Page 93 of Heir to His Court

“So you abandon our cause.”

I sighed again, looking up at the sky through the trees. “Our cause has evolved,” I said finally. Wearily. Talking through this with Numair was like talking through it with myself—my younger, resentful self. I shouldthank him. I would, once he got out of here.

“You need to go. If the Prince learns you tried to kidnap me, I won't be able to save you.”

“Is thiswhat you want? Him? The Court?”

“Go.” I gripped his shoulder. “I'll be home in a few days, and we'll talk some more. Right now, your duty is Juliette, and to obey your commander and your Lord. The next order of business will be extricating Danon, and if you piss off Renaud you will make that infinitely more difficult for me. I’d rather not make concessions I would have otherwise avoided.”

Numair looked away from me for a minute, his lips thinning. Then he sighed and held out his arms. “Fine. I can't make you do anything you don't want to do. I never could. You would only thrash me.”

I laughed and walked into his arms, letting him hold me. “I would, yes.” I pulled away, then lifted my face and pressed a kiss on his lips. When he tried to deepen it, I pulled away. “Now go.”

When he was gone, I grimaced and refused to think of the dozen different ways that scenario could have gone to the Dark. Time to return to the courtyard before my bonded came hunting me down.

I stood for another few minutes, letting a flick of my power burn the alcohol—most of it, anyway, because I still needed a pleasant numbness to sit through the rest of that infernal proof-of-life dinner—when I sensed a presence behind me a second too late.

“Halfling.” He slithered an arm around me and locked me against his chest.

That voice. I was no longer dealing with Raniel, orthe merge of Raniel and Renaud I'd learned had been his default state the last several weeks.

“Why should I not kill the boy when he refuses to learn?” Soft, sibilant words.

“He is beneath your notice, Prince. Allow me to deal with the petty discipline problems of my House.”

His hand traveled up my middle, locked around my throat. “But he is not a petty problem, is he, halfling? He continues to attempt to take what is mine.”

I stiffened. “Do you think me so easily taken? So weak? So disloyal?”

His claws caressed the column of my throat then slid around into my hair. “If I thought you weak or disloyal, you would not be alive.”

“Renaud—”

“Perhaps the boy believes you are not fully mine. What is it he sees that I do not? He has always looked at you with covetous eyes—I should pluck them out.”

My heart yammered. “There is no possibility any citizen of Everenne believes I am anything but yours. Your scent saturates my pores. Your bruises brand my skin.”

“Myscent?Mybruises? Or Raniel's?”

“What?” Darkan kept insisting they were all the same man. Was Renaud not in agreement?

The Prince yanked my head back. “I let him have you first,” he crooned. “I let him. . .make itsweet.Now I take what is mine.”

He released me and I whirled around, retreating several steps. Renaud's pitiless gaze bored into me.

“Run,” he mouthed.

I was a Lord in all but name; ruler of a House. A warrior holding considerable, if infant, power of my own. All of that meant almost nothing in opposition to a feral Old One.

Because it was almost nothing, butnotnothing, I would survive him.

The quality of that survival. . .was in doubt.

I ran deeper into the forests where no one would hear my screams, and die to save me from a fate I wanted no saving from.

ChapterTwenty-Eight

Islipped into his mind as I ran; the fall of his hair in the corner of my vision, a silver glimpse of my dress through the trees.

---