Page 77 of Heart of Shadows

No. She hadn’t done that at all. She had stolen a knife from his very own table and put it to his throat. He had never met anyone quite like her—and she thrilled him. No doubt it would be beyond tricky to navigate what was to come next, especially if he needed to finish with the Dragonheart in hand, but he had no doubt whatsoever that she was going to make it deliciously interesting. He started at a small tapping on the outside. With a last look at Harper, he silently closed her door and answered the tapping. One of his operatives at the door to his suites.

“Yes?”

“Rook reporting, sir. Word has made it back to the king that you have the prisoner he detained for the theft of a Dragonheart. You’re about to be summoned.”

He nodded, and Rook melted into the shadows. Dimitrius barred the door again, locking it and putting up his wards, then charged back to Harper’s room, pulling a bell cord on the way.

“Harper, wake up,” he called in a low, urgent voice. She stirred. After a second of grogginess, she jumped from the bed, whipped something gleaming from under her pillow and brandished… a candlestick holder at him. Amusement and something deeper bloomed. She was untameable.

“What are you doing in here?” she demanded, her eyes narrowed, every muscle in her body tensed. He noted that she still remained fully clothed.

He decided not to remark on the makeshift weapon, which she had somehow filched from the dining room without him knowing. “It is my abode.” He raised a brow, but continued without waiting for a venomous response. “I apologise, but there’s no time. I thought we had until morning, but alas, I was mistaken. The Kingsguard is on its way. They come for both of us.” He knew there remained only one card in his arsenal. To take her to the king as his own tool.

“You called, m’lord?” A maid appeared, and Harper jumped at her presence. Her blank eyes slid over Harper without lingering before settling upon Dimitri.

“Emyria, I need you to obtain a squire’s outfit for this young lady at once. Nothing too fancy or too shabby.”

Emyria sized up Harper with a critical eye, before bobbing her head and scurrying away.

Dimitri turned back to Harper. “I need you to listen and follow my instructions to the very letter. Do you understand me? For goodness sake. Put down that trinket. You know that’s no defence.”

“What’s happening? What do you want?”

Dimitri sighed. “What I want is a different matter. What I need right now is to make sure the pair of us survives the night. The king’s men are coming. If you want to avoid an excrutiatingly painful death, I need you to act exactly as I tell you. I assume you would like to remain alive and well?” He raised an eyebrow.

Dumbfounded, she nodded.

“Fantastic. Get ready to meet the king…”

58

HARPER

Harper gawked at him, still groggy from sleep and a full stomach. The king. But nerves assailed her. She had been arrested, charged with theft, and tortured in this king’s name. And now, Dimitrius wanted her to… what?

As if he could read her thoughts, Dimitrius ceased pacing. “I realise it sounds ludicrous, but this is the only way I see that we can succeed.”

Her chance was slipping away—how could she bargain for her freedom and passage to Caledan if she went along with this? But, if she did not… Aedon had warned her it would be a painful death. Now, she believed him. Perhaps the only win was leaving there alive.

She wrinkled her nose. “So I have to pretend that I work for you, and I found the Dragonheart for the king?”

“Exactly. It won’t be hard.” He looked at her, and with a rush of fear and something she could not name, his voice sounded in her head. “Do not fear. I will be with you the whole time. Anything you do not know the answer to, I can help. Any moment you doubt, take a deep breath and my answer shall be there on your tongue.”

That snatched her breath away, to have him inside her own head—far too intimately close for comfort. Harper swallowed and glanced down at herself, suddenly self-conscious. The squire’s clothing fit decently and was finer than anything she had ever worn before. The pants were made of a charcoal cloth that hugged her legs and tucked neatly into new, stiff, brown leather boots that were only slightly too big for her. A charcoal tunic bearing the royal symbol—a tree, mountain, and stars—dropped to her mid-thighs, the fitted sleeves covering the length of her arms and threatening to spill over her hands.

Emyria had done her level best to tame Harper’s flyaway hair into a neat braid that sat squarely between her shoulder blades, but no matter how much she had tried, Harper felt like she did not belong, and that she was well out of her depth.

The guards waited outside, loitering like crows. Dimitrius had dismissed them, so he could present himself in a more befitting manner to the king. It had bought them time, but no more than scant minutes to dress as best as they could.

“You look fine. Fitting to be in my employ,” Dimitrius said with a smirk, which Harper answered with a glowering scowl.

As she followed him out the door and into the company of the king’s personal guard, she thought she caught the faintest tremble of Dimitrius’s hands as they smoothed down his impeccably tailored tunic. That scared her more than anything else. If he feared the king, what chance did she have?

Seated in full regalia upon the throne at the far end of the vast hall, King Toroth could have been a statue. Harper shivered, and not just due to the frigid cold. A far contrast to the surprising warmth of Dimitrius’s chambers.

Toroth’s face was carved in stone, and the stern, uncompromising harshness in his expression made her even more anxious. Trailing Dimitrius, she forced herself to take one step after another and bowed as he did before the king, halting a respectful distance away.

The king’s booming voice echoed around the empty hall and up into the lofty heights where no light pierced the shadows of the vaulted ceiling. Silent, unmoving guards, who could very well have been empty suits of armour for all she knew, were just as imposing as their master. Harper’s gaze nervously flicked around them all. Unconsciously, she shrank toward Dimitrius, the only semblance of an ally she had.

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