Page 42 of The Curse of a Kingdom
“Take a deep breath, Nava. Don’t pass out on me.” His voice was like honey, and her skin raised with goose bumps. However, it was the soft beating of his heart that helped calm her down.
Nava didn’t remember what happened next, just that she was inside his warm embrace in one moment, and the next she was lying on a mattress made of feathers, under covers of silk and fine cotton. The scent of leather and him pulled her to sleep.
CHAPTERFIFTEEN
ORION
It was not lost on Orion that he’d been the one who’d jumped to comfort Nava when the panic attack hit her in the middle of breakfast. It was even stranger that his brother hadn’t reacted at all to the fact that he’d touched his fiancée.
She’d asked him to take her home, like he knew what she meant. Maybe in that moment, when the wave of desperation hit him out of nowhere, he would have taken her anywhere.
Orion sat on the green velvet couch. Flames rolled in the fireplace; however, no heat reached him. His fingertips grazed his lips as he studied the frame of her body as she slept. The waves of her dark hair lay across the mattress, covering the points of her shoulders. He followed the gentle curve of her back and the soft curves of her hips.
He had never burned like this for anyone. To drop whatever he was doing just to get her out of the situation. To want to fly, to fight, to kill. What was going on here?
A sob escaped her lips, and the sound alone had his back straightening. His fist tightened as he tried to rein in his feelings. He would find and hurt anyone who’d harmed her this way. Flipping the sofa over wouldn’t help the situation at all. The fact that that was his first inclination as to what to do had him stopping before he did it.
His fingers stilled over his chapped lips, and he blinked away the fog of protective anger that had settled within him. The deep knot in his throat was hard to swallow, but he knew he needed to get out of the room before he just took her in his arms and left this place for good.
To hell with his mission of finding the reasons for his mother’s betrayal, her death, his past. He was up and storming out of the room like a soul traveling to hell. He hesitated for just a second before he flew off the balcony.
Nava only represented danger to him. She was forbidden and would only distract him from something he had been searching for his whole life. He needed distance.
* * *
The guards were pushing Devon out of the gazebo by the time Orion entered it. His aura bloomed against the greenery, almost as opaque as the night. Their gloved hands immediately abandoned his brother’s shoulders, and his ebony hair lay in disarray over his forehead.
“Your Highness!” The two guards took a healthy step back from his brother before one dared to speak. “We thought you would be occupied, and we were bringing the pri—your guest back to his accommodations.”
“Was he even done with his meal before you two decided to push him around?” Orion growled, and silence descended.
These two guards were part of his troop, and he usually had to work with them when they went into the woods or to town to deal with any issue that might have arisen. They respected him and were amicable enough that he didn’t sense they feared him. However, the scent of the area was sour with the spike of anxiety emanating from them.
He knew his answer then. They hadn't waited for Devon to be done with his food. They had decided to take him away whether or not he had eaten.
“You are dismissed. I will take Devon back into his roomafterwe are done eating.”
The two men didn’t have to be told twice. They pretty much piled toward the exit of the gazebo, trying to get away from there.
Devon looked back with a scoff and straightened the cuffs of his shirt before his pale hands combed his hair back in place. “I thought you had forgotten about me.”
“They shouldn’t have pushed you around like that.” Orion walked to the table and took the seat he had previously occupied, his gaze traveling toward the metal chair that still lay on the floor.
“I’m guessing the cat is fine?”
Orion’s attention snapped back, and his jaw ached with tension. It was hard to battle the need to go back to where he’d come from. “She is asleep.”
“Rather an intense reaction to scones, if I do say so myself.”
“Do you know why she acted that way?” He had lost his appetite in the middle of the commotion.
Devon piled extra food onto his plate as though nothing was amiss. He didn’t care what had happened. “Not a clue.”
Orion went over everything they had said, trying to find what had triggered it, and it was the mention of her parents—not her mother, but her father. “Did her father hurt her?”
That had his brother looking up from his food, his brow crinkling as he thought over his answer. “As far as I know, the man is dead. Nava was working at the potion shop by herself. Why?”
“She has a potion shop? Where is Celeste in all of this, and why would Nava panic when reminded of her father?”
