“As my lady wishes.” Unable to help myself, I press a kiss to her neck. “Will I see you tonight?”
She hesitates.
“I want to see you again.” Another glancing kiss. I’ve only just found her. I’m not letting her go now.
“I shouldn’t.” She glances back over her shoulder, biting that lip. “I shouldn’t have given you even this. My mother….”
“Fuck your mother.” I capture her chin and with it, her mouth. She tastes like sweet hesitance, but the second my tongue darts against hers, she moans and kisses me back.
“You don’t understand.” Vi trembles as she presses her forehead to mine. “My mother will kill you if she hears of this.” Fingertips brush against my cheeks. “I just wanted…. Once. I just wanted a single night to pretend I was free to make my own choices.”
Don’t we all?
But there’s something in the way she says it that makes me draw back and consider her heart-shaped face.
She doesn’t want me to know her name.
She’s scared of her mother.
There’s no reason to connect the dots, but a lead weight starts to settle in my chest. Premonition, perhaps.
Then she’s gone.
She peers out through the brambles, dawn’s soft light pouring over her as she winds her hair into a knot and pins it atop her head. Without the cascade of her hair, her back is revealed. The dress cuts wide and dips low, revealing all of that smooth, olive skin. Skin I never truly noticed last night, when she danced in my arms. Her hair was always covering it. Gold flashes on her back. Gold and black and red…. It’s a tattoo that runs down her spine, one I never noticed in the light of the stars.
One by one my eye picks out roses, and then the gold begins to make sense…. Thorns. Thorns and roses, and a gilded crown.
Everything within me goes cold.
My mother.
She’s got the royal fucking crest of Asturia on her back.
“Vi.” Relief floods the stranger’s voice, and there’s a whispered half-exchange between them that ends with, “What were you thinking? Staying out so late? She’s already asking for you!”
Vi.
Not Violet.
There are two daughters. Andraste, the Crown Princess, and…. “Iskvien.”
It captures her attention. Dark eyes meet mine as I slowly push to my feet, and she looks a little confused, as if to wonder how I know her name. “Goodbye, my prince.”
There’s no guile in her expression.
No hint she even suspects.
She doesn’t know.
And then she’s gone, leaving me with the reeling sensation that fate just kicked me in the teeth.
There’s only a single starburst mask, lying forlornly in the grass.
“You ruined everything,” Thalia accuses, the second I’m back within my tents. “Princess Lucere was there to meet you, and you barely even looked at her, before you ran off with another woman.” She rakes her hands through her hair. “I can fix this,” she says, half to herself. “I can—”
“No.” There’s no point in playing alliances now. “There will not be a marriage between Evernight and Ravenal.”
Thalia pales. “What?”
I can barely breathe as I turn away from her, rubbing at my knuckles. Eris remains a silent shadow at my back. She knows. The queensmoot may be the only time when murder and treachery is forbidden, but I still don’t go anywhere without at least her or Baylor at my back, and it seems Eris drew the short straw last night.
She’d have given me enough distance to have some semblance of privacy, but when I finally exited my heather-scented bower, she’d arched an eyebrow at me.
“Out.” I tilt my head toward the door. I need to bathe and dress. I need a fucking moment alone to still the thoughts circling my head like sharks.
She’s Asturian.
It’s a fist within my chest. A knot of discordant emotion.
She’s fucking Asturian. My promise, my hopes, my dreams…. They’re all turning into a nightmare.
Because Adaia will never allow me to touch one of her precious daughters.
The daemon within me laughs. Did you think it would be that easy?
“Out?” Thalia repeats, as if she’s never heard the word before. She sets her hands on her hips. “Did you just tell me to get out of your tents?”
I wasn’t thinking. “Please,” I add. “I need to bathe.”
Oh, it’s too late for that. Her eyes narrow. “What’s wrong? Why do you look like you were just punched in the sternum. Eris?”
She looks to Eris, who is pouring a glass of wine.
For breakfast.
“What is going on here?” Thalia demands.
“Thanks,” I mutter, as Eris turns with the wine.
She merely arches her brow at me. “Who said it was for you?”
And then she drains it.
I pour my own.
“It was the woman, wasn’t it?” Thalia’s apparently scented blood, and she’s smart enough to put it all together. “The way you went after her—”
“It’s her,” I tell her.
There’s a moment where she doesn’t understand, and then the color bleeds from her cheeks. “Her? The one you saw all those years ago?”
I nod.
She clasps her hands over her mouth. “Mother of Night.” Thoughts race through her eyes. “Clearly, things went well between you…. And you’ve finally found her. I don’t understand what the problem is.”
“The problem is,” Eris says to Thalia, “that she’s fucking Asturian. Adaia’s youngest daughter, by the look of her. Lysander was supposed to watch Thiago’s back last night, and I traded in with him sometime after three so he could get some sleep.” She jacks her thumb toward me. “I didn’t realize who our prince was cuddling up with until this morning, when it was too late. Or I would have put a halt to it.”
“Asturian?” Thalia whispers in horror.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I snap. “I didn’t know who she was either, until I saw the tattoo down her back.”
“You didn’t think to ask?” she demands.
“She lied.
