Chapter 56: Fifty Six
Lucien
The tavern was a terrible idea. But try telling Evadne that and she’d have my balls mounted on a wall.
I couldn’t decide if she was attempting to get under the barmaid’s skirts or into Valka’s pants. Likely the latter, judging by the amount of liquor she kept sliding down the woman’s throat.
Cyrus is long gone, slumped on the bench, cheeks flushed and head bobbing like a drunk pigeon. Every time he lurches, Trenton’s hand on his shoulder is the only thing keeping him from eating the floor. Humans. I still can’t fathom what Valka sees in a man who can’t even hold his drink.
To be fair, their bodies burn through wine faster than ours. Still, after the endless parade of jugs the doe-eyed barmaid keeps delivering, even Valka’s drunk enough to forget why her clothes are supposed to stay on.
She stands on the table of the packed tavern, feet tapping adeptly as she hooks her arm through Evadne’s, the duo turning a circle and singing along to the loudest of their lungs.
I didn’t know she could dance.
Didn’t know she even knew the meaning of fun.
Her cloak is long gone, all that’s left of her clothing a thin, strapped underthing that’s clinging to her torso. And sure as hell, every man within the mile radius with a pair of eyes can see her nipples poking through it. And they’re all looking, of course.
"Have you decided yet?" Trent murmurs, bringing the beer to his lips. "You’re going to need to appoint a new general soon."
I cut him a sidelong glance. "We both know that job belongs only to one man." Fishing into my pocket, I retrieve his still squashed badge. "I expect you back tomorrow. The hour you keep will be generous enough for the family’s sake. I’ve grown weary of leaving Eva to be my only headache."
True to her name, Eva grabs Valka’s cheeks and plants a kiss square on her lips, and half the tavern erupts into cheers, hoots and stupid bawdy chants. A man shoves a hand under his tunic and makes a private prayer with his fist. The sound in my chest isn’t amusement. It is a low, animal rumble that does nothing to improve my mood.
They pull apart and begin cackling like idiots.
Trent snorts, taking the metal from me. "I didn’t know she had become a part of the family."
I don’t look at him when I respond. Instead, my gaze slides down Valka’s silhouette. "She’s not."
"Uh-huh."
I glare irritatedly at Trenton. "What?"
He shrugs, running his fingers along his goblet. "You get attached. Obsessed. You break ’em. Like clockwork. She’s not the first and most definitely won’t be the last."
The very object of my frustration is currently driving her fingers through her hair, body twisting in an obscene manner that makes lush curves you normally wouldn’t notice under all that nonsense she loves to wear all the more obvious. I take another swig of my wine as her hands run down her chest, the small of her breasts catching the light and gleaming.
Her laugh tolls like something sweet and dangerous and I feel, absurdly, like I’ve been nicked. Another five minutes and she’d be naked.
Not that I care.
Not that I *should* care.
Dismissing them, I change the topic. "I need you to look into Blackspire."
Surprise glimmers in dark eyes. "You suspect them of treason?"
My tongue caresses my fangs. "House Blackspire has been House Draemont’s fiercest ally since the beginning of time, where my father and Zon were the closest siblings amongst the first sixteen. We may have drifted apart across generations, but we have tried to maintain tradition, at best. I never doubted them, not until the attack. No one else knew where I hid Ilya and Jessamine outside family. Mine died in that attack, leaving me the only Draemont left. It’s safe to say they couldn’t have done that. And not even under the torture of those bastards could that information be forced from me. That leaves the Blackspires."
Trent sobers. "Serenya’s too high most days to remember her own name."
"It is not Serenya that worries me."
"Lilith may be a menace," he nutters, "but I don’t think she has any love left for the wolves. Certainly not enough to commit treason and murder her kin. I’ve always been of the mind that she can be trusted, regardless of her shortcomings."
My frown deepens. "I don’t imagine she took kindly to having her arms broken." I recall that first night she’d slipped into my rooms, her way of expressing her grief. And I might have killed her, had she not been Illya’s sister. "Though, there could be a deeper motive there. Besides, while Ilya always did have an unwaning soft spot for Lilith, we knew it wasn’t reciprocated. They couldn’t have been any more different, those two."
At the flash of green eyes and red hair in my mind, a searing pain punches through me like a knife to my ribs, filling my chest with a sorrow so bottomless, not even drowning in all the liquor in the world could’ve spared me from the ache of it.
"I’ll have it looked into," Trent promises.
In the ninth hour, Trenton leaves, dragging along Cyrus staggering from. "Katherine will have my head if I do not return home soon," he’d said.
