The room erupted in questions and protest, and I managed my own outrage with the familiar ritual of observing the people and noting who didn’t protest. Ibolya kept her counsel, revealing little. Ambrose watched Con in canny silence. Merle cocked his head with an oddly similar expression.
And myself, of course. I wasn’t happy, but I wasn’t surprised.
I gave Con a cold glare for keeping the unveiling of this aspect of his plan from me. I knew him well enough to have followed his manipulations as he appeared to let everyone give input to a strategy he’d already settled upon. He attempted a cheeky grin for me—patently manufactured to charm me, as the dimple never appeared. I tightened the leash on my rising temper. Maybe Con had learned from the past, and I now suspected him unfairly. I would wait to see if this so-called plan improved with explanation.
Though I doubted it would.
Without answering anyone’s questions and accusations—many of the others didn’t know Sondra had carried my severed finger and hand out of Yekpehr—Con retrieved a bag he’d brought, extracting a wrapped bundle and laying it on the wide rim of the sand table, as far away from me as possible. I watched in fascinated horror as he unwrapped it. The others, one by one, fell silent.
With an apologetic glance to me, Con undid the last layer, revealing my dead hand and finger. Ibolya cast me a distressed look, and Sondra put a reassuring hand on my shoulder. I produced a calm smile, grateful in that moment for the many years of practice controlling my expressions.
“Gracious,” I exclaimed into the horrified silence, nearly adding a frivolous giggle. I decided against it as the chances of it going hysterical were too high to risk. “My hand looks remarkably well preserved, all things considered.” It did look much the same as when it had been attached to me. The skin was smooth, though sunken against the fragile-seeming bones, marble pale with death. Had I looked like that when they found me? An unsettling thought.
The long jeweled nails I’d been wearing that day gleamed scarlet as fresh blood, gold tips glittering. I’d liked that look, had felt fierce and ready for battle. It seemed I viewed my hand—and the severed finger, in its proper position, but limply detached—from a strange distance. I considered that the sense of dizzying remove could be a warning that I might faint. I’d have once said I wasn’t the fainting sort, but that was before they cut my hand off.
“Breathe,” Sondra advised under her breath, and I did—finding that the black sparkles in my vision receded with it.
“You kept it?” Percy gasped in horror, the first to speak. “What kind of monster does something like that?”
I was likely the only one who saw that epithet hit the mark—and Con’s mostly internal wince—because Con met Percy’s gaze levelly. “A monster like me,” he said. “Make no mistake that the Slave King has done far worse. And now this will be our entrée into the citadel. Anure, and his wizards,” he added with a glance at me, “will be unable to resist this prize.”
Brenda cleared her throat, bracing her hands on her knees. “I feel compelled to point out that they’re likely to notice the absence of the orchid ring.”
Con shrugged that off. “We take some fresh orchids and tie one on right before we get there. It doesn’t need to survive close examination—just get us in the door. Claim the hand that wears the Abiding Ring, And the empire falls,” he quoted. “The prophecy foretold that this would be our key to winning.”
Nobody said anything for a moment, the silence stretching with tension.
“I am right,” Con bit out. Then he looked to Ambrose. “Aren’t I?”
The wizard shrugged cheerfully. “It’s a prophecy. Like poetry, it’s subject to interpretation.”
“I never did like poetry,” Con muttered. “I take the hand that wore the Abiding Ring to Yekpehr and use it to lure Anure out of his hole. He won’t be able to resist.”
“And why won’t Anure simply slaughter you where you stand and take the hand and ring anyway?” I asked in a coolly polite tone that should’ve alerted Con to my grave doubts about this plan. Of course he didn’t take warning, because he was galloping heedlessly down his path of vengeance, too wrapped up in his hatred and thirst to fight to think clearly. Fear for him sucked at me, pulling me relentlessly toward the maw of devastating grief. He’d get himself killed for this vengeance. The wolf, biting at my hands as I tried to free him of his chains. I’d been warned.
“Because I’ll imply that I have knowledge about you,” Con returned. “Sondra told me how you led Anure to believe you hated me and that I’d run off with your wealth. I’ll turn it around and offer intelligence on you, confirm the rumors that you’re not really dead. Maybe offer a deal to collude to capture you again, string him along that way.”
