Page 128 of Gemini Wicked

“Pity your hand slipped,” I say tightly.

“You moved just as I threw.” By the moon, he even dares to sound indignant.

I’ve heard this from him before. Amidst a blinding snowstorm on a night without moon or stars, chaos reigned on that roof.

But he is mortal.

He can lie.

And I’ve clung to my grievance against him far too long to relinquish it so easily.

He frowns at my stubborn silence. “Bollocks, how’d you even survive the fall? I—searched the rocks under Pendragon Tower straightaway, I searched till dawn, but you were nowhere. I… assumed the tide took you.”

These are memories I scarcely care to revisit. The forced recollection clips my syllables and abrades my courtesy.

“I was barely conscious. I can scarcely recall. But Xhevith plucked me from the sea—and brought me straight to Ash.” My fists clench and unclench. “’Tis fortunate for you I didn’t tear down that tower around your ears and seed your farmer’s soil with acid in wrathful retribution. Believe me, I was tempted.”

Ronin folds his arms across his chest and scowls.

For a breath, I’m utterly distracted by his furious beauty. His decadent mane of midnight hair spills in a wind-whipped tangle down his back, his golden skin is flushed with passion, and the mortal witchery called psi fire makes golden flames dance in his eyes. The inky fire of his tattoo—an adornment that is new, in the years since I traced and tasted every handspan of his skin with my tongue—that tattoo wicks above his collar to lick along his neck.

What’s more, he still wears those damnable leather pants that encase his narrow hips and sinewy thighs like a glove. In proper dragonscale, he would look truly wicked. For he is a dragonrider. He rides that behemoth Maxim without a trace of fear, by all appearances he glories in dragon flight, and I hold utterly no doubt my Xhevith too would tolerate him.

If Ronin were ever my consort, he would have that right. To share my dragon, to wear my colors, to warm my bed—

“So what happens now?” he says abruptly. “An eye for an eye?”

Rudely interrupted in my ogling and musing, I release the table and fall back in shock. Mine is a reaction I’m far too startled and too appalled to hide.

In earnest truth, no matter what’s passed between us, I’d rather take my own remaining eye than ever wield my blade against him.

No doubt he can read these thoughts—and the others too—in my face. Where I’m concerned, he was always far too perceptive.

It occurs to me that I’m tempted to ask him what he would like to happen.

Most of all, what he would like to happen between the two of us.

But I’m nowhere near prepared to hear him answer.

“Now…” In desperate search of some safer inspiration than these unruly musings about my unresolved feelings for my former flame, I glance toward the closed door that leads to the royal bedchamber.

Beyond that door, the hushed murmur of my queen and her harem—our harem, if I can ever manage to win them—beckons me.

Yet the deep baritone rumble of my own Seelie consort is (uncharacteristically) silent.

“Now,” I sigh, “I must somehow persuade Ash not to challenge you to lethal combat to avenge my lost eye and shattered heart. I fear that persuasion will be no easy feat.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Zara

By the time Ronin finally stops shaking with grief and shock, it’s after midnight.

Not that I’m wearing my dive watch or anything, because that battery-powered shit doesn’t work in Avalon. But Lucius packed an antique pocket watch that winds with an old-fashioned key, so we can keep track of the passing time here (because finals).

Anyway.

Ronin.

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