Page 95 of A Reign of Roses
Kane’s form was elegant. Refined, practiced. I imagined that came from studying under a masterful, by-the-book instructor like Dagan. And that otherworldly grace—I was sure that had been inherited from his mother.
But Griffin was a different kind of swordsman. Scrappy and brutal, as if his hulking body merely contained too much power to control. The unexpected moves seemed to dart out of him on a whim—a feint here, a sweep of the leg there. For a man that kept everything so internal, so closed up and private, I thought watching him fight might be the most intimacy he shared with anyone. Here, the commander was baring his soul to us, acting on each impulse and desire as it sprang forth, without a second thought.
“Shit,” Kane uttered, looking down at his sword midparry.
They sprang apart and inspected his steel together.
“I’ll buff it out,” Griffin offered, taking the dulled weapon from his king.
Kane glided over to Mari and me and slipped his warm hand around my waist. Chills licked exquisitely up my spine at the touch, though my eyes roamed over the luxe gated palace where we’d meet the Scarlet Queen for tea tomorrow. I was grateful for the respite our night in Revue offered. I didn’t have much desire to meet a woman who’d earned her nickname from the amount of blood in the streets when she took the throne. Nor much hope for how that meeting might go, or how soon war might follow…
“What are you thinking?” he asked me softly.
I was thinking of enemies and violence and things beyond my control. “Is there any chance Aleksander knows you’re in Rose already?”
“I doubt it,” Kane said, running a hand through his unruly hair. “We’ve covered our tracks.”
Mari leaned forward from my other side. “Who’s Aleksander?”
“The leader of a race of Fae called Hemolichs. They—”
“Oh,him. Blood Fae. Betrayer. Hiding in Rose from Kane.” Mari nodded to herself and cast her eyes back out at the sparkling city.
Kane stiffened beside me, and I placed my hand atop his until his grip on the wrought iron loosened. “How do you know all of that?” I asked Mari.
“Come on.” She shot me a withering look. “You weren’t gonethatlong.”
Kane leaned past me to say to Mari, “You ever hack that invisibility charm?”
“No,” she said, frowning. “Given that I’m not hideous nor a pervert, I thought there were other, more pressing spells to master.”
“All right, easy.” Kane put his hands up in mock defense, and I missed his touch instantly.
I pulled his arm back around my waist. “I think invisibility could be valuable, Mar. You never know who you might want to sneak up on.”
Mari worried her lip. “I can’t seem to get it quite right.”
“We are up here to train. You want to try?”
Mari abandoned the balcony rail with a sigh and stood still in the center of the roof. Griffin watched her carefully from his post buffing Kane’s sword. Wind spun around her feet and rustled the few remaining dried branches in the dead garden. She whispered the words of her spell.
And then the wind ceased, and the light snow that had been lifted fell to the ground. Mari sighed deeply before opening her eyes to scowl at both of us. “See?”
“Have you tried adjusting your stance?” Griffin asked, coming up behind Mari to study her legwork. “Doesn’t matter if it’s lighte or magic, being centered is half the battle when drawing power into yourself.”
He leaned toward her, his battle mind clearly taking hold, and, as his face neared hers from behind, brushed his hands across her hips and thighs to right her stance.
“There,” he managed, as he stood, a little breathless. He was so close her hair fluttered with his words.
Mari’s eyes went stark.
The silence around us rippled, and myowncheeks grew warm.
After what had to have been a full minute of him standing there behind her, nearly panting, hands still on her hips, Mari said, “Do you always breathe so much, Commander?”
He stepped back immediately and appraised his hands as if they’d been on fire. Then he cleared his throat and said, “Chronically.”
I laughed, as did Kane beside me, and whatever tension had coiled between the two of them eddied out into the night.
