Page 40 of A Sea of Vows and Silence (The Naiads of Juile #3)

Selena

E milius wrapped my outer thigh around the back of his waist, then grabbed my hands and swept me across his back, catching me on the other side.

Soft applause followed. My gaze strayed as he spun me back down to the floor, searching for rusty hair and a lace blindfold.

Then snapped my thoughts back, caging them away.

I had a job to do.

Get Emilius to his room. Incapacitate him. Find any letters written by the Queen. Get out.

I pressed my body into the King’s, letting him run his hands up my sides, my hips, and ribs. He leaned into my neck, mouth open as he grazed my collarbone. I turned my head, thrusting my throat into his wandering mouth, letting him taste me. Even while the entire court watched.

I knew what rumors would be circulating in the morning.

His fingers circled my wrist as the musicians beat the last loud note, ending the song. We froze in place, and he smirked at me as the nobles around us clapped. I sent him a simpering one back.

“I need a drink,” he said, roaming away from the dance floor before the next number began.

His hand left mine, but an invisible tug remained.

A silent demand to follow. We landed where Pheolix had found me, musing over the sparkling options of liquor and wine.

Not too far from us, leaning against the wall with a knife dancing in his hand, the Naiad I’d been searching for watched something over his shoulder in the opposite direction. I slanted my eyes away .

“Have you been here all night?” Emilius asked as the musicians started again.

I took the volare he offered me, though my blood had long since hummed to life under the buzz of the drink. “I ran out of ways to pass the time.”

He leaned in, his mouth hovering over my ear to evade the volume of music surrounding us. “I haven’t seen you in the palace lately.”

I nodded, doing the same to him. “I’ve been away.”

“Doing what?”

Glass tilting toward my mouth, I smiled coyly at him. “Dancing with kings at other courts.”

His eyes darkened. He snaked his fingers between us and under the slit in my skirt, splaying them across my thigh.

“She’s watching,” I warned, keeping the proud woman who sat over on the dais in the corner of my eye.

A flash of teeth. “She’s waiting for me to leave.”

The volare effervesced across my tongue, warming my stomach. “Why is that?”

Emilius licked his lips, letting his gaze drop down the sheer lace of my bodice. “So that she can play ruler without me.”

“Well.” I pressed into him, encouraging the slide of his thumb along the indent of my inner thigh. The scent of him wafted in the air, rising like the heat waves of an open oven. Not his human scent. The heady, musky odor of his arousal. “Should we give her what she wants?”

From my periphery, still gazing toward the opposite wall, a tendon in Pheolix’s curved neck twitched.

“Usually, what she wants is last on my list of priorities.” He tested the thin barrier of fabric between us with his roaming hand. “But I don’t mind making one exception. ”

I felt their eyes. The collective patrons of the palace. When I scanned the room, they shifted, birds scattering when you stepped too close. But I felt them return as soon as I looked away, flocking heavily over us again.

All except Pheolix, who stood a stone’s throw away. Close enough to hear our words.

I indicated the sweeping staircase with the small slant of my head. “Shall we?”

Emilius stepped away, allowing me to cross in front of him, letting his knuckles graze sensitive skin as I passed.

I breezed around the side of the grand room, ignoring that the women all looked away before our eyes met.

Their men stared twice as hard, holding my gaze when I crossed the sea of them.

Judgment idled in both, vacillating in the whirlpool of each set of eyes.

But I lifted my chin, straightened my back. Let my hips direct the current of my long skirt behind me. And ignored them all.

Had the King cared for discretion, he would have waited before following me up the staircase.

He didn’t. His steps echoed in the vibrations under my feet as I climbed, not far behind me.

The Queen watched us go, face hidden under her jeweled mask, and I had the profound sense that I was a chess piece between them.

Some part of a game I didn’t quite understand.

At the final few steps, hand still on the railing, I glanced back before passing beyond a wall that would shield me from view.

Pheolix watched from where I’d left him.

He was no longer leaning casually against the wall.

He’d straightened over his feet in a way that seemed too tight for his body.

Too rigid. Too heated. From this distance, I couldn’t see the gray in his eyes past his lace blindfold.

But something in them boiled as he tilted up to look at me.

My feet slowed, and I stalled at the top of the stairs, surprise forcing a double-take from where I stood.

Emilius made his way around me, fingers running down my arm. Tearing my gaze from Pheolix, I rounded the corner and found myself pushed against the wall .

The King sealed his mouth over mine. The embellished edges of our masks scratched together. “I’ve been waiting for you,” he said, the words humming through my open lips.

Boiling. Pheolix’s gaze had been boiling .

I thrust myself into the King, grinding my stomach against his, watching heat swirl in his brown eyes. “Good.”

He gave a throaty laugh. “The drinks always get the better of me before the end of the night. I take you to my bed, but I never remember you there in the morning.”

“No?” I gave a false pout, twirling a lock of his brown hair around my finger. I tried to count how many times I’d accompanied Emilius to his chambers only to sing him into a stupor and either interrogate him or steal something from his desk. “Am I so forgettable?”

The King grinned. “That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying I’m a fool for drinking on the nights I plan to spend with you, so I’ve sworn off them for the night.”

“Well, that’s no fun.” I fingered the buttons of his shirt, thumb dipping under the hem to pop the top one loose, then stroked across the dust of chest hair underneath.

I’m sure the palace was full of women who’d leap at the chance to find themselves pressed between a wall and his body, even among the cruel gazes of the nobles in the ballroom.

The King was tall. He was smooth. Confident.

Graceful and aristocratic, the lines of his cheeks sharp and strong.

I could have had him, if I wanted. Thaan made no secret that was what he intended eventually.