Terror struck my heart. Con had told me repeatedly that Anure’s gift was seeing what someone cared about. He would see Con’s love for me—everyone could see it—along with Con’s reckless thirst for vengeance. He would use both to destroy Con. “This is too risky,” I said. “It’s not well thought out.”
“I have thought it out,” he insisted. “Besides, that’s not the whole plan. We won’t all knock on the front door. I’ll go alone, and the rest of the team will infiltrate the township and be ready for me to admit them to the citadel. While I have the emperor and his wizards distracted, you all can rescue the captives.”
Everyone exchanged glances for a moment, then several people spoke at once, Agatha overriding them. “I have to agree with Her Highness, Conrí. This plan is full of holes.”
“It’s a good plan,” he snapped back. “It gets us inside, then we improvise. That’s where I rely on your knowledge. You were indispensable last time, Lady Agatha.” He produced a semi-charming grin, but the look she flashed him was decidedly uncharmed.
“Uh-huh, I see what you’re up to, Conrí.” Brenda pointed a stubby finger at him. “You plan to take that vurgsten bomb into the throne room, hoping to kill Anure and his wizards in one blast, then rely on the confusion to allow us to spirit the royal captives out of the citadel. And you figure if you get yourself killed, well, that’s the price you’ll pay.”
Con looked a little surprised—and more than a little sheepish—then shook his head. “No. Not … exactly.”
Yes, exactly. I would not stand by and watch Con self-destruct. I stood, drawing everyone’s attention, letting the silence settle into unease. Fixing the coldest glare imaginable on Con, I said, “You lied to Me.”
He actually sputtered, everyone turning their heads to look at him. “What? No. What are—”
“You said,” I interrupted, the group looking back to me, “that we’d plan this mission together, that you would take My cooler-headed approach into account this time.”
“I am!” he snapped back, gesturing at the table, the sands hissing as they reacted to the movement, which he quickly snatched back. “Obviously, I have been. What do you think all of this is?”
“This,” I said, stabbing a finger at the model, but restraining my intention so the sands didn’t move, “was an elaborate charade, largely for My benefit.”
Con set his jaw. “You’re wrong, Lia.”
“I don’t think so. Tell Me, what did you learn from us re-creating the citadel—besides the dimensions of the throne room?”
Everyone looked at him expectantly. “There’s the tower rooms,” he said, the answer tentative.
“Why do you need to know the layout of those rooms?” I shot back.
He floundered, groping for an answer I knew he didn’t have. I laughed, letting it be bitter. “That’s right. You don’t. The only piece of information you really wanted was the throne room. You already had a plan when you walked in here, the same fucking plan you’ve had all along, Conrí,” I spat, letting my fury rise. “All you care about is killing Anure. Worse, you don’t care if you die doing it.”
“That is not true,” he roared back at me. “I care about rescuing Rhéiane, too. I can do both!”
I folded my arms, the butterfly jewelry tinkling. “What about what we discussed? Rescuing all the royals, returning them to their lands, undermining Anure’s power so that the fraud of an empire he created falls apart in his hands?”
“We can still do that and kill Anure,” he snarled.
“With this plan?” I loaded incredulity into the question. “It’s not even worthy of the word. You’re just lunging at your chain, waiting for the moment it breaks so you can devour your enemy.” Our fascinated audience snapped their heads back to him for his retort.
“And what if I am?” he shouted at me across the table. “I want this for you, too, Lia. Don’t you want them all to suffer like you suffered?”
“No!” I shouted back. “Because nothing that happens to them will change My pain. Adding suffering to suffering doesn’t equal zero, Con—it only adds up to more suffering.”
“Well, you know I never learned much math,” he replied with blistering sarcasm, “since tutors were scarce in the mines where I was enslaved for most of my life.”
“You’ve apparently learned nothing since then, either,” I informed him, slicing to the heart of it coldly. Someone hissed in a breath at the point scored.
“I have!” He thumped his fist on the table, and the tower near him shivered into a heap. “I’m not using you this time, am I? I promised you’ll be safe, and you will be. No more using anyone else as bait.”
“Just yourself,” I said with pointed softness.
“It’s my life to use,” he snarled back.
“This craving for vengeance will destroy you, Conrí.” I dusted my hands together. “It eats everything else, making all your words into lies.”
“I drank your waters of truth, didn’t I?” He threw up his hands.
