Page 79 of Promise of Darkness
“You should return.”
“There’s a lot of things I should be doing,” I retort, “but I have this terrible habit of not listening when I’m told to run along.”
“How much did you hear?”
I’m tempted to say everything, but if my mother taught me anything, it’s to never give the game away. “Something about empty beds. The words were a little muffled though, so you may have to repeat them.”
He glances over his shoulder, eyelashes brushing against his cheeks. The light behind him does marvelous things to his features, but I harden my heart.
The bastard’s been lying to me from the start.
He needs to seduce me, and I, fool that I am, fell for his sad story about his wife. I fell for his kiss. For his smile. For the way he allowed me to join his meeting today. It’s all been one big ruse.
Never again.
“What are you all doing up so late?”
“Plotting,” Thalia calls.
“We were discussing the meeting today and the result of it,” Baylor adds, and I catch a glimpse of him, one foot kicked up on the chair in front of him.
Instantly, my eyes dart away. I’m not yet ready to face those particular demons. “I shall leave you to it then.”
Thiago stares at me for a long, hot moment, then slowly pushes the door open wider and steps back, gesturing me into the room. "Join us. If you dare."
His smile burns me. I hadn’t realized how much he’d gotten under my skin, but that smile does things to me.
And he knows it.
I don't belong here.
This is Evernight. Not my own people. We have to be enemies, no matter how many silky smiles Thiago gives me.
I think that’s what bothers me the most. I’d started to like these people. I’d started to drop my guard, only to hear them plotting behind my back as though I am just a pawn in this war.
Well, it’s time to be more than a pawn.
My mother was right.
The prince can’t be trusted, but if hethinksI trust him….
"It's none of her concern," Eris bites out, and the words are enough to make me step inside the room like nothing else might have.
"E," Thalia snaps, pushing out of the fur-lined chair she was reclining in. The smile she gives me is far more welcoming, but I can’t help remembering her words. "Iskvien's more than welcome here."
Some sort of tension drifts between the two women. That same old silent argument I always feel I’ve just walked into.
Eris's lips purse, and she looks down at the map-table in the center of the room. She doesn’t want me here, that’s clear, though I swear I’ve never done a cursed thing to make her hate me so much.
"If you’re speaking of war, then yes, it’s my concern,” I tell them. “I have my people to think of too. And I may be able to convince my mother the threat is real if I know more of what’s going on."
I can’t allow my people to suffer if my mother decides to abstain from this coming war from pure spite.
I circle the map-table. It’s extraordinary. All blues and greens and browns. Valleys carved into the timber, and rivers snaking their way through the grassy plains of the Horde to the North-west, with snow-capped mountains rising out of the map, tipped with white. Little gold castles stand up from the map where the main cities lie. I see Hawthorne Castle ringed with thorns, and Ceres gleams by the sea. To the north, Valerian stands like a bastion of strength, a far cry from its current state. I’ve never seen a map like it.
Little red flags mark the wilderness in the north, beyond the mountains. The Unseelie kingdoms. A chill runs through me. There are considerably more flags there than I'd expected. "There’s so many of them.”
“The Unseelie have always bred like rabbits,” Eris says.
