Page 43 of The Chains You Defy

As I openly inspected his flawless skin and how his higher cheekbones ever so slightly altered the structure of his face, I also analyzed the change in the angle of his glowing eyes before my attention brushed another alien feature. Something almost like a compulsion overcame me. I lifted my hand and gently ghosted my index finger over the tip of Dion’s pointed ear.

With fascination and the hint of a smile on my lips, I examined the small flutter running through him and the light twitch of his ear. My fingers moved on their own accord, driven by my wish to coax the reaction out of him again, but before I could repeat the motion, Dion enveloped my wrist with his hand, feathering his lips over my knuckles.

Both his skin and his lips were cool and smooth, as if marble had come alive and gained a velvety texture.

It was my turn to shudder.

“Cautious, Nayana. Or I’ll get the impression you want to startsomethinghere.”

His voice was deeper, somehow darker, and he observed me, a predatory expression written on his features, his head canted as so often before.

Gods, Dion was more than intense on a normal day, but in his actual form, he was something else, something more.

One thing was clear. His fae appearance would require some time to get used to.

And when I spotted the honed peaks of his canines behind his feral grin, I failed in withholding an embarrassing wince. The sound simply rolled from my throat as I not only caught up with what he’d been hinting at but also couldn’t stop staring at the wickedly sharp cuspids.

Why I was so enamored with stupid pointed teeth, I couldn’t even begin to understand, nor why blood had flushed my cheeks deep red.

“Noted,” I said, and my voice sounded a bit squeaky, much to my dismay. No one should have the right to be so absurdly attractive, and yet the giant fae prince—who was indeed a few inches taller without his Glamour—was very real as he rose to his feet, choker in his hand.

This time, I didn’t object as Dion gathered my hair gently into one of his hands and carefully arranged the tresses so my locks wouldn’t disturb his mission, but then he growled for some unknown reason.

When wearing his human disguise, he often made an impulsive impression, followed moods on a whim, fussed about everything, was territorial to the maximum, and barely veiled the feral predator hidden beneath civilized skin, but all these mannerisms were more pronounced without magic concealing the truth about him.

My best guess was that the absence of his Glamour caused him to drop the rest of his act, and he simply stopped pretending to be something he wasn’t.

And although I hadn’t been granted much time yet to observe his true self, the small glimpses, together with all the quirks he’d displayed during our travels, allowed only one conclusion—fae were peculiar creatures.

To my surprise, Dion let go of me once more and didn’t react to my inquiring look. Instead, he sat down on the chaise and, as if he’d already figured out what this action did to me, flashed his canines again. And not only that. His dimples came out to play too, and for a brief moment, I simply forgot to breathe. Anotherquestion answered—his dimples weren’t limited to his human appearance.

“Better. Now, I won’t break my back from crouching over you.”

How I found my voice would forever stay a mystery to me. “Complaining about your height, princeling?”

“Never.”

An icy shiver ran down my spine when Dion brushed his fingers over the dark mark around my neck. “While this suits you, it’s only mine to see.”

“What do you mean?”

“Haven’t you listened to me? It’s considered scandalous among fae to flaunt your binding marks, comparable to a human leaving their house while flashing their genitalia for the world to behold.”

That was a comparison I wasn’t willing to dwell on, given how long I’d walked around with my divine symbols on display. “It’s fascinating. Feroy’s men broke three knives before finally accepting they couldn’t cut the mark out. And that I refused to tell him what the design represented drove him insane.”

Dion tensed when I so casually mentioned my torture at the merchant’s hand, but instead of commenting, he took a deep breath, relaxed, and placed the golden choker around my neck. His touch was a whispered caress as he deftly closed the piece of jewelry.

The pendant with the multicolored gems nestled over my throat, and I didn’t need a mirror to know that my marks were completely covered.

A shiver traveled through my body as Dion’s breath ghosted against the shell of my ear from behind. “Now you.”

Hopefully, the fae sitting in my back wasn’t detecting how my hands trembled as I reached for the bracelet, just like I’d done back on that clearing in Iolesia. Dammit, I needed to get a grip on myself. Only because he’d apologized once didn’t mean I wasn’t still angry at the prince, no matter how much pretty jewelry he gave me or how weirdly magnetic his presence was.

With fresh resolve, I inspected the bracelet. So far, I’d missed that another set of six stones adorned the gold. While the jewels were arranged in a circle around the empty socket in the middle of my pendant, these were lined up along the bracelet in two groups of three, with an empty space between them. “This is a true matching pair, Dion.”

“That was the intention of the one who commissioned the set.”

“It’s curious. If someone described our jewelry to me, I’d assume the pieces to appear flashy and over-the-top, but that’s not the case.”