But food is a privilege.
You never know when you’re going to get another mouthful. And if there’s one thing I enjoy about these missions my father sends me on, it’s that I get to eat and drink whatever I can steal.
Zemira Ashburn. The White Wraith. The Greatest Thief in the Blessed lands.
And the best heist I’ve ever pulled off was one that saw me forced to hide in a chocolatier’s shop.
I can still taste the caramels.
He sets a tray on the bed as I climb back into it, lifting the silver cloche as he sinks onto the mattress.
I try not to think about the muscles shifting in those powerful thighs. He’s wearing his riding leathers again—evidently there’s another hunt on the cards for today—and while I’m sure they’re exquisitely useful in avoiding saddle chafe, they stir remnants of the rapture within me.
Too large. Too close. Too… male.
I try to breathe through it.
“I’m…. Is that pie?” I inhale the scent, and my mouth waters. Distraction. Please. “Venison pie?”
Keir’s smile is wicked as he wafts the steam toward me with the lid. “Venison and onion with a red wine gravy.”
“Are you trying to seduce me with your pie?” I challenge.
“My very delicious pie.”
I swear I’m drooling. “Sir, I shall have you know I am a lady of very refined tastes.” I reach for the fork. “I shall eat your pie—your uncouth pie—but never let it be said that I was tempted.”
“You can eat as much of my pie as you want.”
I arch a brow at him. Are we still talking about the pie?
He tries to steal my plate at the last second, and I threaten to stab him with the fork.
Keir laughs, and then pushes the plate back toward me with one finger. “All yours.”
“I swear I’m not going to fit in any of your lovely dresses if you keep feeding me.” I tear off a piece of pastry and stuff it in my mouth. Oh my… gods. I think this sauce is the best thing I’ve ever eaten. I was wrong. I’m ravenous.
“You’ll have to go naked then, and that would be such a shame.”
I peel off another piece of pastry. “Excellent response.”
“The only response.”
My eyes narrow. I suppose, when you’ve lived three thousand or so years, you become adept at avoiding certain traps. Holding out the pastry, I offer it to him as a reward.
Keir’s eyes heat as he leans forward to take it. He calls my bluff, and what began as an incongruous move ends in a lengthy stalemate as he carefully closes his teeth over the golden pastry without touching me.
Curse it.
“Is it my imagination, or are you always trying to feed me?” I murmur, withdrawing my fingers before his lips can graze them.
Keir licks the crumbs from his mouth, and I force myself to focus on the pie again, but the sound of his low voice is doing dangerous things to me. “Shadow Walkers tend to burn a lot of energy when they use their magic.”
I pause, a scalding piece of meat in my mouth. “They roo?”
He pours me a glass of water and offers it to me. “All the transfiguration magics do. Shapeshifting is a demanding process. You’re shifting levels of your body on a minute level. In your case, you’re not just shifting your body, you’re changing states of matter. A state of being.”
I have never, ever realized that what I can do has anything to do with shapeshifting.
“There were also some that said that Shadow Walkers could manipulate light too,” he says. “And not just the absence of it.”
I swallow down my lump of meat and take a sip of water. Long ago, one of my father’s ancestors could walk the shadows. I’ve always thought my gifts a throwback to him, but there’s only been two other wraiths in the last two hundred years who could Sift—and neither of them survived long enough to master the gift.
I know virtually nothing about my talents.
“Manipulate light?” I ask, popping another pie of pie in my mouth. Light burns when I’m Sifting. Stay to the shadows and you’ll be safe, but if there’s one weakness I own….
“It’s not advisable,” Keir points out. “Light is a Shadow Walker’s weakness, except for the very rare few who learned to bend it, and they were true masters. Kings and queens of their courts. They transcended their gifts.”
“How do you know all of this?”
He smiles. “I may have known a Shadow Walker or two in my time.”
“Hmm.” I eye him. “Just how long does a dragon live?”
“Why do you want to know?” There’s a challenging note to his voice. “A great deal of the lore of dragonkind has been lost to the ages and maybe that’s the way I like it.”
“You’re already trusting me with your secret.” I’ve never truly thought about what a rare gift that is—to be the only person in possession of information that might be able to destroy him.
I look at him anew.
He’s never once threatened me to hold my tongue. He may have locked me into a year and a day of service, but it’s almost as if he gave me the key to his demise and then dared me to do something about it.
A chill runs through me.
He’s testing me. He has to be testing me.
Does he want to know if I can be trusted?
Or is it… something else?
“A dragon lives for many thousands of years,” he replies, his fingers stirring over the blankets as if he sees and feels something else. “We were the goddess’s favored children, torn from the stars themselves and forged into beasts who ruled the skies. But it is one thing to own the possibility of living for eons, and quite another to live it. The toll of time comes to a dragon, not so much in the weight of his bones, but in the weight of all he has lived and lost. Mated pairs follow each other swiftly into the grave. But others who lose children and