To remove the Queen, to seat me in her place, to further embed himself within the royal family by sending me to a human marriage with the crown.

But other than the obligation of keeping Thaan content, I held little interest in pursuing Emilius. And it had nothing to do with the bruises that sometimes bloomed under the Queen’s eye, the fact that his children always avoided sitting beside him during hunts and games .

I probably could control him. Thaan didn’t like to overuse incantation , but I’d have no problem abusing my song like a drug if it meant keeping hands off me.

He watched my fingers play with the buttons of his shirt. “Fine,” he said slowly. “But you’ll drink with me.”

I curled into him. “Lead the way.”

More stairs. We turned the corner, climbing together. He reached for me every few steps, twiddling his fingers between the folds of my dress, tugging me into him. I made myself giggle. Made myself squeeze in when he pulled me close, letting him rip delicate stitches of silk as he teased.

It was all for Cebrinne, I reminded myself.

I’m going to Leihani.

As long as it remains lit, the gateway is open. As long as it’s lit, I’m there.

Until the ocean dries up. Until the moon burns out.

Are you sure that’s a good idea? Keep your head in the game.

The thoughts rattled in my head as I climbed, lashing me from every angle.

The King’s quarters in his tower were higher than the one in mine, and the soreness from the day before returned, that tight ache in my calves and thighs, deep in my core muscles.

I leaned into them, pumping my feet. Up, up, up.

Emilius stopped me just after the final climb, grasping my chin in the crook of his hand, sliding a thumb roughly across my lower lip. “Wait here.” The corner to our right led to his door.

He left me to walk down it, leather shoes thumping quietly across the cobalt rug. “You’re excused for the evening.” His voice drifted around the corner to me, and I wondered which of the royal guards were stationed outside his door.

The man left his post, his feet echoing more quietly than the King’s, down the servants’ staircase. A moment later, Emilius’s voice rang across the hallway, coated in velvet. “Selena.”

I heard his door open .

I heard Emilius go in.

I made to follow him, leaning away from the wall.

But at that first step, something grabbed my arm, yanking me back.

My back hit the wall again. A figure swathed entirely in black flattened me against the wall.

The threads of his shirt wove small, embroidered patterns across the fabric.

Leaves and vines and roots. A cloak graced his shoulders, hood pulled low over his eyes, and I managed to only make out the shadows carved by his unshaven jaw.

He inhaled as he swept in, his chest swelling against my body, but that was all I gathered before he rocked his mouth into mine.

My eyes closed on instinct.

Fire exploded on impact.

It surged through my veins in an instant, slamming against my skin and climbing across every barrier, seeping to my very core.

He shoved himself closer, so close I was almost lifted from my feet.

His hip bones jarred into mine, his chest hard against my thorax, and his hand wrapped the base of my throat.

My mind halted, caught in the whiplash of trying to understand, but it was as though my body already knew, and my hands were suddenly lost in the briar of wild russet hair.

I held him as hard as he held me, maybe harder, jaw opening to brand his taste into my mouth.

My blood roared a savage song, deafening in my ears. The hallway twisted under my feet. The wall rotated against my spine. I was flung somewhere as violent and disorienting as the tide in a storm, spinning into the depths, unsure which way was up or down.

His hand slid up my neck, thumb pressing under my chin, tilting me up.

My lungs protested at the sudden lack of oxygen, and I’m sure his did as well, but neither of us came up for air.

We pushed and pulled, not only with our mouths but with our hands, our arms, our hips.

His teeth grazed my lower lip, igniting dark flames, sending them streaking down my neck and up the landscape of my cheeks.

I’d kissed before. Had felt the thrill of lips against mine, of wandering hands and coarse skin, but I couldn’t remember a flame this sharp, this untamed.

He carved the hollow under my jaw, his lips a soft chisel, sculpting each dip and arc with roughhewn precision.

I arched my back, baring my throat, breath ragged as he hunted for each curve and secret within my skin.

“Selena?” A distant voice called from down the hall.

“Pheolix,” I murmured into his mouth. A warning.

The scent of molten steel flooded us in an instant, though he began to peel himself away.

Suddenly, I couldn’t stop. My fingers tightened across his arms, my hips thrusting harder against his pelvis. Pheolix let out a gasp of intoxication and snatched my hands from the air, pinning them above my head, each kiss a bite that left me desperate for more.

“Pheolix,” I said again, though the ache in my voice was anything but a dismissal. “Go. He will hang you.” I’d seen the King do worse to men for less criminal offenses than being caught with a woman he’d intended to take to his bed.

He answered with something between a growl and a groan, the noise deep within his throat.

“I don’t care.” Pheolix ground the words into my flesh, lips hot against my neck.

“If you go to his rooms, you’ll go with the memory of my mouth burned into your skin.

You’ll think of my voice when he speaks to you, my hands when he touches you, my lips when he kisses you.

You’ll walk through that door with him, but it will be me in that room with you. ”

“I’m not going to cordae with him.”

“You’re right about that.”

A door closed.

Steps padded softly over a rug around the corner.

“Go,” I ordered under my breath, finally shoving him away. Cold air took his place against the heat of my body, starving me of his warmth. “Before you ruin this entire chance and Thaan makes me start over another night. ”

He ducked in to brush his lips against mine one last time. Then grasped the railing of the staircase, vaulting over the edge and dropping out of sight.

“What are you doing?”

Emilius stopped as he turned the corner. I pulled my gaze from the guardrail Pheolix vanished over, willing my chest to stop panting, hoping my cheeks weren’t flushed. “I was waiting for you.”

“I called you.”

“You did?” I reached for him, letting him take my hand and pry me from the wall. “I didn't hear.”

The scent of hot metal climbed the stairs, trailing our feet all the way to the King’s door.