Page 64 of A Court of Ash and Midnight
I let out a small sigh of protest. “You can’t possibly go back out in this weather.”
Daemon’s eyes rove over my bare shoulders, and the thin cloth clinging to my wet skin. His voice, when he speaks, is dark and gravelly. “No, what I can’t possibly do is stay here and not keep you up for the rest of the night.”
My heart begins to thrum in my chest all over again, imagining his lips on mine, his lips in other places…
“Embyr…” he warns with a growl.
A flush moves over my cheeks. “What?”
“I can feel your blood pulsing and it’s making it very difficult to do the right thing.”
I take a step closer to him, a thought resurfacing in my mind. “You told me back at Shadow’s Keep that you can sense me, when I’m in danger. Has that ever happened to you before? With someone else?”
“No,” he says softly. “It has not.”
We stare at each other for several long moments. I don’t know what any of this means. Another mystery in my life, but for once, this is a good one.
“When will you be back?” I finally say.
“In the morning. As soon as I can get away without anyone noticing.”
Daemon leans in, his lips hovering for a heartbeat before he dusts them gently over mine. Even that slight touch sends a rush of heat through my body. When he pulls back, I let out a slow sigh.
“Goodnight,” I whisper.
“Goodnight, Embyr.”
And then, Daemon melts into the night and disappears from view.
The next morning,however, it is not Daemon who comes for me at dawn. It’s a trio of guards from my grandparents’ tent.
“What do they need from me at this hour?” I ask groggily, wiping sleep from my eyes.
“We don’t ask questions,” one guard says gruffly. “We just deliver people from one place to another.”
My cloak still isn’t dry from the night before, so I pull a green sweater on over a pair of pants and tug on my boots. As always, I tuck a dagger down into my belt, and add another in one of my boots. Then I step out into the crisp morning air, the sea breeze reminding me of last night up in the peaks above the valley. Life has such a funny way of twisting in the complete opposite direction from where you thought you were going. I touch my lips as I walk, trying to hide the small smile there.
Of course, the moment I step inside the huge tent of House Harkyn, the smile falls. My grandparents are sitting in their thrones, Cillian beside them, and they are not alone. There are two other men there, not guards, but something else entirely. They are very tall and very muscular, with sun-weathered skin covered in black runic tattoos, even curling up the sides of their necks and their cheekbones. Black hair is braided down their backs, and they’re dressed head-to-foot in rough-hewn leather. Each of them is laden with at least a dozen weapons. They don’t exactly look like they run in the same crowd as my grandparents.
My first guess is mercenaries, but when my grandmother speaks, she quickly squelches that theory. “Embyr, these are our associates from abroad, Kildari and his brother Quelan. They’ve come to watch you compete in the tournament.”
I can feel my eyebrows shoot up. “Me?”
Cillian lets out a hearty laugh. “Come cousin, no need for such modesty.” He smiles but shoots me a look.
What in the name of the goddess is going on?
I offer a slight bow to the visitors. “I’m honored you’ve come such a long way to see me. Where did you travel from?”
My grandfather narrows his eyes. “Abroad, Embyr.”
Cillian laughs again, but no one answers the question. I don’t know what exactly I’ve walked into, but it’s not at all how I was expecting my morning to start.
“Shall we break fast together?” My grandmother says it like it’s a question but then looks over expectantly at the servant standing off to the side of the throne and he hurries off.
There’s a large wooden table set on one side of the tent, and my grandmother gestures for everyone to take seats. She and my grandfather sit at each end, and Kildari sits next to me, while his brother sits across from me. Cillian seems an eternity away at a diagonal. I feel like I’ve just sat down in the midst of a pit of serpents.
Three servants return with steaming mugs of spiced tea and plates of fruit that they sit down in front of each of us. The visitors look down at it like they’ve set piles of trash on their plates. My grandmother gestures for the head servant and whispers something in his ear that is clearly unpleasant from the frightened look on his face. Then she looks out across the table and smiles beatifically.
