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Tamlin stood there, face a mask of cold calm. The beginnings of claws glinted at his knuckles.
We pushed away, too swiftly to be casual. “I had a nightmare,” I explained, straightening my nightgown. “I—I didn’t want to wake the house.”
Tamlin was just staring at Lucien, whose mouth had tightened into a thin line as he marked those claws, still half-drawn.
“I had a nightmare,” I repeated a bit sharply, gripping Tamlin’s arm and leading him from the room before Lucien could so much as open his mouth.
I closed the door, but could still feel Tamlin’s attention fixed on the male behind it. He didn’t sheath his claws. Didn’t summon them any further, either.
I strode the few feet to my room, watching Tamlin assess the hall. The distance between my door and Lucien’s. “Good night,” I said, and shut the door in Tamlin’s face.
I waited the five minutes it took Tamlin to decide not to kill Lucien, and then smiled.
I wondered if Lucien had pieced it together. That I had known Tamlin would come to my room tonight, after I had given him so many shy touches and glances today. That I had changed into my most indecent nightgown not for the heat, but so that when my invisible snares in the house informed me that Tamlin had finally worked up the nerve to come to my bedroom, I’d look the part.
A feigned nightmare, the evidence set into place with my thrashed sheets. I’d left Lucien’s door open, with him too distracted and unsuspecting of why I’d really be there to bother to shut it, or notice the shield of hard air I’d placed around the room so that he wouldn’t hear or scent Tamlin as he arrived.
Until Tamlin saw us there, limbs entwined, my nightgown askew, staring at each other so intently, so full of emotion that we’d either just been starting or finishing up. That we didn’t even notice until Tamlin was right there—and that invisible shield vanished before he could sense it.
A nightmare, I’d told Tamlin.
I was the nightmare.
Preying on what Tamlin had feared from my very first days here.
I had not forgotten that long-ago fight he’d picked with Lucien. The warning he’d given him to stop flirting with me. To stay away. The fear that I’d preferred the red-haired lord over him and that it would threaten every plan he had. Back off, he’d told Lucien.
I had no doubt Tamlin was now running through every look and conversation since then. Every time Lucien had intervened on my behalf, both Under the Mountain and afterward. Weighing how much that new mating bond with Elain held sway over his friend.
Considering how this very morning, Lucien had knelt before me, swearing fealty to a newborn god, as if we had both been Cauldron-blessed.
I let myself smile for a moment longer, then dressed.
There was more work to do.
CHAPTER
A set of keys to the estate gates had gone missing.
But after last night’s incident, Tamlin didn’t appear to care.
Breakfast was silent, the Hybern royals sullen at being kept waiting so long to see the second cleft in the wall, and Jurian, for once, too tired to do anything but shovel meat and eggs into his hateful mouth.
Tamlin and Lucien, it seemed, had spoken before the meal, but the latter made a point to keep a healthy distance from me. To not look at or speak to me, as if still needing to convince Tamlin of our innocence.
I debated asking Jurian outright if he’d stolen the keys from whatever guard had lost them, but the silence was a welcome reprieve.
Until Ianthe breezed in, carefully avoiding acknowledging me, as if I was indeed the blinding sun that had been stolen from her.
“I am sorry to interrupt your meal, but there is a matter to discuss, High Lord,” Ianthe said, pale robes swirling at her feet as she halted halfway to the table.
All of us perked up at that.
Tamlin, brooding and snarly, demanded, “What is it.”
She made a show of realizing the Hybern royals were present. Listening. I tried not to snort at the oh-so-nervous glance she threw their way, then to Tamlin. The next words were no surprise whatsoever. “Perhaps we should wait until after the meal. When you are alone.”
No doubt a power play, to remind them that she did, in fact, have sway here—with Tamlin. That Hybern, too, might want to remain on her good side, considering the information she bore. But I was cruel enough to say sweetly, “If we can trust our allies in Hybern to go to war with us, then we can trust them to use discretion. Go ahead, Ianthe.”
She didn’t so much as look in my direction. But now caught between outright insult and politeness … Tamlin weighed our company against Ianthe’s posture and said, “Let’s hear it.”
Her white throat bobbed. “There is … My acolytes discovered that the land around my temple is … dying.”
Jurian rolled his eyes and went back to his bacon.
“Then tell the gardeners,” Brannagh said, returning to her own food. Dagdan snickered into his cup of tea.
“It is not a matter of gardening.” Ianthe straightened. “It is a blight upon the land. Grass, root, bud—all of it, shriveled up and sickly. It reeks of the naga.”
It was an effort not to glance to Lucien—to see if he also noticed the too-eager gleam in her eye. Even Tamlin loosed a sigh, as if he saw it for what it was: an attempt to regain some ground, perhaps a scheme to poison the earth and then miraculously heal it.
“There are other spots in the woods where things have died and are not coming back,” Ianthe went on, pressing a silver-adorned hand to her chest. “I fear it’s a warning that the naga are gathering—and plan to attack.”
Oh, I’d gotten under her skin. I’d been wondering what she’d do after yesterday’s solstice, after I’d robbed her of her moment and power. But this … Clever.
I hid my smirk down deep and said gently, “Ianthe, perhaps it is a case for the groundskeepers.”
She stiffened, at last facing me. You think you’re playing the game, I itched to tell her, but you have no idea that every choice you made last night and this morning were only steps I nudged you toward.
I jerked my chin toward the royals, then Lucien. “We’re heading out this afternoon to survey the wall, but if the problem remains when we return in a few days, I’ll help you look into it.”
Those silver-ringed fingers curled into loose fists at her sides. But like the true viper she was, Ianthe said to Tamlin, “Will you be joining them, High Lord?”