Page 69 of A Kingdom of Shadow and Ash

Mal turned, catching sight of Ash again.

He was watching her.

Expressionless.Unreadable.

But his eyes… those golden, fire-filled eyes…

They held something. Something she could not name.

‘This place is beautiful, is it not?’ she mused, turning back to Kai.

His brows furrowed.

‘It is indeed, sister.’ He pulled her close, voice lower now. ‘However… all that glitters is not gold.’

Hadrian forced me on the back of his wyvern for the very first time today.

I get it now.

Tabitha Wysteria

Sleep was an impossibility.

Ash Acheron lay restless, staring at the canopy of his bed, but no amount of silence could erase the image burnt into his mind.

Mal Blackburn dancing.

She had moved long after most had left the banquet hall, swaying alone in the dying glow of the torches, her body a symphony of sinuous grace. The way her hips rolled should have been forbidden.

He had sat there, mesmerised. Hypnotised. Ruined.

Even as Hagan had sat beside him, trying to hold a conversation, Ash had barely been able to hear anything but the silent rhythm she swayed to. Her body spoke a language that required no words, only the spellbinding movement of her limbs.

And then—she had looked at him from across the room, alone because her brother had abandoned her for some drakonian servant. Mal’s purple eyes had locked onto his and she had danced for him. It had been slow at first, languid and teasing, but then her hands had begun to move, trailing down the curve of her thighs, sliding back up, lifting the whisper of a dress that was already too sheer, too dangerous.

Ash had forgotten to breathe.

She was taunting him. And he had let her.

Her fingers had skated over her bare stomach, rising higher, higher—

Ash pushed back the sheets and strode onto his balcony, barefoot and shirtless, the cold wind biting into his overheated skin. There would be no sleep for him tonight. His marriage was mere days away, and the thought of being bound to a foreign princess he barely knew churned something bitter inside him.

But after fighting her in the Champions’ Battle, after feeling her raw power, the exhilaration of facing someone so untamed…

And then tonight—watching Zahian Noor touch her hand.

The same hand she had later run along her body as she danced.

Ash gritted his teeth, unable to shake the unbearable, maddening urge to touch her himself. To sink his fingers into the wild tangle of her black hair, to pull her to him and taste her, explore her, consume her. What would she feel like beneath him? What would she taste like?

He closed his eyes, the image of her spread across his silk sheets—her dress ripped from her body, his lips trailing every inch of her skin—it was too much.

With a growl, Ash turned sharply and strode down the stonestaircase that led from his balcony to the secluded beach below. He needed the water. Needed to drown the hunger clawing through him.

Stripping off his clothes, he waded into the inky black sea, the cold biting against his burning skin. The water was still, the only light coming from the silvered glow of the moon as it shimmered across the gentle waves. He swam farther out, turning back to look at the castle, its towering silhouette rising against the night sky.

This was his home.

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