Page 140 of Prince of Masks
“You underestimate what I know,” he tells me, and there is nothing soft about the sudden darkness in his tone, “what Isense.”
The breath steadies through me.
Our stares are locked in a steel moment, and I understand exactly what he means by that.
The sense, a print from his mother, but not the one he inherited. His makut is many things.
‘It is to hex without hexbags, curse without chants, conjure without ritual.’
And apparently the ability to sense without the print.
It is weaker than Amelia’s, as all his talents are weaker than those with the print.
But he senses enough—to know that I respond to him, to his touch, his kiss, these mocking moments of a love I should have gotten from him.
Then I went and turned out deadblood.
But will he sensethis?
I decide on it so quickly, so suddenly, that—as my hand comes arching for him, reeling for his face—he shouldn’t know it’s coming.
Yet he does.
His hand is quick to grab my wrist, his stare unflinching from mine. His eyes flash dangerously.
“I will strike you back, Olivia,” he warns me, and the tone of his voice, the truth of his words, sends frost climbing down my spine.
I steel against him, frozen, almost waiting for him to strike.
His grip is too tight on my wrist, his thumb pressing into the bone too hard. His mouth twitches, something of a lazy grin tugging at him, but his eyes are pits of the coldest, deepest waters.
The mocking polish of his voice bites at me, “I will forgive it—for a kiss.”
There it is.
Dray has found a new way to torture me. He’s bored of the methods he’s been using for the whole nine years at Bluestone, and around six months on top of that.
He’s found another way—a way that has my body responding but my mind screaming, a way that brings shame to me.
I won’t be his willing victim.
I seethe back at him, teeth clenched, “Go fuck yourself, Dray. I would rather drown in—”
“Better get started,” he says, a soft murmur that he brushes over my snarling lips.
Then the ground is stolen from me.
Dray shoves me, hard, and the stoop of the fountain knocks into my heels.
I fall.
A cry lifts through me.
Then the thud of hitting a shallow fountain sends shooting bolts of pain up my back.
The splash lifts—then too much water rains back down on me.
I flinch against it.
