Page 60 of The Lure of Wolves and Whispers
Instinctively, I check over my shoulder, bracing for a serrated blade at my throat, for the swish of a dark cloak on marble that will mean the Lady of Shadows has come for me.
Then—
“Dance with me.”
The smell of crisp winter air and spice fills my nose as Prince Cashel offers out a ringed hand to me.
His sapphire eyes flash on mine. “Come on,” he says, and his smile tightens. “You threw the rose I gave you on the ground. The least you can do is dance with me.”
“Your rose made me bleed.” Keeping the fear out of my voice is a battle.
Old Ones, I can feel every eye in this court narrowing on methe longer he stands here, one hand still extended between us, waiting.
When I still don’t take it, the prince leans in close enough for me to count the dark lashes shadowing his eyes, and murmurs, low and deceptively soft, “Why do you think I had every one of them ripped out?”
My blood pulses in my veins.
Killer.
Monster.
Every warning I’ve ever heard about him races up the back of my neck as he watches me, navy eyes searching mine. The velvet of his midnight tunic doesn’t have so much as a crinkle, and the rubies in the silver crown he wears wink in the candlelight.
“I know what people say about me,” the prince says carefully, finally taking my hand and placing the other at the curve of my waist. He keeps his unsettling gaze locked on me, taking control of the dance and pulling me in as the piper plays faster and faster.
If he’s looking at you, he won’t be looking for me.
I stumble on my own feet.
A soft laugh tugs at the edge of the prince’s mouth, but he pulls me in closer so our bodies are flush. All it would take is one slip of a knife at the back of my ribs, and he could kill me without me seeing it coming.
“Do you?” I cover the words with a shy smile and the smooth mask every courtier expects from a girl dancing with a prince. Even if Wolf won’t let me in, I can’t keep myself from wondering: If I succeed, will the Whisperers burn this court down, or put a new king—put Prince Cashel—in his father’s place? Thecombination of strong wine and the spinning dance sets me off-kilter. “I’m surprised you’ve let them live.”
I wince as the words leave my mouth.
Shit.
If the stories are true, he had a childhood friend’s entire family slaughtered over an insult.
The prince’s blue eyes bear down into mine. “And do you believe the stories?”
Music and the hiss of gossip surround us, but this close, the only sound I hear is the brief catch of the breath in his throat as I let my gaze linger on his. One finger brushes precisely where the laces of my shimmering midnight gown end to expose the upper length of my spine.
A slender curl of danger unfurls in my stomach, almost drawing me in.
Keeva told me once that some poisons work through the air, twisting in fumes that can capture your will and cloud your judgment. Others turn your nerves to fire, sinking like magic into a mage’s bones and eating away at you from within. Some consume every rational thought until there’s nothing left but madness. Some can even stop your heart.
She never told me about this one, though.
How the scent of winter spice threatens to trick my better judgment. About how it might entangle me, brushing like chilled velvet in my mind, as he sweeps me away to dance in the pulsing music.
I never knew the whisper of danger—ofwhat if, ofmaybe—could be a poison all its own.
What would this man be like as a king? If the Whisperers puthim on the throne, how much could change for people like me?
He razed the temples with the gardai. He did as his father said.
But even as I think the words, a low, insistent part of me whispers,What if he was just surviving too?
