tempestuous…
Which sounded like fun to him.
“Of course,” he said out loud, and smiled. “Are you going?”
Jarven shook his head.
“Are you invited?”
That earned him a sharp glance. “Yes,” Jarven said. “But Kett’s family is…a lot to take.”
“Are they like her?”
Jarven seemed to consider this as he fastened his gloves. “No,” he said eventually. “They’re worse.”
Kett chucked her kitbag on the ground and slapped the dragon’s hide, watching it rise into the air and head home. It, like all the others, was trained from birth to return to the mountains, several hundred miles away from Elvyrn, but just a few hours flight for a dragon.
She patted her damp shirt, throwing a filthy glare at her traveling companions. It was all very well and good having an aunt who’d shacked up with the Realms’ most evil man, but he tended to have a detrimental effect on, well, everyone. Including dragons. She’d had a fight on her hands ever since she’d picked up Striker and Chalia at the Bridge, and when they’d finally landed outside Elvyrn in the early twilight, the young dragon had thrown a hissy fit and tried to incinerate them.
Striker had remained totally impervious, as had his lover. Kett remained slightly scorched and, after Striker had laughingly conjured a bucket of icy water to douse the flames, she was also soaked through and utterly frozen.
As she pulled a blanket from her kitbag and wrapped it around her shoulders, Striker stuck his fingers in his mouth and whistled twice. A minute later a horse thundered into the clearing at breakneck speed. It skidded to a halt when it saw Striker, flanks quivering. A second after that, another horse did the same thing.
Kett shook her head. She’d seen women react in much the same way. Striker-six feet of menace wrapped up in muscle and perfect bone structure-could make a happily married woman orgasm on the spot just by fixing her with his blue, blue eyes.
He’d passed the talent on to Chance. Magical ability and sexual magnetism. Kett had heard her cousin say she’d have preferred to inherit a house and some money, but she played the cards she’d been dealt.
They all did.
Striker looked smug as he slung his saddlebag over the first horse’s back. “Just a little move I’ve been messing with,” he said.
“Whose horses are they?” Kett asked.
“Who gives a fuck?”
She rolled her eyes.
“Does Kett get one?” Chalia asked, looking around. Striker shrugged a negative and Chalia sighed. “Okay then, you take one, Kett, and we’ll share.”
Kett didn’t argue. Chalia would probably lean on Striker for the return of the horses later, and if she didn’t, then Kett guessed she could probably send them back to the general vicinity and someone would claim them.
It seemed to be the way their relationship worked. Striker had no internal conscience of his own, and Chalia had none of the magical power that crackled around Striker, but they’d evolved to share what they had with each other. It had been Chalia who’d persuaded Striker to help Kett after the sabertooth-tiger incident, for which Striker had been extracting favors ever since. Favors such as picking him and Chalia up and flying them to Elvyrn for Yule.
It seemed impossible to consider, but once upon a time Striker had been a child, and a fairly normal one at that. He’d been school friends with Kett’s father, Tyrnan, which Kett figured probably explained a few things. Chalia, herself a childhood troublemaker, had turned out to be Tyrnan’s illegitimate sister. She’d been the one to track Kett down and force her brother to meet his teenaged daughter.
Kett still wasn’t sure she forgave Chalia for it.
She scowled at them as they rode on ahead. Despite being nearly twenty years older than Kett, they appeared years younger, which she considered to be monstrously unfair. Not for Chalia, the fear of getting older and older and the dread of dying alone…
Not that Kett suffered such a fear, because if she did then she’d have happily taken Bael up on his ridiculous suggestion that they were mates. But she hadn’t, because she wasn’t some pathetic creature who needed that sort of validation in her life, which was why she was feeling guilty. Because she’d had hot sex with him last night, twice, instead of just walking away…
They rode into Elvyrn, the Realm’s second city, picturesque in the early twilight as people bustled around getting ready for Yule. There was a light dusting of snow on the pink buildings, although the streets had been swept clean, and everywhere Kett looked seemed to have sprung straight from a Yule card.
Chalia and Striker veered off to visit other friends and Kett continued up the hill. Her uncle’s Winter Palace stood tall and beautiful at the summit, illuminated by flickering torches. A few streets away stood her stepmother’s massive house, every light blazing.
Kett hesitated outside the gates of her parents’ mansion, where a young garda waited patiently to admit her. On the one hand, Yule with her parents, who would almost certainly try to get her to attend their high-toned, fancy shindig, for which she’d have to wear a dress and be polite to people. On the other, going back to the mountains and facing Bael, on whom she’d so suddenly run out.
Well, it was about time he learned what that felt like.
And her parents were never stingy with the alcohol.
Kett sighed and nudged the horse onward, hooves crunching over the snow. She let herself in through the kitchen door, snagged a hot meat pie from the counter and juggled it as she wove past the servants.
“Your ladyship!” the butler cried as she was halfway up the stairs from the kitchen to the public part of the house, and Kett winced. She turned to face him. What was his name? Willis? Wilson? Willikins?
“Hey, Wills. Didn’t I ask you not to call me that?”
He made a courteous bow. “My apologies…miss.”
“Miss”…well, better than “your ladyship”. She waved a hand, taking a bite of the meat pie and shucking the blanket from her shoulders. “Whatever,” she said through a mouthful. “Can someone make my room up?”
“As always, it is ready for you, miss.”
“Great,” Kett said indistinctly, and swallowed. “This is a great pie. I’m so bloody hungry.”
“I shall pass your compliments on to Cook,” the butler said politely, despite Cook standing a dozen feet away. “Dinner shall be served in five minutes in the Gold Salon.”
Gold Salon? “Which one’s that?”
The butler gave an almost imperceptible sigh. “Formerly the Rose Room, my…miss.”
“Gotcha,” Kett said, and continued up the stairs, the butler following. Shoving open the heavy door at the top of the steps, she took another bite. “Cheers, Wills.”
“Wilden, miss.”
She waved her hand at him as the door swung shut. Then she shoved it back open again and handed her bag to him. Through a mouthful of pie she said, “Can you chuck this in my room?”
“Certainly, miss,” Wilden replied, not missing a beat.
“Ta,” Kett said, and went to try to find the Gold Salon.
“How interesting, Lady Kett,” said the duke of…oh hell, wherever. “And how exactly does one train a dragon?”
Across the table, Nuala mouthed, “Sorry!” Kett grimaced. Her stepmother was so unfailingly charming toward everyone that she’d been unable to turn away the very boring duke and his unbearably pompous wife when they’d “dropped by” that afternoon and invited themselves for dinner.
