Page 100 of Thief of Souls
“I’d be nervous too if I was marrying Belladonna.”
Keir gestures me toward our seats, which are several rows back from the front of the natural grotto. But I can’t stop myself from examining the layout of the terrain.
Red leaves rain down softly from the blood oaks that surround the top of the grotto, as if they’re weeping. The floor is smooth, polished stone, and enormous limestone columns line the amphitheater, ensuring that those cavernous walls stay in place. The stone sarcophagi line the rooms, bedecked with flowers and candles as if to hide that they are, effectively, tombs for some of the lesser dragonkind that stepped into mortal flesh. This is a place of power, and I can feel it in the hush of the room.
“Relax,” Keir tells me, his fingertips resting in the center of my back.
Instantly, I still. My brain is racing at a hundred miles an hour, but I thought I’d managed to keep it off my face. The ability to consume such emotions and choke them down is what saw me through the first nineteen years of my life, until I finally graduated from the training camps.
If it’s showing….
Keir cuts me a sidelong look, and his hand slides over my hip and draws me into the curve of his waist. “That’s not relaxing.”
I force my shoulders to drop and ease out a slow breath as I rest against him. All the better to commune privately. “Forgive me if I’m running to a deadline,” I mutter. “You’re not the one with a curse entwined around your heart.”
“Nothing’s going to go wrong,” he reminds me, his lashes smothering those wicked, dragon eyes. “We have this entirely in hand. We just need to play our cards. ”
About this “we” business….
He still thinks we’re going to run with this illusion.
Keir can manipulate reality, and heisthe Prince of Dreams. If anyone can make it look like Mistmark is dead….
“Glamor’s tricky,” I whisper into the curve of his neck. “If even a single fae in this room realizes that what is about to happen didn’t actually happen….”
“We only need to fool one of them. As long as the bride believes it—”
“The entire room needs to believe,” I whisper fiercely. “I can’t risk it.”
Keir looks into my eyes. I don’t know what he sees.
A lover. A liar.
Afool.
One who doesn’t dare wear her heart on her sleeve.
“We risk nothing,” he growls. The room goes silent, and I know he’s encased us in one of his little warded bubbles so that no one can hear us. Indeed, everyone around us seems frozen in some sort of tableaux. Even the leaves hover in the air, as if they hang suspended in time. “You know what I am, Mira. I don’t just create illusions, I breathe them into reality. I can change the very existence of the world around us. Belladonna will believe what I want her to believe. I can make it look like the Lord of Mistmark dies with but a flicker of my will. The entire gathering will believe it—”
“And you would bet my life upon your skills?”
“Yes.” Fury lights within his eyes. “I wish you would trust me.”
There it is. The crux of the matter. I don’t. I don’t entirely trust anyone. “But I—”
Everyone’s head turns as the bride appears. The ward evaporates, but silence falls over the guests, the entire room settling with a single hush. A stream of natural light falls over the entrance, highlighting Belladonna.
My breath catches.
She’s beautiful. Stunning. The red of her dress is cut to accentuate her waist, and the bodice caresses her full breasts, making more of them. The fae are rarely curvaceous, but Belladonna’s curves threaten to spill out of her dress.
A single split up the center of the skirts reveals creamy white legs, and the train of elegant red ruffles is almost ten feet long.
A girl could kill for a dress like that.
Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.
The Lord of Mistmark cuts a look toward his bride, the muscle in his jaw tightening imperceptibly. And then his lashes shield his eyes, but I know his attention is shifting to the side.
