Page 26 of In the Ravenous Dark
I won’t cry. Not in front ofthem.
The dead man is still standing nearby, watching me. “Rovan, I—”
Lydea walks right through him without knowing. “Now that that’s over,” she says briskly, “I need a drink. How about you?”
I do. Goddess, but I do. It’s probably a terrible idea to go with her, but I don’t care. If anything, I have to get away from Kineas before I smack the smug look off his face. I let the stunningly beautiful princess take my hand and drag me away from the dais. I throw one last glance back at where Japha and the dead man have been standing, but they’ve both already vanished, one into the crowd and the other into thin air.
It’s just me and Lydea.
8
I don’t know how many hours later, how many plates of food listlessly picked at, how many glasses of wine guzzled, or how many falsely polite guests mocked by either me or the princess—knowing looks exchanged between the two of us—that I find myself in a dim hallway outside the banquet hall, perhaps a servants’ passageway, with Lydea still leading me by the hand. Everything blurs behind a pleasant, alcoholic haze. The princess’s tinkling laugh, as musical and sharp as breaking glass, fills my ears, and her pale face burns like a lantern.
She might be drawing me away to murder me, for all I know. And still, I can’t help but think,Goddess, she’s beautiful.
I glance over at Lydea, see another one of her sparking looks, and decideto hell with it.Murder plan or not, I push her up against the wall. Wonderingly, she lets me with a short gasp. In the breathless moment that follows, the princess’s dark gaze swallows mine. Her hand trails down my arm.
A caress, with pointed nails.
“You know,” she murmurs, “they say that Kineas and I were a lot alike. We were inseparable as children.”
“What changed?” I ask. I don’t know for sure they’re so different now, but somehow I can feel it. Even if she’s still just as dangerous, she isnotlike her brother.
My response seems to ignite the sparks in her eyes. “I amend what I said—I really,reallylike you.”
I can’t help it. I kiss her. Something inside me mutters of caution,and so I only brush Lydea’s mouth with the lightest of feather-light touches. Her lips are as soft as silk, and as red as blood.
I can’t believe what I’ve done. OrwhyI’ve done it. Maybe because the crown prince won’t like it. Maybe because it’s akin to hurling a table across a room for something to do.Or maybe because the princess is jaw-droppingly gorgeous, and I’m always one to kiss as many beautiful girls as will let me.
And maybe because I’m incredibly drunk. I’ve done less intelligent things under these conditions.
Before I can wrench myself away, maybe even run, Lydea spinsmearound, pressesmeagainst the wall, and kissesmewith far less hesitancy.
Her tongue is like intoxicating, overpowering wine in my mouth, but I freeze. The princess must sense it, because she pulls away a hand’s breadth.
“If you don’t want to give me this,” she murmurs, “I’ll not take it from you. I’m not my father. Not my brother.” A hectic flush lights her cheeks as she meets my eyes. It seems important to her that I understand this. Or maybe she’s scared to admit it, in this place. “Though youdidgive me some indication that such advances were wanted,” she adds with a wry twist to her red lips, the color now slightly smudged.
Her breath is warm against my face, sending tingles from my scalp to the tops of my feet. I struggle to parse the situation, but my brain isn’t working. There’s only Lydea, filling my vision, delicious and decadent, like a forbidden dessert that I want so badly to devour.
“Don’t…,” I begin, and her expression falls a fraction. “Don’tstop.”
Her wicked smile returns. As do her lips to mine. And just like before, it’s not a tentative kiss. It’s a kiss that curls my toes and sends my senses buzzing. I forget for a moment that I’m somewhere I don’t want to be, with someone I shouldn’t want to be with. My head threatens to float away from my shoulders.
“Is this flying?” I gasp, when my mouth is finally free enough to do so.
Lydea’s delighted laugh makes me want to kiss her again. Before I can, the wall suddenly slides out from behind me. Rather, I suppose, I’m sliding down the wall.
My first thought isPoison!And then my next isOh right, I’m drunk.
The princess catches me with surprising strength.
“Oh dear.” She sighs into my hair. I think she might sniff it, like a bouquet of flowers—which I find terribly charming—before she asks, “Are you utterly wine wrecked, Rovan Ballacra?”
“You sound like my mother,” I mutter into her shoulder, which smells quite nice. And then I remember my mother, imprisoned. My father, cowed like a whipped dog. The crown prince and Kineas, eyeing me like a piece of meat at market. I groan in a mixture of despair and disgust. Belatedly, I realize Lydea might think I’m disgusted withherwhen she doesn’t ease me to the ground so much as let me drop the rest of the way. At least it’s not far.
“Let me fetch some servants to take you to your apartments,” Lydea says somewhere above me, and then her voice fades down the hall. “We can continue this conversation later, when you’re in a more fit state.”
Before I know it, I’m hoisted to my feet by impersonal hands.
