Page 43 of Taken By the Shadow Prince

He chuckles. “I suppose it’s not the most convenient timing.”

I can’t help but smile as he looks down at me with humor in his eyes. “Yes,” I say, “I know how to make contraceptive tonics. For men and for women. If you’d like one as well, to be extra careful—though yours is most helpful if you drink it daily—andbeforeyou’ve had sex.”

“Depends,” he says to me. “Is this contraceptive laced with anything that might root me in place and render me and my magic paralyzed?”

“It could be,” I answer. “Depends on how much of an ass you’re being when I make it.”

He laughs and kisses the top of my head. “Okay,” he says. “I will take it—on the days that I’ve been nothing but nice to you, at least.”

“How kind of you,” I tease. “It tastes like ass, by the way.”

“I’ll rinse it down with you.”

I am very much okay with that

Chapter 24

Armin

two sheer robes

Mavey and I spend the rest of the day together. We’ve long since changed into a set of robes, when it became obvious that putting on our clothes was nothing more than a waste of time, since we’d just tear them right back off each other.

She told me more about her life when I ask as she brews our tonics in a workroom that I think might have been a closet, before she converted it. There’s a window she’s opened to ventilate the powerful smells that come from the shelves upon shelves of ingredients—some smelling delightful, and others so rancid I wonder what they couldpossiblybe used for.

She was right, about my tonic being awful. It tasted like absolute shit, but she’d quickly gave me a mint leaf to chase it down before I reminded her of how I’dpreferto wash the terrible taste off my tongue.

Mavey had no problems complying. She might have hated my mouth when we first met, but I am rather confident that it’s her favorite thing about me now.

We sit on her balcony now, where we’re high enough up that none of the guards stationed outside could hear or see the things Mavey and I did to each other just with our hands. She’s skilled with them—at more than just making potions and powders.

Her robe is sheer enough that her umber skin is clearly visible through it, those still-pebbled nipples not at all hidden from me, the thin fabric showing just how hard they are. Which means that she’s still heavily aroused right now.

Distraction, indeed. We’ve been distracted since dinner, and the sun has only just begun to set.

I am nowhere near done with her. I don’t think I’ll be done with her for a while yet, if ever. No, she’ll leave Atheya in five years and I’ll be left craving her. She’ll leave, if for no other reason than because she needs her brother.

But perhaps if I could convince her to invite him...

“I still think you should ask,” I tell her.

She looks over at me with a raised brow. “What?”

“Your brother, Ellis,” I clarify. “I think you should at least give him the opportunity to come with you. Ask him if he’d like to, instead of assuming he’d rather stay here without you.”

Mavey shakes her head. “No—that’s not the problem. Iknowthat he’d say yes, Armin. I just don’t want him to come.”

“Is there something wrong with Atheya?”

She sighs, but I can tell it’s not from annoyance. It’s like she’s unsure of how to voice her thoughts, after keeping them quiet for so long. I refuse to let her hide anything from me, though—I want to hear every thought that crosses her mind. Perhaps she thinks that it’s not worth it to say these things, that it’s not important enough. I’ve yet to ask—it feels like the sort of thing that requires a bit more trust for her to share. But Idoknow that there’s nothing she could say to me that I wouldn’t find worth the words.

Mavey answers with a softness to her voice that only ever comes through when she speaks of her brother. “No, there’s nothingwrongwith Atheya. But Ellis... he’s softer than I am. More sensitive. I might be able to handle the probing questions of your people, the things they will say and do to get a reaction, but he couldn’t. He’d be miserable and depressed—and it’s not worth it, bringing him along just to watch him sink into himself.”

Noble of her, to choose her brother’s happiness—everyone’shappiness, really—over her own. The sort of sacrifice most people I know aren’t willing to make.

Most people who make bargains do it for their personal gain. But Mavey... she did it for Mair. For a wholecountry. And she didn’t seem at all like it was a hindrance. She treated it like it was an honor, for her to be the one who had been chosen to do this.

“Did you know, when you left the castle, that you’d have to make a bargain with a demon in order to find all those demon witches?”

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