Draven smirked. “Is that—
“My King—”
The sound of Balandria’s voice as she bounded up the stairs averted both their attentions. She slowed her bounce at the top step, grinning, and she pressed a bowl into Draven’s arm.
“Second batch,” she said proudly.
Draven looked as though he would laugh, and he set his cup on the banister so that he could reach inside the bowl. He pulled a yellow circle from the inside, and popped it in his mouth, and she could hear the crunch of it as he chewed. He made a pleasing noise and clapped Balandria on her shoulder.
“Like that. Every time,” he told her proudly.
Balandria beamed. She turned quickly and ran back down the steps, leaving Draven to munch on whatever food it was she had brought. Draven did a double-take at Aydra’s stare, and then held the bowl out to her.
“What is it?” she asked cautiously.
“When someone offers you food, the polite thing to do is eat it,” he argued playfully.
Her jaw tightened, but she reached in the bowl and took out one of the circles. One sniff, and all she could smell was fat and salt. “Are these potatoes?” she asked before popping it in her mouth.
He watched her a moment, and she fought the pleasing look her face wanted to make as she savored the taste of it on her tongue.
“Chips,” he answered. “Balandria’s been working out temperatures for years now.”
Aydra hated that she enjoyed it so much.
She pressed her cup back into her hands and leaned back in the chair. “How exactly is it you people look as…” her eyes traveled deliberately up and down his husky body and then back to the fried potatoes in his hands “…well, as you do,” she managed, “when you are all always eating?”
Draven smirked. “Climbing trees,” he said with a shrug. “Battling each other. Constant training. Gifts of Duarb. Take your pick.” His eyes traveled down her own sitting body and he raised a brow when his gaze landed on her hips. “Am I to think Arbina simply gave you that weapon or did you find the secret to a man’s lust on your own?”
Her lips pursed at him. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
Draven huffed amusedly and shook his head. “You know that wall is going to shatter one day,” he mused, popping back another chip in his mouth. “I can’t wait to be there when you’re trying to pick up the pieces.”
She watched him chew smugly a moment, contemplating whether to throw the rest of her tea in his face. “Is it not you who tells your men constant vigilance?” she finally decided to ask. “To never trust words, only instinct?”
His chewing slowed, and he stared at her a moment. “My kind have been persecuted over the years for simply being what we are… for the mistakes of our giver,” he said in a low voice. “Would you expect me to tell them to live as though they could trust every being to walk this land?”
“There are good people in this land,” she said. “Not everyone has ulterior motives.”
“And are you one of these… good people?” he asked with a raised brow.
She pondered his question a moment, the life she lived echoing in her mind like it were playing backwards in her sight.
“I may not have alternative motives… but I don’t know that I would call myself a good person,” she finally determined.
He slowly grabbed for another chip and crunched it in his mouth. “Look at that,” he said, swallowing the food. “A crack.”
Her jaw tightened at his words, but it didn’t seem to bother him. The smirk on his lips returned. He went inside and sat the rest of the bowl of chips on the table, returning with a cup of the familiar potion he’d been feeding her. He sat it down on the ground beside the chair, and then he turned towards the staircase again.
“Drink the potion, Sun Queen,” he called back to her.
Aydra grumbled as she switched from tea to the thick liquid, and then she shot it back into her system before she could hurl at the smell.
CHAPTER TWENTY
DRAVEN WAS NOT the one to bring her breakfast the next morning. He had sent Balandria up to her with food and more of the potion around midday. When Aydra had asked Balandria about where he was, she’d insisted Aydra not be concerned with her king’s whereabouts.
Aydra sipped the potion instead of gulping it back as she usually did, allowing her curiosity the better of her as she sat down at Draven’s desk to pour over some of the maps he had spread across it.
Maps of the southern shores, of the Forest dwellings. She paused at this one, staring at the vastness of the forest home she realized she’d only seen a fraction of. Another set of drawings caught her eyes, and she pulled one page up to the top of the pile, finding on it the drawing of one of the Noctuans— the Rhamocour.
The dragon-like beast was sketched deliberately into the parchment. Long neck raised, great wings spread out, each the same length as its body. The drawing made the beast look like it was all black as smoke, whisps drawn around it as though to signify it as a shadow. But what stood stark was the great horns on its head, and the apple green color the eyes had been filled with.
“You know—”
Aydra jumped so quickly at the sound of Draven’s voice that she nearly fell to the floor.
“—The last time someone snooped in my things, they found themselves in the middle of Berdijay territory on the last night of the Deads.”
Draven was leaned against the frame of the door, shadows over his features as he stared pointedly at her.
“Sweet Arbina, Draven,” she managed, willing her heart to even pace. “Can you—” Her words ceased at the sight of him. A great slash ripped through his shirt, his forearm bleeding from