“Seeing the truth doesn’t force you to act upon it. That part is up to you.”
“What have I said that’s a lie?”
Our audience looked back to me. Fine. “You said you loved Me, wanted to marry Me and build a life here on Calanthe.”
He reeled back as if struck, baffled. “I do, but you won’t—”
I held up a finger to stop him. “Can’t you see? If you truly wanted that with Me, you wouldn’t contemplate this suicidal plan for the sake of vengeance.”
“It would be after that,” he offered, far too tentatively. “Once Anure is dead, then—”
“Then what?”
He stumbled, golden eyes flashing with frustration, and he raked a hand through his long black hair, hitting the tie and furiously yanking it out. “Then I come back here.”
“What about Oriel?”
“I mean, Oriel first, then back here.”
“What about the other forgotten kingdoms?”
“Them, too. I don’t know, Lia! We’ll figure it out when that happens.”
I shook my head, sorrow and frustration warring in my heart. “You don’t know because you can’t even conceive of a life after Anure. You’re a broken man, Conrí, living for one thing only. Which is why you don’t care if you die doing it.”
“I told you I was broken,” he grated out. “I haven’t changed.”
“No, you haven’t. And that’s the problem. An insurmountable one. Therefore, I am done.”
He stared at me, stunned. “Lia, what…”
“Done,” I repeated. “Done with you, done with this farce of a strategy session.” I waved a hand and sent the model sliding into a featureless surface again.
“Damn,” Sondra muttered. “I thought I got to blow it up.”
“I apologize to all of you that your time and energy was wasted today. You may continue to assist Conrí in his self-destruction or not. It’s entirely your choice.”
“Does this mean the Last Resort is de-commandeered?” Percy asked, glancing up from the notes he’d been taking in order to share the gossip.
I looked to Con, who stared at me in flabbergasted silence. He leaned on the table, hair hanging wildly around his face, looking like a man who’d had his feet cut out from under him.
“Whether you donate your yacht to Conrí’s doomed venture is entirely up to you,” I replied, and Percy did a chair dance of joy, flashing a triumphant look at Con.
“Lia.” Con growled my name with ominous temper. “What do you mean you’re done?”
“Done,” I spat, letting the fury warm my cold and aching heart. “Done with you. Done with your vengeance. Get what you need and go. Get off My island and never come back. If you even survive. You are not welcome on Calanthe and I will never marry you.”
“Whoa, wait.” Sondra stood, bewildered, looking between us. “You’re already married, like forever.”
I gazed coolly at Con, who looked pained. I’d been willing to keep the truth quiet, but I was also done going along with his pretenses. “No, we’re not. When I died, the marriage bond dissolved. Our brief liaison is nothing but a footnote in Ambrose’s history. There.” I gestured to my severed hand. “The trophy you needed, duly claimed. Take it and go.”
Holding on to my composure with the last thread of my control, I spun and strode out of the room. Over the furious clicking of my heels on the tile, I heard Sondra’s voice. “Oh man, did you fuck up.”
Ibolya tried to follow, but I waved her away. My other ladies were off taking care of assigned tasks, not expecting me to leave the strategy session so soon. I snorted to myself, muttering, “So-called strategy session.”
Con would never learn—and apparently neither would I.
I likely should consider convening court, since I wasn’t going to be wasting time watching Con pretend to take advice. But I couldn’t bear the thought of maintaining my poise in front of everyone—much less attempting to make coolheaded decisions—not when I felt so terribly raw.
I might be healed physically, but internally I remained a shattered mess.
So, knuckling away the traitorous tears and walking at a brisk pace, I entered the main hall and turned toward my chambers, needing to just be alone for a while. Maybe I could spend some time in the dreamthink, gain some clarity and calm that way. Startled nobles and courtiers flashed me curious glances as they quickly bowed before my furious passage. I tried to convey the impression that I was hurrying to an important engagement rather than running away.
“Lia!” Con’s voice thundered from some distance behind me, echoing through the graceful hall with coarse, dark threat.
Against all reason, I picked up my pace.
“Don’t you run from me!” he roared.
Aghast faces became a blur as I ran indeed—at least as fast as my towering heels would allow—practically leaping up the stairs before racing down the hall to my chambers. It made no sense, but I held on to the goal of simply reaching my rooms and barring the door against him.
