Page 43 of Caged By Dance and Desire

“I think the humans call it House. . .Mark? They are storytellers.”

I stared at him, that silliness distracting me from the immediate need for bloodshed.

He grinned. “All right, no, she's boringly pragmatic, which takes so much fun out of it.”

“Not pragmatic, focused.”

“I still thinkopenbloodshed would send her running. The key with Anah is to give her enough plausible deniability to let her look the other way, but not insult her intelligence. You got away with that human because she wanted him dead anyway.”

I’d been happy to oblige. I shook my luudthen off and headed to where Lord Dartanyon deliberately courted a gruesome punishment for putting hands on my consort with that look inhis eyes. Making her look at him with fear in hers. She couldn’t have done anything to offend him, but he was angry.

The anger in his eyes echoed my own—he thought of her as his, had singled her out. How had Mathen missed this? Or had Dartanyon finally decided the manner of his death?

“Dartanyon.”

He flinched subtly, hiding it behind a smooth smile, his eyes glinting with a particular kind of malice. There were truths I could dance around to Anah concerning the nature of Fae males during the bonding process, but Dartanyon knew.

He understood I yearned to rip his throat out with my nails and fling the tissue onto the dance floor—but that my Lord held my leash.

And that this single, delicate human female looking up at me with wide eyes took that leash from Issahelle and strangled me with it.

I wrapped my fingers around her upper arm, squeezing so she would remain silent.

“So, it's you who's claimed the girl,” Dartanyon said, as if he didn’t already know. As if he didn’t relish my silent fuming. “Silly of me not to recognize your taint earlier. But then you always have had a light touch.”

He dared. The taunt normally wouldn’t bother me. If the others thought me weak because I didn’t indulge in senseless killing to assuage boredom, I cared nothing for their opinions. Let them challenge me and learn their mistake. But that lackadaisical attitude was coming back to bite me in the ass,because Dartanyon stood in public insulting meto my faceand questioning my claim over my own consort.

He didn't fear me.

That was my fault.

I was going to rectify the fault. But not here, and not now. Not with Anah watching.

“My touch is light because nothing more is required. When one begs for a heavier hand, I give it. This one is not for you, Dartanyon. Choose another.” If he heeded the warning, I would do nothing.

I almost hoped he’d prove to be a twit.

“It's not so simple, High Lord. You don't recognize the water flowing through your fingers, disappearing into the cracks of parched ground.”

A typical play on words implying either I was too weak to hold her, she was the answer to a drought, or both. If we hadn’t been speaking English, I suspected what variation of the word parched he would use, and in what inflection—matching the goading, blatantly sexual gleam in his eyes.

Dartanyon gave Anah a heavy-lidded glance, increasing his taunt by aiming that gleam ather.

“My offer is still on the table, little dancer. And now you know my name.”

I pushed Anah towards Mathen and lunged at Dartanyon, seizing him around the throat. How could I not when he so clearly begged for my attention?

When he made so plain his desire for the embrace of a slow, painful demise.

I dragged him close. He was trained, as all Lords were, but he was no true warrior. My cadre of luudthen regularly did their best to beat my ass into the ground—their version of training. My mother had put blades in mine and Mia’s hands as soon as we’d learned to walk.

“You offer for her in front of my face? Are you challenging me?” I peeled my lip up, aching to sink fangs into his throat.

Dartanyon lifted his hands. “This isn't the venue for a challenge and that would be premature, in any case. Has she danced for you, High Lord? She has danced for me.”

Roaring filled my ears. Her fear beat inside my head, the only thing that stayed my hand and broke the copper taste of blood in my mouth because more than anything. . .but I held back. This was what it meant to be Heir. What it must mean.

One could not hold a territory if one lacked self-control. If the Lords could control you by forcing you to react to every taunt, you would drown under a writhing mass of fangs and claws.

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