Page 45 of The Rebel and the Rose
When she reached the front of her cell, he came to his knees, his hands sliding down the bars until his fists framed the sides of her face.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ she hissed. Now he was no longer standing to block it out, lamplight poured over them, illuminating his face. It was stark.
‘Making sure you’re not planning to do something reckless tomorrow,’ he said in a low voice.
Sera narrowed her eyes. ‘Can you be more specific?’
‘Like shoot off that smart mouth of yours and refuse the King of Valterre.’
‘Are you saying that’s an option?’
‘This isn’t funny, Seraphine.’
‘You think I findanyof this funny?’ she said, jutting her face forward, until his curled fingers brushed her temples. ‘Lookat my face. Am I laughing?’
Voice strained, he said, ‘It makes me feel murderous.’
‘You’re always murderous.’
He huffed a sigh.
And just like that they were bickering again. Home sweet home.
‘I’m pissed at you,’ she said. ‘Just so you are aware.’
He gave her a flat look. ‘You’re one to talk.’
‘Oh, don’t tell me you didn’t see me coming. You hardly thought I’d retire the secrets of Lightfire once I saved my own ass? Let you get on with your little reign of terror?’ she scoffed. ‘Leadership obviously suits you. You’recoveredin shadow-marks.’ She drew back, running the pad of her finger along the marks on his knuckles, not missing the way he shivered at her touch. ‘And after I went to all that trouble to erase them.’
Momentarily, she was seized by the memory of that reckless, heady kiss in the alleyway near Hugo’s Passage, how he had groaned against her neck, slid his hand down her trousers and shattered her whole world. How the Lightfire in her cloak had responded to the swell of her pleasure, running through him like a current and shredding all the Shade festering inside him. It had been perfect, before everything went to hell.
By the way his eyes darkened, she knew he was succumbing to the same memory. ‘Don’t talk like that when there are bars between us.’
She regretted it herself. Her heart was like a volcano, spewing heat through her blood. She could feel her magic waking up, getting ready to erupt into an inconvenient and possibly deadly spectacle.
She scrunched her hands, schooled her breathing.
Not here. Not now.
She’d never make it out alive.
Think of something else. Anything else. ‘How many kills have you notched up since I last saw you?’
There. An ice-cold bucket of reality to douse the bonfire of her lust.
‘Where are my prized smugglers?’ he parried. ‘You know, the ones you stole from me?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘I hardly stuffed them into a big sack and ran off with them into the night. I offered them a different path. And better coin.’
‘And Lark?’ His voice turned cold, his eyes too. ‘What about him?’
Sera pulled back from the bars. ‘You know what happened with Lark. He tried to kill me.’
‘I’m not talking about the night at the Aurore.’
‘Then whatareyou talking about?’
He said nothing. He just watched her in that unnerving way, like he was waiting for something.