By the eleventh hour, Evadne hops off the table, taking the red faced barmaid behind the stall. Every now and then, the wooden stall shook and the faint sound of moans drifted across to my hearing.
Valka barely notices. She moves like a woman with all the time in the world, eyes shut, a pleasant grin tilting her lips and for a long moment, she looks nothing like herself, basking in the attention on her skin, moving with like she could hear every sick want and desire from every man in the room, re-enacting them, teasing just enough to make them unsteady.
She is abnormally attractive, abnormally inventive, and the only reason I do not snatch her off the table when she begins crawling on all fours, arsw in the air, is because I cannot, for the life of me, move.
I feel the mischief from the other side of my control of her. She knows. Of course she knows. The wicked little creature feels the way my gaze pins her. She knows how her fingers curling under the hem of her shirt make my pulse spike. She knows that raising it slowly, high enough to expose the diamond of her navel, low enough to reveal nothing, is a kind of torture that would make even a saint plead. And that sigh, that soft little sigh she lets slip... it feels like someone dragging their nails down my spine.
Heat floods my veins. I growl, with disgust, at myself more than anything, and tear my eyes away long enough to order another bottle. The shiver that follows feels like a feverish intoxication, like madness, like whatever the hell she smeared across my skin earlier has seeped deeper than it should have. It’s become worrisome that I feel nothing but pleasure to be held at her mercy.
Since the moment her blood touched my tongue, I haven’t been myself. Maybe I should kill her soon, just to be safe. Before I do something truly stupid, like go back on my promise to jam my cock through a meat grinder before I ever touch her that way.
And that--that--is why I hate her. Because she makes me forget. Forget who I am. Forget what I’ve done. Forget Ilya. Forget Jessa. Forget the way they looked that day.
A ragged drunk staggers forward through the crowd, giving in to her provocation. His trousers are tenting obscenely as he throws a sack of rusted coins at her feet. "One hundred," he slurs, "and you show me your tits."
Ah. Charming.
The room erupts in a frenzy. Coins rain down like hail. Demands are shouted. A fight breaks out somewhere near the back. I sigh. That’s my cue.
I stand--a little less steadily than I’d like--and cross the room. In a blink, I’m in front of the table, looking up at her. "That’s enough. We’re leaving."
Amber eyes glitter when they land on me. A slow, defiant smile curls her mouth. "Your Royal Pompousness," she says, attempting a curtsey before promptly losing her balance and toppling.
I don’t want to catch her. Truly, I don’t. I want to let gravity teach her a lesson. But my treacherous body decides otherwise. My arms wrap around her before my mind can object, one beneath her knees, the other around her back.
Her head lolls against my chest with a pleased hum. "You smell," she mumbles, fingers pressing against the muscles of my stomach, feeling me out shamelessly. "You smell and feel terrible."
"Still a little liar," I mutter, tightening my hold as I stride for the door.
Her hands slip beneath the hem of my shirt, nails dragging across my skin. My breath hisses out through clenched teeth. "Valka," I warn.
She blinks up at me, all wide-eyed innocence, while her fingers roam lower, tracing the sharp V of my hips with infuriating curiosity. "What? You’ll punish me for having excellent taste?" She makes an obscene sound in the back of her throat, fingers snapping twice against my belt. "Gods, what do you eat to look like this?"
" You like?" I ask.
She nods, utterly unbothered that I’m cradling her to my chest. "Hell yeah. Sometimes, I think about all the things I could eat off this skin."
The comment shoots all the way to my cock and I shift uncomfortably. "I look forward to reminding you of this tomorrow, when you’re sober enough to die of embarrassment."
A heavy, rather unlucky hand chooses to land on my shoulder, right then. "The lass doesn’t wish to go with you."
I don’t bother turning back when he begins screaming. I could’ve warned him, but some lessons you have to learn yourself. Ice spreads down his hand from the point of contact, and he is still screaming when we step out into the cold night, dark veins spreading rapidly.
I really didn’t like people touching me.
"Lucien," Valka murmurs, fingers still hooked in my belt.
"Hmm?"
"I’m considering Cyrus’s offer," she yawns, eyelids drooping. "Would you let me leave with him tomorrow, if I wanted to?"
I think about it. I knew this was coming, had known from the start. Cyrus asked me for her in exchange for his support. I told him I’d consider it. And maybe, once upon a time, I might have.
But now?
She’s already asleep by the time I answer with a soft, humourless laugh.
"Not even in your wildest dreams."