Page 180 of Primal Bonds

She memorized the sequence. If she somehow escaped Sindre with her fur intact, she didn’t want to get lost in his damn maze.

“This way.” Fane ducked through an archway. At the end of a long hall was a huge oak door, leading to what her internal GPS told her was the north tower.

Her stomach knotted. She palmed her switchblade.

“Put that away, damn it.” He grabbed her arm. “You can’t fight your way out of this. You have to bargain with him.”

He was right, much as she hated to admit it. She shoved the switchblade back into her pocket.

“There. Now let me go.”

His grip tightened. “I’m not your enemy. Remember that.”

“So you keep saying,” she spat back. “And yet here I am.”

Fane released her. “I’m sorry.”

The black rage washed over her again. “Go to Hades,” she grated, and pushed past him.

Fane easily passed her with those long legs of his and reached the door first. It swung open on silent hinges, and she stalked into the tower on that wave of anger.

She was in a spacious antechamber. A big bodyguard with long black hair and silver eyes gave her a small bow. No scent, but maybe Sindre had given him one of those charms.

“Welcome, senhorita,” he said in a southern European accent. “The king is expecting you. You, also,” he said to Fane. “Please, enter.”

He indicated an arched doorway. Marjani nodded and continued through the door, Fane on her heels. They were in a huge, high-ceilinged room that took up most of the tower. She blinked.

Because it was snowing.

She shot a look up, but no, a glass-and-steel dome capped the tower. And yet, fat white flakes drifted down to settle on the marbled granite floor and the furniture scattered here and there in intimate groupings.

Silver and blue fae lights floated through the falling snow, augmenting the natural light from the long, narrow windows, and leafless trees around the perimeter stretched gnarled limbs toward the feeble sunlight. The walls held towering bookcases filled with leather-bound books and museum-quality vases and statuettes, and an arched doorway like the one they’d come through marked each of the four compass points.

Presiding over it all was an impossibly beautiful man on an ivory velvet couch, one sinewy arm slung along the back, head tipped to the snowflakes. His white-blond hair spilled over broad shoulders, and he wore pale gray pants and a collarless white linen shirt that hugged his lean torso.

Sindre.

She didn’t need Fane’s whisper to know who he was. The man reeked of silver and power, the kind only an old, old fae could gather.

Not that he looked his age. She knew the king had seen more than a thousand turns of the sun, but he could’ve been Fane’s slightly older brother. They had the same sculpted features with slanted cheekbones and a straight, definite nose.

He lowered his chin to look at Marjani. She concealed a shiver, because his eyes gave his age away. They were the cold gray of glacial ice, the eyes of a man who’s seen entire civilizations come and go.

“Marjani Savonett.” Sindre scrutinized her as if she were a butterfly pinned to a corkboard. “Welcome to my court.”

The knot in her belly tightened another notch. It was never a good thing when a fae addressed you by your full name.

Setting her backpack by the door, she squared her shoulders and made herself walk forward. “Your highness. Peace to you and yours.” She inclined her head. “I apologize if I’m intruding.”

Those frosty eyes bored into hers. She forced herself not to squirm.

“You couldn’t have entered the castle without an invitation. Who invited you, I wonder?” He glanced at Fane, who remained a little behind her and to the side, feet apart and hands at his sides like a soldier at attention.

“I followed a man in,” she said before Fane could reply. “A dark-skinned man with silver hair,” she added, carefully sticking to the truth. “He didn’t see me. He was on a motorbike.”

“Lord Jon?” Sindre asked Fane.

“I wasn’t there, your highness.”

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