There weren’t guards on my doors since I wasn’t within, but they were closed. I skidded to a halt and lost precious seconds twisting the handle open. I threw myself inside, turning to thrust the door shut and lock it—only to find Con right there, golden eyes blazing, hair streaming like a thunder god’s. He hit the door with his hand, throwing me backward with the force of it, and I teetered on my heels, flailing for balance.
Until he caught me around the waist, kicked the door shut, then—holding me fast—paused to turn the lock.
“Put Me down, you crazed brute!” I practically shrieked, flailing to be free.
“No.” He sounded eerily calm.
“I told you to put Me down this instant.”
“If you were serious, you would’ve hit me with that magic whammy.” He strode across the sitting room and carried me through the next sets of doors, into our bedroom, then tossed me onto the bed. Folding his arms, he scowled at me. “We’re going to talk.”
I made a great show of looking around at the bed. “This is talking?”
With a growl he went to close the bedroom door, sliding that bolt home, too. “They won’t interrupt us in here if they think we’re having sex.”
He had a point, though that just pissed me off further. “I am not having sex with you,” I spat, sliding off the bed and pacing a good distance away.
“I know that, Lia.” He sounded sorry and weary, and rubbed his hands over his face. “When I said we needed to talk, I meant it.”
“There is nothing to discuss,” I informed him crisply. “We’ve said everything that needs to be said.”
He dropped his hands and studied me. For once he didn’t have the rock hammer on his back, and I realized he must have left it behind in the Sand Salon to chase after me. What a spectacle we’d made of ourselves. Between Con chasing me through the main hall of the palace, bellowing, and the very public argument that Percy was no doubt spreading even now to capitalize on the exclusive and titillating news, the gossip would be blazing.
“You do that so well,” Con said, in an almost wondering tone, and I had to think back to what he could possibly mean. “You just declare what you will and won’t discuss. You deliver your edicts and then refuse to listen to—”
“To listen to lies and foolishness!” I shouted.
“To any opinion that’s different from yours,” he roared over me. “You cut me out of your life, tell me you’re done, and banish me from your precious realm with less compassion than you’d give a stray dog.”
“Because I am queen here,” I shot back, trembling with righteous fury. “It’s My responsibility to protect Calanthe and—”
“Yeah, yeah. Protect Calanthe, blah blah blah,” he snarled, closing the distance between us. “This isn’t about the throne or Calanthe, and you know it, Lia.”
I did want him gone—if only to end this roiling surf of up-and-down emotions. He was determined to kill himself; nothing I could say would stop him.
Unless I told him about the baby.
Did I dare use that lever against him? And what then, if it worked, where his love for me hadn’t? I might not survive that blow. “I know no such thing,” I spat, but I lacked conviction.
“Liar.” He reached for me and I scrambled back, barely evading him. He only followed. “This is about you, Lia. The woman. Now what in great green Ejarat is going on inside your head?”
“My personal emotions aren’t relevant,” I replied stiffly. The only feelings of yours that deserve attention are those regarding the throne.
“The hell they aren’t.” He reached for me again. I backed up—and hit the wall. A glint of victory in his eyes, he took me by the shoulders.
“Drop your hands,” I warned, “or I will hit you with a ‘whammy’ that will put you out for three days.”
He searched my face, smiled thinly. “Do it then.”
I summoned my magic, ready to fell him like a tree, but there was nothing to push against. I couldn’t reverse the violent intention if he didn’t have any. Curling my lip at the discovery, I glared in impotent fury instead. “Very clever, wolf.”
He looked grimly satisfied—and deeply unhappy. The wolf, kicked on his tender muzzle. He flexed his hands on my shoulders, searching my face, searching for words. “How could you say those things to me, Lia? Don’t you care for me at all?”
I wanted to tell him no, that I did not care, not a whit. The words assembled themselves in my brain. The sex was great. It’s been fun. Thanks for saving My life. Good luck storming the citadel. Go ahead and get your fool self killed for all I care.
But none of them reached my lips. Instead, without warning or sense, I burst into tears.
“Oh, Lia.” Con’s arms came around me. “No, Lia. Don’t cry. Yell at me, but don’t cry.”
“I hate you,” I sobbed.
“I know.” He picked me up, again carrying me to the bed, but this time he sat on it, holding me on his lap. “I’m sorry, Lia.”
