Page 26 of Thief of Souls
A crushed velvet doublet the color of a black-red rose spans his broad chest, with black edging clinging to his shoulders. Rings glitter on his fingers, winking in the light, and I catch a glimpse of midnight leather shifting over his thighs as he finally sights us through the crush.
Instantly, he stills, like a panther sighting its enemy.
His brown hair hangs in a wavy curtain to his shoulders, and eyes the color of a crystalline lake lock on me, even as he plucks a golden goblet from his attendant’s tray and nurses it negligently. He slowly lifts the wine to his sulky mouth, but he barely sips it. Instead, he watches us over the rim, his blackened claws scraping on the gold.
Or no, not us.
Me.
That look shivers all the way through me. It’s intimate, as if he’s picturing stripping the gown from my body or drawing me into the embrace of a knife.
“You’ve met before?” Keir murmurs in my ear, clasping his hand over mine as he leads me toward the dais.
“No.” Though there’s something about the way the prince looks at me that makes me question the truth of that myself. “Maybe he’s met my sister. Soraya resembles me in some ways. Her hair and eyes are black, but otherwise we could be twins.” My voice roughens. “A little bit of glamor and she fooled even you, after all.”
“Mmm.” Keir strokes my knuckles. “Then I don’t like the way he’s looking at you.”
Me either, but— “If you kill the prince, then we won’t get what we both want.” Though the Prince of Blood is going straight to the top of my suspect list for those involved in Soraya’s disappearance.
“Prince Keir.” Malechus strides down from the dais, a dangerous smile on his mouth as he clasps hands with the prince and draws him into a swift embrace. “If I’d known you thought to attend, I would have sent an invitation.”
“If I’d known you would invite me, I would have made my intentions clear.” Keir’s smile is a knife.
The two of them part.
And though Keir has an inch on him, Malechus feels in no way less dangerous.
“Please allow me to present my lovely bride-to-be, the lady Merisel,” Keir purrs, a hand coming to rest in the small of my back as he gestures me forward. “She wishes to lure me back into the world.”
“Ah yes.” Malechus reaches for my hand and brings it to his lips, his eyes settling once more on me. “I’ve heard many things about the lovely lady. Twenty potential brides accepted your Summons, and yet it was this one pretty little dove that caught your eye.”
“A dove?” Keir laughs under his breath. “I consider my love a peregrine instead.”
“And she’s captured fair prey,” Malechus says, breathing the words over my bare knuckles. He straightens abruptly. “You are very brave, my lady, to have survived such a dangerous ordeal, for others were not so lucky. You may recall my dear cousin, Narcissa?”
The last I saw of Narcissa, she was entombed in a wall and only her hands—forever clutching for help—remained free of the marble.
“A terrible tragedy, Your Highness.” I never liked her, but nobody deserves to die that way. “And it was not bravery that saw me win the day, but luck.”
Malechus glances at Keir beneath his lashes. “Tell me… did you bring me her killer’s head?”
Keir stares him down. “No. I burned Calliope’s body and gave the ashes to the forest.”
“A pity.” Malechus’s lips thinned. “I should have liked to have set it on my castle walls.”
There’s a hard truth in Keir’s eyes. “I should have liked to have had a chance to… discuss many things with her before I was forced to kill her.”
A shiver runs through me.
Calliope claimed she was born from the bloodlines of Queen Mab—the fae queen who married the most powerful of the dragon kings. Mab birthed a daughter, Igrainne, who bore half of her mother’s magic and her father’s power, and all of the hunger for more.
Calliope was a direct descendant of Igrainne.
She tried to kill me.
She very nearly pushed me into a wall, leaving me to suffer the same fate as Narcissa. If I’m a little swift to snatch a glass of elderberry wine from a passing servant, it’s only because drowning isn’t the only death that makes my heart race.
But it’s the first time Keir has mentioned Calliope’s name.
