I’d hoped the breath might.
“Gangs,” I managed, a semblance of sense. I forced myself to look at him, meet his stare with my own and damn the consequences.
His eyes narrowed. I had been wrong, after all. What I’d mistaken for blue were not—simply the river of flame down the left, turning warmed brown to a devil’s fury.
I had eaten too much, ’tis all. An easy mistake to make. Certainly, I was not the only opium eater to have done it. I resolved to be more careful next time.
At least I’d found my words. “The Ferrymen are amassing in Ratcliffe, where they shouldn’t—” The brief tumble of hard-won words ceased abruptly as Hawke’s fingers closed around my throat.
I froze, barely breathing at all.
“Out,” he said, quiet but nothing remotely soft.
The high neck of my collecting corset helped, but it was merely leather, designed to keep the slats in place over my chest. “Hawke, ‘tis—”
Muscle tightened along his arm. I found myself on my toes, chin high to ease the pressure from between his fingers. “Get out,” he said, this time sharper. The threat apparent in the order drew blood. So used, now discarded.
What was happening? Hawke had always been physical—his was not the patience reserved for intellectual debate—but I had never felt truly in danger. My throat felt ludicrously fragile in his powerful grip, as if he would only need to strain a little before the high collar between his fingers and my flesh no longer mattered.
I wanted to argue, to fight, to demand that satisfaction in a very bloody way, but Hawke did not humor me. Using the hand he still held and his grip on my neck, he forced me backward. Step by step, oddly graceful as I was forced to remain upon my toes, he pushed me from the room. An absurdly agile dance no Society maven would ever see.
My back hit a wall of cool air, then sank into it.
Immediately, the hand he held throbbed in pain. I winced.
He let me go. No push, no struggle. He simply removed his hands, as if I were something to be rejected. Or forgotten. He turned, presenting me that scarred back, and still one part of me ached in sympathy.
The rest snarled in a fit.
What was he thinking? Who was he to discount my help? My intentions were pure, and he could not even afford me the courtesy of hearing me out. Half-blooded bastard as he was, what did he know?
My rage cracked through a bliss that seemed somehow lessened, now that I was removed from the intolerable heat.
I was not kind in my fury. I was, however, not so far gone that I did not recognize the threat his greater physical strength posed. I did not let fly with any of the terrible names crowding my thoughts.
“This is
“Leave him,” came the evocative voice of the lion-prince I’d left behind. I near jumped from my skin.
Hawke did not address me or to acknowledge Osoba. He did not turn. As the firelight danced within the overheated room smelling of fragrant spice, he simply reached out with both hands, muscles pulled taut across his bare back, and shut the doors. The panels slammed into place, practically in my face.
Furious, I thumped my fist against a painted dragon’s leer, which only brought tears of pain to my eyes.
A hand touched my sweaty shoulder.
“I warned you,” Osoba said, in a manner that suggested I’d brought this upon myself.
I shook off the touch, rounded on him—and found myself face to face with Zylphia, instead. Behind her, the lion-prince waited, his features no more or less composed than when I’d left him.
When had either arrived? Had they seen my forceful ejection from that room? I shot Osoba a glare designed to quell any mockery, but I saw none in the prince’s demeanor.
Zylphia’s expression did not reflect dismay to find her touch so rejected. In truth, she barely looked upon my face, her chin high and shoulders square in a frock that was more tea gown than true day-dress. Jealousy seized me, for no matter how often I begged Fanny to allow me to wear the unstructured fashion of the suffragettes, she had refused.
Now that I had seen a tea gown on Zylphia, I would never measure up.
She was lovely. The pale blue turned her skin to the hue of tea and rich cream, and her hair was loose in a long fall of heavy black. Her blue eyes, startlingly pretty in already exquisite features, were focused on the door behind me.
I stepped aside, because I did not like having no exit at my back. “Why is he in there?” I demanded.
Zylphia said nothing. Avoiding my gaze, she opened the doors, gathered her fine skirts—sheer in material but layered as if to provide a modest, cloudlike effect—and stepped inside.
For the second time, the doors closed on me.
Something ugly twisted my heart. Painfully, malice and poison conspired to turn my rage on Zylphia. To paint upon her the target of my reproach.
But it did not sit right, and I did not know what to do with it. I had no call to think of Zylphia so uncharitably. She had always done what was best for me, trained to act as my maid when the Veil forced her to accompany me above the drift. She had helped me when the sweet tooth had taken Betsy, my dear friend and childhood maid.
Zylphia had even brought me opium when the shock of Earl Compton’s death threatened to overwhelm me.
That I would not allow her to accompany me now was not her doing. It was mine. I feared for her safety— for all who befriended me. I suffered no argument, would broach no debate. It was temporary, I assured myself. Only as long as it took to bring the sweet tooth to justice. Surely she understood that.
Surely, she of all could read the fear that underscored my behavior.
I stared at that door and realized the cost of my independence. With nowhere else to go, Zylphia had obviously returned fully to her role as a sweet.
Like all the sweets, her duties included that of tending to the ringmaster’s every whim.
My fists clenched.
“It is time to go,” Osoba said, spreading one long arm to the side in gentlemanly mimicry.
I could not speak around the pained lump in my throat.
Instead of making any further attempt, I clasped my wounded hands to my chest and turned away from the polished door with its scenes of fantastical conflict. Dragons, tigers and ornate birds tangled together, as if caught in a dance, or a fight.
I would lay good coin on the latter. If I had a fight of my own to attend, I would have traded all I had to be there.
Perhaps it would have hurt less.
I did not attempt to ask Ikenna Osoba of what I’d seen in that room. I knew instinctively that he would not answer—perhaps in part to devil me, perhaps because he had nothing to answer me with.
I had not even made up my mind if what I’d seen was true, or if I’d only been taken in by the pressing heat and my own imagination. Hawke had thrown me for a terrible spin, and I did not like it. Not one little bit.
I expected Osoba to leave me once I’d been removed from Hawke’s presence, but he did not. He stayed near enough on my backside that I could bear my silence no longer. I spun in the foyer, glaring up at him with all the indignation I could muster. “What do you require of me, Your Highness?”
His teeth were rather white against his black skin, and I noted with some unease that his eyeteeth were slightly sharper than usually seen on a man. Not unheard of in the occasional person, but off-putting nevertheless. “Biddableness,” he informed me.
“Quite a few syllables for a savage prince,” I retorted, snide beyond measure.
His smile did not dim. “Your English disposition is laughably out of place.”
“So is yours,” I muttered, giving him my back in a huff. That I had not yet uncurled my fingers was an omission I chose to ignore. The feel of Hawke’s mouth on my sensitive flesh was something I had entirely too much trouble forgetting.
