Page 55 of Winter's Fate

She snorted. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say so many words.”

“What are you doing here, Laena?”

She reached for the bottle, adding another generous pour to her glass. “I should think that was obvious. I thought I’d give your problem-solving method a whirl, Captain Farrow.”

“Not a captain. How’s it working?”

She raised her glass, lips twisted in a poor imitation of a smile. “Delightfully well.” She tipped her head back and drained half the glass.

“Come morning, you may have a different opinion,” he said.

She set down the glass and leaned toward him, placing ahand on his shoulder. “P’rhaps not. But I like it now.” Her hand slipped, and he caught her before she could topple off her stool.

She laughed, but there was no mirth in it. And when he settled her back on the stool, she held onto his arm. “He called me a whore.”

A fresh surge of rage spiked through his chest. “I heard, my lady.”

“Not a lady. I’m a whore. Remember?” She released his arm and leaned back on the bar, swirling her wine hard enough to slosh several drops out onto the counter. “I know people think it. The traitor. The whore. But they don’t often say it out loud.”

“They shouldn’t think it, and they shouldn’t say it.”

“Kat wanted me to do it.” Laena leaned her chin on her wrist, eyes locked on the swishing liquid. “She wanted me to fuck him and leave so she could be queen, and now she acts like I’m less than a worm in the garden. Worms have value. Good for the soil.”

The way Callum heard it told, it’d been a surprise to the entire country. Laena and Katrina’s parents had died of fever, years back, but there were always talking heads to deal with, or so he’d learned from spending years in the palace. The regent and the council, and all the lords and ladies that’d been prancing through those pretty gardens.

He didn’t think anyone had known enough about the fool stablehand to want Laena to do anything. Supposedly, she’d merely appeared one morning in her riding skirts, her beau at her side, and announced her abdication. Simple as that.

But he’d seen how Katrina treated her. More importantly, he’d seen how she used her magic. There were layers to this that no one else understood, layers that Laena had kept from everyone.

Now she leaned closer, her lips brushing his ear. “Can I tell you a secret?”

His heart hammered in his chest, begging for her to go on.Begging for her to stop. He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear more about the fool stablehand who’d left her. Or what Katrina had caught them doing together. “Can I stop you?”

“I didn’t leave for him.”

There was more to the story, but he didn’t want Laena telling him when she was too drunk to be sure she wanted to. He stood, taking her gently by the arm. “Come, Princess. Let’s get you to bed.”

The yard with the guest cabins was quiet by the time they made their way to it, with only the gentle whisper of the salty wind through the trees. The stars watched from above, diamonds in a moonless night, as he helped Laena toward the door that’d been marked with a slip of paper bearing her name. Written, Callum noted, in Thaddeus’s hand.

When they reached the steps, however, Laena stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Thank you for finding me.”

He swallowed, all too aware of her nearness. “I thought you wanted to be unfindable.”

She ran her hand up his arm and across his shoulders until her fingers met the skin of his neck. It was all he could do not to shut his eyes and lean into her touch. “Princess?—”

She rose on her toes and pressed her mouth to his, and mages but she tasted good, the tartness of the wine she’d been drinking mixed with hints of sweet honey, of fresh apples from a tree. That cinnamon spice, always that, threaded with the apple’s sharpness. But she was anything but cold; she was warm, as soft as a rose petal, and for a moment he was so surprised that he returned the kiss, his mouth moving on hers before he could quite stop himself.

She made a sound like a whimper, pulling him in closer, but he forced himself to break the kiss. Even so, she lingered close, her breath tickling his upper lip and nearly stealing his will away entirely.

“You do not have your wits about you, my lady,” he whispered, his voice a husk in the dark.

“I had my wits about me the other night, when we nearly kissed.”

He reached behind his neck and took her fingers gently in his, sliding them away from his skin. “And yet we didnotkiss. Even if we had, wits then do not translate to wits now. Let me get you to bed.”

“Come with me,” she said. “You want to bed me, do you not?”

Oh, he wanted to. He could practically feel that silken hair tumbling around him, her naked hips settling against his. His cock stiffened just thinking of her like that, draped above him, giving herself to him fully.

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