She almost laughed. “I have a running game with Lex. Sometimes after really terrible meetings, we talk about who would scream the loudest if we suddenly started a massacre.”
“Ash,” Draven affirmed as she exhaled the smoke into the air. “Definitely Ash.”
“I’m more inclined to think old man Sauder from Scindo would be the loudest.”
“Who does Lex think?” he asked.
She took a long inhale of the herb and grinned. “You.”
His brows raised again. “Me? Really?”
She turned over sideways almost onto her stomach. “She thinks you would scream loudly, and very high-pitched.”
He laughed. “What do you think?”
“I think I would have saved you for last,” she said smoothly, “kicked your ass as I did when we were children.”
He almost choked on the inhale he’d just taken, and his hair fell over his eyes as he shook his head at her. “You got lucky that day.”
“You think so?” she mocked.
He handed her the pipe once more, and she inhaled it deeply, her muscles falling further into the depth of its haze. Talk of fighting made her head spin, and she suddenly remembered the words the man had said to her on the beach.
“The man on the beach that I cornered… he said something weird,” she said then.
Draven frowned. “I didn’t know you cornered one.”
“I did. Asked him who they served.”
“And?”
“He said… ‘Long live King Aeron of Mathis, ruler of Man.’”
Draven took another long draw from the pipe, eyes narrowed just slightly. “Interesting.”
“Any ideas?” she asked.
“None,” he said with a shake of his head. His eyes flickered over her again, and a small smile quirked at the corner of his lips.
“What?” she asked, seeing the amusement in his gaze.
“You… You’re the only person I know capable of making talk of war seducing.”
She smirked. “Tricks, Venari,” she mused with a wink.
A long sigh left him as he watched her once more, the darkened haze of the herb lifting into his eyes and replacing the amused glint. She felt the herb swimming through her the same way, and her eyelids became heavy. She sighed back into the bed on her stomach and sat her head on her hands, staring out at the canopy around them. Draven’s head hit the poster of the bed, eyes closing as an elongated breath emitted from his lungs.
Content.
Perfectly. Content.
The silence between them was a blanket she hugged herself into. She couldn’t stop watching him, fascinated by the creature before her that made her feel things she’d dared not think truly existed. Challenged. Fulfilled. Matched.
Equal.
She sat up then and pushed herself beside him, curling her legs behind her. His eyes followed her movements as he took a long inhale of the herb. She leaned in and pressed her lips to his as he began to exhale, and she swallowed the sweet smoke emitting from his lungs. The warm trickle of a honey chill ran down her spine, and she felt his fingers gently touch her knee. Her tongue raked the length of his, savoring the taste of the herb on his breath, of the Venari man sitting before her— a taste of forest and darkness and unchecked desire smothered into this perfect shadow she wanted to envelop her core. And when she pulled back to look at him, her thighs shifted, and she felt herself growing wetter again at the amorous look on his face.
The tip of his finger reached between her thighs, and he grazed her folds so delicately that she had to take in a sharp breath of air.
“Careful, Venari,” she heard herself whisper as his finger brushed against her. “You’ll have me undone before I can touch you,” she repeated of his own words.
“Thrice.”
Her brows raised, and she pulled back slightly to see the determined gaze in his eyes. “Thrice?” she repeated incredulously.
“Before you can touch me,” he confirmed.
She felt her lips gape open slightly at his torture. “This really…” She almost whimpered as his lips brushed the skin of her throat, and his middle finger dipped between her folds, grazing her clit. “This really isn’t fair,” she finally managed.
He pulled back and smiled slyly over her. “You are truly used to getting your way, aren’t you?” he mocked.
“I am the Queen.”
The low chuckle that emitted from his lips made her thighs squeeze again, and he bent down, his teeth tugging at her earlobe. “My forest. My rules. My Queen.”
The growl of his words against her skin made her eyes roll into the back of her head, and she surrendered to him a few times more.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
THE MORNING CAME too soon.
They stayed up for hours, enjoying the embrace of one another’s company, holding onto it as though it would disappear if they fell apart. They smoked, stared at the skies together, speaking of the stories of Haerland’s past and the differences of the Chronicles and Honest Scrolls. And when she fell asleep in his arms, her mind rested of the darkness and was instead swallowed by a feeling she was unfamiliar with.
“I wondered where you’d end up last night,” Lex mused.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Aydra lied.
Lex chuckled under her breath. “He’s good for you, I think. Only man I’ve ever met that can actually handle you.”
Aydra gave her a sideways smirk. “Do you truly think that or are you just too scared to tell me otherwise?”
“Well, you’ll notice I said man, not person,” Lex quipped with a wink.
The pair laughed and Aydra started packing her bag. Words Draven had said two nights before continued to echo in her head.
“What’s wrong?” Lex asked, apparently feeling the tense in Aydra’s form.
“He said something the other night that I can’t stop thinking about…”
“What?”
“He said I deserved someone who would burn down this entire kingdom to save me if I ever needed it,” she repeated.
Lex’s brows raised on her face, and she nodded. “He’s not wrong,” he agreed. “You think he meant himself?”
“Maybe,” she wondered aloud. “Perhaps. I’m not sure. I—”
Lex’s hand on her arm made her
