“Oh yes, you are different. In more ways than you know. With you, I don’t feel like I need to watch my back. Only with you, can I be myself without reservations.” He sat back as if the realization had just hit him. “You’re the only person in this entire world whom I feel I could trust. Implicitly.”
He stared past me into the distance somewhere, with a pensive expression. As if the very idea of implicit trust was so novel to him, he needed some time to rearrange his entire way of thinking around it now.
“Fae have partners, allies, family,” he said, turning to face me again. “You’re more than any of those to me. What you and I have gone through together, in your world and mine, will forever connect us. No one would ever understand me as completely as you do. No one could give me everything the way you have.”
“No man could ever give a woman everything,”Lady Igaed had said. But she was wrong. When I was with Kyllen, I wished for no one else.
“I trust you, Amira. I cannot say that about any other person in this place.”
“Yet you didn’t trust me enough to tell me where you went when you left to get the veil.” The earlier disappointment echoed through me.
He shook his head.
“That wasn’t because of you, but becauseI didn’t trust the people around you. You’re so new to this world, to this court. There are so many of those who could trick you, even hurt you, to get what they want. I made sure you had nothing to reveal.” He tossed a handful of senties over his shoulder. “I couldn’t risk anyone knowing even the direction in which I’d traveled. It would’ve been so easy to attack the undesired heir out in the wetlands and make it look as if he’d never returned at all.”
Dread seized me at his last words. “Could they really do that? Would they?”
He shrugged. “If anyone wished to get rid of me, that would’ve been the best place and time to do it, out of sight. The wetlands provide plenty of excellent places to hide a body. It’d be absorbed quickly and without a trace. The news of my return hasn’t traveled that far yet. It’d be as if I’d never come back. Which would be preferred by some, I’m sure.”
I sat back, frozen in horror at how easily the man who meant so much to me could be erased from existence.
“No…” I shook my head. “Don’t leave ever again. Please. I know you had to make that trip. I know you did it for me, and I’m very grateful for the veil. But if something happened to you…” My voice broke. I refused to imagine the world without him. “I need you, too, Kyllen. I need you in my life.”
“Come here, my sweetest.” He pulled me to him. “I’m not going anywhere. Definitely not tonight.”
I twined my arms around his neck, and he used his senties to tie me to him.
“Stay with me,” I whispered against his lips as he kissed me.
“As much as it is in my power, I will never leave you again.”
For now, it was enough. It had to be. Tonight, all I wanted was simply to be with him, just like this, wrapped into each other’s arms.
Lost in Kyllen’s touch, I barely heard the quiet knock on the door.
“My lady?” Geltar called from behind the door.
Kyllen tore his mouth from mine long enough to growl, “Go away!”
“But…” the maid insisted. “I have to help Lady Amira get ready for the night.”
Heat pulsed low in my belly. Pressure was building up between my thighs, demanding Kyllen’s attention.
He slid his hand between my legs and groaned approvingly, kissing my neck. “Oh, the lady is perfectly ready for the night I’ve planned for her.”
“I’ve brought her nightshirt…” Geltar pleaded.
Feeling sorry for the poor woman, I reluctantly let go of Kyllen. “I’ll get it. It won’t take long.”
Untangling myself from his limbs and senties, I climbed out of the nest.
“What’s the use in a nightshirt?” Kyllen grumped, obviously deeply annoyed by the interruption. “I’d take it off you, anyway.”
“She’s just doing her job, following the court’s norms. Etiquette? Protocols?” I shrugged. “Whatever you call it.”
Yanking the top sheet from him, I wrapped it around myself to cover up. That left Kyllen exposed and gloriously nude.
Reclining on the cushions, he rested a forearm on a bent knee. I couldn’t resist sliding a long look down his strong, beautiful body. His erection bobbed eagerly at my attention. My skin tingled in anticipation.
“Just…um, hold that thought,” I quipped and hurried to the door.
The gears of the intricate lock Kyllen had put on the top part of the door slid and shifted under my fingers, their bearings smoothed by magic.
“Thank you, Gel—” The name of the maid stuck in my throat.
There was no nightshirt.
Geltar’s head was tipped back, her senties wrapped around Bherlon’s wrist, their ends clamped in his fist. Her warm-orange eyes were open wide in horror. In his other hand, Bherlon held a knife to her throat. At least a dozen guards surrounded them.
Shocked, I leaped back, trying to shut the door.
“Get her!” Bherlon ordered.