Page 16 of Caged By Dance and Desire

“I'm not poor, I can afford to feed you, Hasannah. You will not eat me into destitution, if that's your concern. Your hunger would also imply you either fear me too much to demand your right to provision if I was mindless enough to need prompting, or you have been conditioned to accept gross neglect.” He glared. “Or, yes, that you're somewhat stupid, and I'd rather not have that said either. If you don't mind.”

“You shouldn't care what people say.”

“Certainly not, ifyousay so.” His voice warmed with temper. “And you understand enough about the Courts that you can instruct me on what should and shouldn't concern me? You think this is about my ego?”

Fine. When he put it like that, maybe not.

“Instead of getting angry at me, can you explain, please?” This time, I spoke without any of my mounting frustration.

His silence brimmed with forced patience, and I turned reluctantly to look at him. Once my eyes were on his, Andrei said,

“It's not a simple matter of male ego.” He’d calmed his voice again. “Even so insignificant a rumor, as it must seem to you, could be the basis for a challenge. Of my fitness to rule, of my place as your master.”

I strived, valiantly, to ignore the word master. It wasn't worth re-escalating the argument.

“If I can't take care of one little human, then another Lord will try to take what's mine, whether it be my title or my mate.” He paused. “Is that what you want? To be seized by someone who sees you as a pawn to be taken by force in a power play?”

I lowered my gaze to where his hand rested on his knee, his fingers restless. “Better the devil you know.”

The fingers stilled, then he laughed. “You seem so meek, and then you remind me you have claws.” A sensual note entered his smooth voice. “Will I feel those claws raking down my back soon?”

“Andrei.”

The amusement faded from his voice. “I'm preparing for challenges once it's known I've taken a consort. They won't be able to help themselves. It's rare I give them anything they can use against me.”

I rubbed a hand over my forehead. “That’s what I’m saying. It probably won't come up. If I don't earn a place in the company, on my own merit, then I can't stay in Casakraine.” I sighed. “I just don't think this is going to work. I'd rather we agree, like civilized adults, that we’ll part ways once the showcase is over.”

Bracing myself for another protest, I looked up at Andrei?—

—and pressed against the back of the coach, digging my fingers into my arms, my toes curling.

Fire filled his eyes, staining the whites, and it was as if the bones of his face had thinned, sharpened, the skin gone translucent to reveal the shimmering power beneath.

I'd become comfortable. Despite the flashes of masculine assertiveness and High Fae danger, he'd been so civilized. Kind, almost relentlessly soft-spoken.

“It seems we still have a fundamental miscommunication,” he said.

His voice sounded different.

Stripped of gentle amusement, stripped of sensual warmth, stripped of patience and all the emotions he'd infused his words with that had put me off my guard, made me think he liked me, respected me, wanted to develop a relationship based on compatibility and merged goals.

Andrei didn't yell. He didn't have to.

“If I was unclear before, I apologize. Though I was certain I had eliminated the possibility of doubt regarding what you are.”

I almost couldn't breathe. Tears pricked my eyes because something primal in me wasafraid.

“If you're still uncertain, what you are is radthven.”

I stilled. I knew that word. It was one of the useful ones. It wasn’t English, though the direct translation was “mine.” It was the one Cassanian word for 'mine’—Coralene said there were others—she’d taught us as a matter of self-defense because a Cassanian who used it indicated the object of the “mine” was utterly, irrevocably bound to them and they would defend that claim with immediate, lethal force.

It was not a sentimental word. It did not evoke love or affection. It evoked nothing but possession, and the eagerness to kill to keep.

When a Cassanian used radthven, you backed away slowly and didn't breathe until out of sight, hoping you were also out of mind.

Unless youwantedto die. And in that case, have at it. Suicide by immortal was supposedly one of the quicker ways to go.

The twist being if you were the “mine” and also the one resisting, your death was not entirely out of the question either.

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