Page 92 of Thief of Souls
“No, I didn’t.” He breathes the words into my hair. “Three hundred and forty-three.”
My breath catches. I thought it was just me, but he must have been able to feel them too. For some reason, I feel vaguely naked and cold.
It’s a sense of cold so deep in my bones, it feels as though I’ve been warming myself by the fire for months, only to be shoved out into the blizzard.
Maybe that’s just prescience—a glimpse of tomorrow’s future when I play my hand.
“What’s wrong?” he whispers.
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“You’re such a liar.”
I allow myself a shiver. “I feel cold.”
Instantly, his arms are around me. “Then let me warm you.”
“Mmm.” I bury my face in his throat, my arms wrapped around him. He’s so warm it’s like snuggling with a bedwarmer. “When you were trying to convince me to be your bride, you should have led with this.”
“Would it have convinced you to accept my suit?”
I glance up coyly from beneath my lashes. There’s something teasing about his tone, as if we’re just playing make believe. But the look in his eyes is anything but.
“No,” I whisper. “I was there to do a job and steal the Dragon’s Heart. Instead, I failed.”
“Did you?” he muses, his voice rough with the dragon. Keir rolls onto his side, his amber eyes locked upon me. I don’t know what he’s thinking. I never do. He has the kind of eyes that can see straight through you, picking apart all your unspoken secrets, and yet his own are locked away and guarded.
“Can I ask you something?” I whisper, our faces mere inches apart.
A smile curls over his mouth. “Always.”
My focus shifts to his mouth. “Why do you want the cauldron so badly?”
Ineedto know.
Instantly, tension skates through him. It strips the past few hours away from us; once again we’re on different fields of the game board. “What do you mean?”
“You said you wanted me to find the horn, but you never told me exactly why you want to getyourhands on the cauldron.” I’ve been distracted. It’s the only excuse I let such an important fact slip under my guard.
Keir pushes upright, the sheets falling into his lap. Shadows play over his face, and his hair falls forward, half obscuring his eyes. “You never asked.”
Grabbing the sheets, I haul them up around my breasts as I sit up too. Maybe it’s the timbre of his voice or the fact he didn’t directly answer me, but something tells me this conversation is not one I want to hold naked. Dragging a pillow behind me and propping it against the wall, I face him. “I’m asking now.”
Keir hauls a knee up to his chest, resting his arm on it. Ancient eyes examine me. “I don’t want to find it. Ineedto find it. Before someone else gets their hands on it.”
“It was washed into the sea,” I point out. “Maybe no one will find it.”
He doesn’t look convinced. “It will be found. It has its own part to play in the future.”
“Tell me,” I whisper.
He leans back against the window, his arms crossed over his massive chest. “I guess the story starts with Calliope.”
Calliope. I hug my knees to my chest. I don’t know what she has to do with—
His expression hardens. “Calliope told you she could trace her bloodlines all the way back to Queen Mab.”
“She said there was a treaty between the king of the dragons and Queen Mab, forged by a marriage between them.”
