Page 15 of Blood On His Lips

“They serve only the Prince or Princess.”

“They serve at my command.”

“The last thing I want is the White dogging my footsteps.” My eyes narrowed. “I fought a female warrior who specifically targeted me.”

“Did you recognize her?”

“I don’t know.” I tried to place the sense of familiarity, then shook my head. “I think I’ve seen her before, but she was all in black, and her head was wrapped like the White wrap their—”

It hit me.

“Her eyes. They were a distinctive shade, a blue-green I’ve never seen before, except for the night of the ball. She was the White guard attending you.” I’d bet my life on it. “My height, slender. Her lashes weren’t dark, and when she smiled, there were faint lines. She isn’t young.”

“That means she could be fifty or five hundred,” Juliette said.

“I glimpsed how she moved,” Numair said. “She is no fifty-year-old. She almost killed Aerinne.”

“And maybe that’s why you also nearly died,” I said sharply. “Because you were too busy watching my fight rather than protecting yourself.”

Renaud’s expression held all the emotion of a statue. “No White matching that description attended me that night.”

“I was there. The attack was a vendetta.” I looked at Numair, the same question in his eyes. “But was it a new one, or an old one?” We didn’t have an answer, of course.

“I will investigate.” Renaud glanced at my father and lifted a hand, the imperious bastard.

Baba nodded. “We’ll triple her guard. I will take my daughter, Prince.” He emphasized the “my daughter.”

The males held each other’s gazes. My father was human, a pacifist even, and he stayed well clear of the feuds, but he was no coward.

“I’m too sore and tired for a male dominance contest,” I said. “Lord Étienne, open the doors for the Prince. We may not be allies, but we’re no longer enemies.”

ChapterFive

House Faronnegrudgingly extended its hospitality.

I doubted the Prince cared about the state of his clothing, not when it offered so sinister a warning, but he accepted the offer of a guest room to refresh himself. Probably as an excuse to skulk around my home. He was canny—no one knew the entirety of his Skills and affinities. If my mother had known, she’d held her silence.

“He burnt his clothing rather than let us dispose of it.” Shavonne said as I ran my bathwater, her arms crossed over her chest. “It almost set off the water spell in the guest suite.”

A cousin in charge of running everyday household maintenance, she stared at me with annoyed gray-blue eyes and light brown hair as curly as mine, but ruthlessly braided. The informal livery of household staff consisted of deep blue leggings, a three-quarter sleeve collarless tunic and a kind of half-utility belt, half-apron. Somehow, she managed to make a simple cotton outfit designed for all-day durability and comfort look rumpled.

“You know that’s protocol,” I said, slipping out of my ragged dress and into the tub with a hiss when the hot water touched my freshly sealed wounds. Technically, as Lady of the House, I should have tended to Renaud myself. “It was a mistake to try and take his clothes. He could have killed you in his current mood. Do you need a refresher on High Fae etiquette, Vonni? The Prince would never allow someone to handle an item soaked in his blood.”

Wait—Renaud hadn’t been the one wounded.

“He commanded you do the same.” Vonni’s critical gaze flickered to my neck, and I remembered the mark Renaud had left there, visible even on my golden-brown skin. I guessed Ishaan hadn’t thought it important enough to heal—or like a male, he’d understood its purpose and deliberately left it be. “I’m under a geas to report back that I watched you burn every scrap with my own eyes.”

I grimaced. Only an Old One would waste power on a geas for something so trivial. My own damn clothes were safe in my own damn home.

“That protocol is required only for the Gauthiers,” she added. “What game is he playing?”

“He’s paranoid, and this is probably a reflex.”

“Ifyousay so.”

She handed me a lighter as I pushed out of the tub, and I burned all the clothing in the metal basin she’d carried into the bathroom. Even the heels. Vonni left to dispose of the ashes and report back to the Prince.

I’d wanted to soak until my skin shriveled and all of my problems washed away with the dry blood and sweat on my skin.

---