Page 90 of A Tongue so Sweet and Deadly

Zaddock made more sense—he seemed transfixed by Amalise, his eyes trailing her hand as she brushed some hair off her neck.

When she spoke, Loche shifted his gaze to hers, and the intensity of it jolted through her. Lessia stepped closer to Ardow and Amalise to keep herself grounded.

A voice interrupted the tense silence. “Why are you looking at her like that?”

Everyone’s faces snapped to Amalise as she glared at Loche with crystal eyes narrowed.

His infuriating smirk played on his lips. “Like what?”

Amalise waved her hand Lessia’s way. “Like you either want to eat her or kill her.”

Ardow coughed beside her, and she did stomp on his foot when laughter broke through the fake cough. A shocked laugh escaped Zaddock as well, and he took a step toward Amalise, who gracefully slipped away from him when she caught the look of awe in his eyes.

Lessia eyed him regretfully.

He’d ruined any chance between them.

Amalise didn’t spend time with men who showed any care for her other than for her body.

“She does look tasty. But I neither want to eat nor kill her. I just want to learn all her secrets.” Loche grinned at Lessia when she looked his way, then dragged a mesmerized Zaddock out of the castle with him.

Staring after him, Lessia wanted to stomp on his foot as well.

Or perhaps punch him in the face the way Merrick was teaching her.

He must have done what he did yesterday to get under her skin—to try to figure her out.

The happiness she’d felt seeing Ardow and Amalise faded into something she hadn’t felt for a long time.

Disappointment.

“Well, that was fun. Are you going to show us around?” Amalise dragged her toward the staircase as if she knew the way.

Shaking off the unwelcome feeling, Lessia smiled at her friends, leaning into Ardow when he wrapped an arm around her shoulders.

They spent the rest of the day in her room, trying to pry information from Ardow about his secret lover, and Lessia retelling what she’d experienced during the election so far, leaving out most of the debate and what had happened with Craven.

Her friends couldn’t do anything about it, anyway, and she didn’t want them to have to worry more.

By the time she waved goodbye, the disappointment she’d felt earlier had been replaced with joy and a sense of home.

Chapter

Forty-One

After eating a quick dinner in her room—alone, since Merrick hadn’t returned from wherever he’d taken off to—Lessia walked around the castle searching for the rumored library hidden within its towers.

She’d promised herself she’d learn more about Ellow’s politics, and where better to start than the history books?

Of course, she knew the gist of everything that happened during and since the war, but she’d never truly applied herself to understanding the shift in Ellow’s dynamics that happened because of the war and its aftermath.

After taking the wrong spiral staircase—twice—she finally found a guard who showed her up to the empty library.

Stepping over the threshold, she glanced around in wonder at the seven levels of the curved tower, each lined with thousands of books. Beautifully carved handrails adorned the stairs up to each level, each one telling its own story of the different creatures living in realms outside Havlands.

She trailed her finger over one with sea wyverns andwater serpents, wondering if the creatures still swam the waters beyond the horizon like in the children’s stories her mother had told her or if they’d disappeared, as many of the other magical creatures had centuries ago.

After too many wars between the Fae, shifters, and humans, either against each other or between their own races, all other creatures had left, not wishing to be caught up in the power struggles.

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