Page 56 of Thief of Souls
I hate the fact I don’t have an answer to that question.
Keir sighs. “I’m trying to decide if I care. Shedidtry to kill me.”
“If Soraya truly wanted to kill you, then you wouldbedead,” I point out.
“Not unless she knew what I was.” Keir captures a handful of my skirt, glancing down as he fingers the fine silk, rubbing it between his thumb and forefinger. “I’m not so easy to kill Mira. And if someone didn’t know what I was and caught me by surprise well… they’d only do it once.” He takes another step, his thighs pressing against my skirts. Slowly, his gaze lifts to mine. His voice is a dangerous thing. It whispers inside me, like the velvet stroke of a glovebeneathmy skin. “Theonlyway someone gets a shot at me is if you told them the truth.”
Little lightning sparks shiver down my spine. The wall of the folly is against my back. Nearly seven foot of repressed dragon is staring down at me, his eyes gleaming like a shark’s. There’s nowhere to go. Nowhere that won’t out me as surely as if I suddenly flashed into being right in the middle of the lawn. Even from here, I can tell there are eyes upon us. Somehow, we’ve become the talk of the court, which was precisely what I’d hoped to avoid, and no doubt half the party is dying to know what he’s saying to me.
The dress clasps around my ribs. It was one of the few I could wriggle into without assistance, but it’s so tight that every breath betrays me. He notices too, his attention drawn down to the deep dip of the bodice in an utterly male fashion.
Stalemate.
“I haven’t told anyone you’re a dragon.” I hate the way he looks at me like that. “I wouldn’t.”
Instantly, the sounds from the garden vanish as if he’s warded us within an impenetrable bubble. All the better to keep our secrets. “I have to admit that I wondered whether you would or not.”
That earns him a glare. But to do so means I have to look up into his eyes. He’s so close I could touch him. So close I could kiss him. But fury itches through me. Is this truly what he thinks of me? That I would betray him like this?
“Is that why you didn’t insist I keep my mouth shut about our pact? You were testing me?” It never made sense.
Heat flares to life in his eyes. “Maybe.”
If he’s thrown down the gauntlet, then I don’t hesitate to pick it up. I poke a sharp nail into his chest. “Imay have a sliding scale of morals in regards to the ownership of certain items, but I wouldn’t tell someone such an important secret. If the fae of these lands knew the truth, you would have no rest. Regardless of your intentions, all they would see would be war.”
The dragon kings were too powerful. Ancient spirits who were blessed into being by the goddess. In this world, where every fae prince measures his importance by the size of his dick, knowing there was a dragon out there would be so humbling they wouldn’t be able to abide by his sheer existence.
“You were protecting me,” he says.
“War is bad for business….”
“Horseshit. It’s the perfect time for a thief to reign. And your king would like nothing better than to cast the Blessed courts into chaos.” There’s a dangerous light in his eyes as he leans down. “You were protecting me. All you had to do was reveal the truth, and this year and a day of loyalty that so chafes at you would be gone. You know it. I know it.” He bares his teeth in a reckless smile. “So tell me, Mira, why didn’t you?”
“Is it so impossible to understand I don’t want to see you dead?”
“You could have cut my heart from my chest and used it to—”
That’s enough. I dart beneath his arm, spinning in a flourish of skirts. Keir whirls, every inch of him poised like a cat prepared to pounce.
“The fae are watching,” I point out.
“Let them watch.” He graces them with half a glance. Not to be distracted, not by something so inconsequential as a half dozen fae lords and their princes. “If I threw you over my shoulder and hauled you away to our rooms, nobody would think anything of it.”
“But if I drove my knee into your balls,” I reply sweetly, “then maybe they’d have something to talk about.”
Impossibly, he laughs. “You’re so fucking stubborn. Why can’t you just admit you care about me?”
The words catch behind my teeth. I liked him, of course. There was a part of me that could even imagine falling for him. Dreaming of him. Wishing there could be something between us….
But I never realized until this moment that I’d taken it quite that far just yet.
The heat steals from my cheeks.
It leaves me breathless, and a little off-balance.
No. Absolutely… no.
The smile slips from his face, his eyes widening just a fraction. “You didn’t know.”
