Page 67 of Court of Treachery

Tight lipped, he shook his head. “I would not try it.”

“What am I to do?” Her head bowed and shoulders caved. She shook her head at the floor, eyes stinging with hot, indignanttears at the hopelessness of the situation. She sniffed loudly and straightened. No matter what, she would not flinch. She would not flee. She would not falter.

When she met his eyes again, deep amethyst pools darkened by the low lighting, they were soft. “We must go. I am bound to serve him, but I will not harm you. You know this.”

“I’m not scared,” she retorted, but she knew as well as he it was a lie.

“You don’t have to put that wall up for me. Not here. I will keep you safe.” His throat bobbed as he swallowed. Slowly, gently, he brought a hand up to her cheek to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, grazing the sensitive skin of her neck.

Harper stiffened at the contact, for it sent a sensation shooting down her throat so at odds with the fear that strung an exhausting and agonising melody through her body. “You cannot guarantee that,” she forced out.

His hand dropped. And he did not deny it. That absence hit her like a blow to the stomach as he backed away, leaving the way clear to run, if she chose. No. She had learned by now that most things Dimitrius said or did were deliberate. His omissions were as carefully crafted too. He could not guarantee her—or any of them—safety. That did not give her much hope.

She found herself wondering what that meant for Saradon’s intentions. They could not be good if even Dimitrius worried that he could not keep her safe. In her solitude, she had slowly concluded that to survive, at least for now, they would all have to make themselves useful… somehow. Because running was not an option either. The time for that had passed. They had walked into the jaws of death, and now they would have to cheat it.

58

HARPER

Dimitrius reached a hand to steady Harper as she crumpled anew—feeling struck with despair that she had been so naïve as to walk into this and dream that there might have been the chance of a single positive outcome. Harper threaded her fingers into his giant palm, her eyes slipping shut as she sank into the poisoned comfort of that touch. His hand was warm and reassuringly firm. Her eyes flickered open. Perhaps he too was nervous for what was to come, because his touch lingered three heartbeats longer than was necessary before he dropped her hand, clenching and unclenching his fist, as if to rid himself of her touch.

They still stood before each other, she a footstep away from his chest, confined by the small hallway. His gaze burned her. He spoke into her mind, making her start and she almost flinched into him from the unexpected sensation of his voice inside her. “I can help. He must believe that we do not know each other at all. It is something and nothing, but any connection can weaken us. May I protect those memories we share?”

“I don’t understand.” Saradon had entered at will. Yet Dimitrius… asked? She didn’t understand any of this at all.

“It means he will not be able to see that which is hidden.”He sent a flood of mental images her way, of their first meeting, their time together in Tournai, and the kiss they had shared. To watch them from his perspective—to see herself through his eyes and to feel so viscerally his kaleidoscope of emotions—made her intensely uncomfortable, as though they stood skinless before each other, their very souls on show.

And yet it was dangerous too, because she felt his emotions like a torrent that wanted to slam her into the wall with the force of them—at how conflicted he was to want her, and the depths of his desire. They stirred something wild within her as she relived those intimate moments, knowing he watched them too and feeling all too bared before him. Never mind his masks, she longed to don one of her own, to hide from the weight of feelings on both their parts that she did not feel able to face.

“You think it will help?” she managed to choke out, staring into the dark fabric of his chest, because she could not meet his violet gaze without becoming entirely lost.

“At the very least, it will not damn us.”

Her throat had closed. She nodded.

Dimitrius shifted just a fraction closer. Heat radiated from him, a fiery contrast against the frozen stone at her back. With the movement, a warming, sighing caress slipped into her mind. It was different than Saradon, who ventured there without her permission, but even so, it was unpleasantly violating and deeply intimate. Somehow, she knew where he looked inside her, and how carefully he trod only the paths he needed to hide what he had promised. Not one memory more. Or less.

“I didn’t realise you disliked me so much,” he murmured as he drew closer. Those eyes captured her, filled with depths in the barely lit tunnel, and captured in their gaze, something pulled in her chest. She was grateful for the dim light to give cover to her scorching cheeks. At his side, his hand flexed. Fingers forming afist and then opening once more. “I suppose I did not give you any reason to endear me.”

He leaned in, so close that his breath caressed her ear. Her own stilled, overcome by that bittersweet scent of his and the promise of this unspoken weight between them. Unbidden, she arched back, exposing her neck to him. Gods above, how she wished this were all simpler—that the lives of her and her friends did not depend on every moment going in their favour. “But Iamglad you think I’m the most handsome male you ever did see.” She heard the smile in his voice.

She gasped and recoiled. “I—I! No!”

As her face heated anew, he laughed. “You cannot deny it, for now I have seen the truth etched upon your soul.”

“That’s not fair!” she protested.

His smile was savagely mischievous as he dropped his gaze to her lips. She wet them, her tongue darting out. “Alright. Since I have seen one secret of your heart, I shall give you one of my own.” And with that, he leaned right in, so that his lips grazed the side of her neck.

Harper froze, her hands upon his chest between them, her senses raw with the proximity of him.

His whisper was barely audible over the drumming of her heart—and his thundered under her palms. “If we had not been disturbed, I would not have stopped kissing you against that tree, Harper. I would have taken that as far as you let me.”

Harper gasped as he pressed his lips to her neck, and his tongue darted out to lick a line up the column of her throat to the base of her ear. She arched into him, and he groaned, the sound muffled in her skin.

“Oh, how I wish we had the time for all the things I would like to do to you.” He sighed and pulled back, his gaze dark and heavy as he dragged it away. Her hands fell from his chest.“Come. We’ve tarried too long. He does not like to be kept waiting.”

“Wait. Just one thing.” She braced herself on the rocky wall behind her, begging her breath to steady, her pulse to slow, and her legs to firm. He turned, silhouetted by the torch behind him. “You said you sent the Dragonheart to me by accident. How did you raise Saradon without one?”

---