When his laughter faded and he looked at her again, Malak’s eyes were gleaming bright and she was breathless.

And in more trouble that she wanted to admit, she knew.

“There is a certain liberty in having so few choices,” he told her, almost sadly, and it felt like a cage closing, a lock turning. “This will all work out fine, Shona. One way or another.”

“There’s nothing to work out,” she said fiercely. Desperately. “You need to turn around and go back where you came from. Now.”

“I wish I could do that,” Malak said in that same resigned sort of way, and oddly enough, she believed him. “But it is impossible.”

“You can’t—”

“Miles is the son of the king of Khalia,” Malak said, and there was an implacable steel in that dark gaze and all through that body of his, lean and sculpted to a kind of perfection that spoke of actual fighting arts, brutal and intense, not a gym.

And she believed that, too, though she didn’t want to. She believed that every part of him was powerful. Lethal. And that she was in over her head.

Again.

“Congratulations, Shona,” he continued, all steel and dark promise. “That makes you my queen.”