Page 31 of Kiss of Fire

Without waiting for a reply, she peeled it carefully from the album and tucked it into her back pocket. It was the first picture she’d ever had of her mother, and she wanted to keep it close.

Thirteen

Shade turned over in bed, the silken sheets rustling down to his navel. Moonlight streamed in through the floor-to-ceiling doors. He rarely closed them. They opened straight onto a cliff-edge drop. Sometimes, when the mood took him, he would simply step through them and take flight.

There was nothing like the feeling of gliding silently through the night sky of Nush’aldaam. Aside from birds and insects, flight was a power held only by the very old or the very powerful. He could count on one hand the number of beings in the realm who possessed it.

The fae weren’t one of them. Not any more. Not even Aelfric, thank the gods. If he thought he’d ever meet that lunatic in mid-air, he’d stay grounded forever.

Not even the Vetali possessed the ability, which was ironic given that in the human world, legend associated them with bats.

He shifted restlessly, trying not to disturb Leona. She was sleeping beside him, white-blonde hair fanned across the pillow behind her.

He studied her face and felt the prick of a guilty conscience. He had been selfish, seeking his own release and using her to bury his frustration and anger. She had let him take his pleasure without question or complaint. She had just held him until he was spent.

She had been thinking only of him. And he hadn’t been thinking of her at all.

He touched the remains of the wound on his torso. The jotnar had left a scar, but nothing else. He had been lucky.

No. Not luck. Raya.

Raya had applied healing balm on his wound. And she had beaten the jotnar. She had succeeded where he had failed. A part-human girl. A halfling. How the hell had she done it?

Not a girl. Woman.

His breathing quickened as he remembered his dreamlike awakening next to her in that strange hut. The heat pouring off her body. The feel of her against his hand. He felt a stirring in his loins and for a moment he considered rousing Leona again, but then his mind leapt to another question.

How had they got there?

He frowned as their angry conversation replayed itself in his head. Her shouted words. Something about pulling him down a mountain?

Realisation tumbled over him. She had dragged him, unconscious, for a kilometre or more. She could have left him. By the gods, she probably wanted to. But she hadn’t.

And he’d repaid her by groping her.

He shut his eyes as a hot wave of shame engulfed him. No wonder she hated him. He had been boorish, chauvinistic and aggressive. He sat up, unable to lie still for a moment longer.

“What’s wrong, my Lord?” Leona’s soft voice cut through his self-recrimination. “Are you feeling all right?”

“I am sorry if I woke you. Go back to sleep.”

“If something is bothering you, you know you can talk to me about it.” Leona leaned on one elbow and put a hand on his shoulder. “I’m a good listener.”

“I know you are. But there’s something I need to put right.”

“Now? Can’t it wait till morning?”

“No. I have to apologise to her. And you know how much I hate apologising.”

Leona paused a beat.

“Her?” she asked neutrally.

“Raya. The one I told you about. The one who will help me win the throne.”

Leona lay back among the pillows.

“You seem to be spending a lot of time with her.”

---