This is why I was planning to bypass the mishua altogether.
Sure, a mishua would get me to Rakiz’s camp faster, but I figured as a female traveling alone, it was smarter for me to go on foot—so I could easily hide when necessary. Plus, I can go days without sleep, and I had my contacts lined up along the way in case I needed shelter.
Unfortunately, Korzyn disagrees.
“A mishua will get us there much faster.”
“Only Braxians ride mishua. It’s a good way to announce to our enemies we’re here and traveling alone.”
“Speed is of the greatest importance.”
“Yeah. I’m sure you’ve got a busy social life to get back to.”
He narrows his eyes at me. I narrow mine back.
“This is what we’re doing,” he says finally, and I grind my teeth.
“You make it really easy to hate you.”
He flashes his teeth at me and gestures for me to get on the mishua. Behind him, one of Rakiz’s warriors is looking on in amusement. Dexar and Rakiz quickly realized they would need to keep mishua here for when their people wanted to travel across the water, and they’ve surrounded the mishua pen with guards.
I smile at the warrior, who has incredible dark-green eyes. “I can leave the commander here to watch the mishua. You wanna come with me instead?” I ask him, and he grins at me. He runs his eyes over my body, and Korzyn goes very still next to me.
“Get. On. The. Mishua.”
I sigh. Better to pick my battles. “If we get targeted because we’re on this stupid mishua, I’m telling Arix it was all your idea.”
The mishua tenses as I mount her, one of her red eyes focused on me. Viv says they’re smart and can understand more than we think, so I’ve likely just made an enemy of my lizard horse as well.
Awesome.
Korzyn mounts behind me, and my mood turns darker at the feel of his ridiculously hard body pressed against mine.
“Move back. You’re in my space,” I snipe, and he ignores me, reaching around me and directing the mishua out of the paddock.
“Her name is Heli,” Rakiz’s warrior says, stepping back.
“Awesome.” I wave goodbye to him, ignoring Korzyn’s low growl.
“Why are you so pissy? You didn’t have to come.”
“Yes, I did.”
“You gonna tell me what Arix offered you in exchange?”
“Why would I?”
Now I’m even more curious. But I clamp my mouth shut. “Fine.”
“I will tell you in exchange for an answer to one of my questions.”
Hmm. I consider this as the mishua plods further from the pen and toward the forest. Soon we’ll need to be quiet, careful not to draw any attention to ourselves.
Despite myself, I’m desperate to know what could have made the commander agree to this trip when he so clearly wants to be elsewhere.
The king could technically order him to go with me. But from what I’ve observed, the two are close friends. If Arix is giving the commander something he wants, then I want to know exactly what it is.
Knowledge is power, after all.
“Fine,” I say. “You tell me first.”
He moves slightly in the weird mishua-shaped saddle, and the leather creaks beneath us.
“On the night of Arix and Vivian’s mating, after Vivian was coronated…”
“Yes?”
“The crowd left the ballroom to see the shooting stars.”
“I remember.” It was Seva, and Arix insisted we all go outside. I shrugged, looking for solitude. I didn’t find it, but I became entranced with the shooting stars anyway.
“I met a female that night.”
I suddenly feel…uncomfortable. “Uh-huh. And?”
“She was a noblewoman from Mazark’s tribe. We talked…briefly—”
I smirk. “You mean you flirted.”
“Yes. I had thought that was all it was. Truthfully, I wasn’t looking for anything more.”
Korzyn is being surprisingly open and honest. I glance over my shoulder, but his gaze is on the horizon, his face thoughtful. He’s basically thinking aloud, and it’s as if I’m not even here.
I stay silent, waiting for him to spill the rest of the details.
“I wanted to watch the stars alone. So I found a dark corner of the gardens. It was close to the tree the children like to climb.”
Oh shit.
“The noblewoman sat next to me, and we looked up at the stars. Within moments, we were kissing.”
Uh-oh.
“I don’t know her name.”
I shuffle uncomfortably on the mishua, ignoring the way the beast narrows her eye at me.
The noble Korzyn thought he kissed?
Yeah, it was me.
I didn’t know it at the time, of course. I’d been flirting with one of Arix’s guards all night, and like most people, I was pretty hammered after all the noptri. Vivian insisted I take a cloak, and I wandered out into the garden in an attempt to make the world stop spinning.
I plunked myself down next to the guard, a guy named Heros, who was staring up at the shooting stars as if they’d tell him the secrets of the universe. I glanced up too, somehow still shocked at just how different the stars were on Agron compared to Earth.
It made me feel small, and it reminded me Earth was very, very far away.
When he leaned closer, I decided to numb the pain in a way that noptri hadn’t quite managed to do.
The kiss was the kind of kiss you force yourself to lock away because if you ever let it free again, you’ll lose hours examining it from every angle.
It started off the way all kisses do, my lips brushing his. And then Heros took control, sliding his arm behind me and pulling me close as he explored my mouth. I lost all track of time until the peaceful night was broken as a group of people walked close by, their laughter bringing me back down to earth.
I pulled away,
