessary to question the situation and my motives. Should I set up camp here for the evening or shall we continue?”

Aria grumbled to herself, finding this version of Caspian both irritating and rather appealing. “Lead the way, good sir.”

He chuckled, a throaty, delightful sound that skittered down her spine and left her knees weak. He offered his arm, which she accepted, and they started the climb up the hilly road to the castle. The closer they drew to the horror-filled hallways and deceptively welcoming ornaments that comprised the gorgeous building, the more her anxiety swelled.

“I hope I’m not impeding yourentertainmenttonight,” Aria said, trying to quell the tightening in her chest. Not that Caspian’s choice of entertainment was a topic she cared to discuss. Ironically. “I find it difficult to believe you seek entertainment of the female kind when you could easily settle down with a woman and not pay for pleasure.”

He playfully tapped the walking stick’s ornament against her knuckles. “We have not seen each other for the better part of ten years and you wish to discuss my choice of sexual pleasure? Still shameless and unfiltered, I see.”

“Still flamboyant and a showoff, I see.” After a short laugh, she sobered. “Ten years of paying for a woman, Casp. That’s a lot of coin.”

“Casting coins at nothing is far better than pursuing pleasure where it is unwanted. Promises and wishes and happily-ever-afters. You are particularly versed in how well those turn out.”

The castle loomed as they approached the outer wall, a mixture of torches and electrical lighting casting eerie shadows on the battlements. The king’s crested flags hung from each turret, a vile reminder of the pain her poor choices had caused her. She cast a hidden glance up at Caspian.

The pain her poor choices caused others.

As she opened her mouth to question their direction, Caspian steered her down a narrow alleyway, between nicely kept doorsteps and flower boxes. They walked in silence, her thoughts roiling, the tension growing in the muscles of his arm. She weighed the benefits and risks of voicing the questions she wanted to speak, or keeping quiet. After all, she’d come in search of Caspian at the whim of the sea witch to save her family.

She inched closer to the man leading her from one nightmare and probably straight into a new one.

Here in Alamari, the beasts so rarely looked like what they truly were.