I caught my breath, viciously wiping the tears from my face. “Fuck me—all I do anymore is cry.”
His chuckle rumbled under my ear. “Barely at all. And only in front of me, which is allowed.”
Was that true? Bright Ejarat—it was. Tears were a sign of weakness, I’d thought, but …
He tipped up my chin so I’d look at him. “You should be able to trust me with your tears. Besides, you get a pass, considering what you’ve been through.”
“You never cry,” I accused, more querulously than I’d wanted.
“I do. I have. But mostly I rage and roar and make stupid choices.” He brushed the last tears from my cheeks. “I really am sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I got caught up in…”
“Vengeance,” I finished bitterly.
“Yeah.” He smoothed the wild strands of blooming hair from my damp temples. “Is it so terrible that I want Anure dead? That I want to destroy those wizards for what they did to you, so they can never do that to anyone again?”
“No,” I admitted. “I understand that this is how you deal with an unjust world. It’s your nature to bash and destroy your enemies.”
“You make me sound like a savage.” He kissed me, not savage at all, but infinitely gentle. “And it’s your nature to control everything with icy logic, keeping all your feelings bottled up inside.”
“True,” I admitted. The man did know me well.
He kissed me again and smiled sadly. “Lia, I have to try to rescue Rhéiane. You even agreed, and then you said we needed to rescue all of the royal captives.”
“I know that,” I bit out, pushing against him, against my own irrationality.
“Shh. Stay with me. Then what’s the problem?”
“Exactly what I said. What Brenda said,” I fired back. “You’re not listening to anyone else. You’re not taking a team on a rescue mission. This is a lone-wolf thing in your mind. I know why you wanted that detailed model of the throne room—so you can take that bomb in there and kill everyone in the room, including yourself.”
“There’s a trigger,” he argued. “And I’m fast. I could run out in time.”
“No, you couldn’t. More relevant: You wouldn’t if it came to a choice between saving your own life and killing Anure.”
His smile faded, replaced by grim intensity. “Wouldn’t it be worth it, Lia? My life isn’t worth much, but if I could sacrifice it—”
“How can you say your life isn’t worth much?” I ground out, his casual reference to sacrificing his own life pushing me beyond carefully reasoned words. “What about Me? Don’t you have any idea what you’re worth to Me?”
Studying my face, his was a canvas of contrasts, desolation warring with hope, bafflement giving way to dawning realization. “No,” he said slowly, “I don’t know. Because you have never told me. In fact, you act like you can’t see the back of me soon enough. Just now you said you were done with me and ordered me off Your island.” He finished that on a growing growl of frustration, using the honorific mockingly.
“I mean it, too!” I threw at him. “Go, already. Leave Me alone here, never come back. I was fine before you came here and I cannot wait for you to be gone from My sight.”
Abruptly, he grinned. “You’re in love with me.”
“Ha to that!”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he demanded, pushing me back onto the bed and pinning my wrists as he straddled me on all fours. His dark hair rained around us, his eyes effulgent as afternoon sunlight. “I’ve been pouring my heart out to you, miserable because you only seemed to want to be freed of me, thrilled to shake me loose. Why keep it a secret?”
“I did tell you,” I said, hearing the defensiveness in my own voice.
He narrowed his eyes. “Uh-uh, crazy lady. I’d remember that for sure.”
“Not in so many words,” I admitted, “but I told you that, when I was…” Dying. One day I’d be able to think of it without crumbling. “I only thought of you. Not Calanthe. You. That you were first for Me.”
Huffing out a humorless laugh, he shook his head. “Only you would think that’s the same thing.”
“It is the same thing,” I insisted, struggling a little, but he held me fast.
“No way, you’re not going anywhere. This is a grand and glorious moment for me, and I’m going to savor every drop.”
I groaned, letting my head drop back. “You don’t get it, wolf.”
“I don’t get what?”
“It doesn’t matter how much I love you, because that strands Me on the shore alone when I’m not first for you.”
“The hell you aren’t,” he growled, lowering his head to kiss me. I bit his lip, and he jerked back. “Fuck! What was that for?”
“You’re not listening to Me!”
“Fine. I’m listening.” He gave me an exaggeratedly patient look, a bead of blood welling on his lower lip. The same place I’d wounded him before.
“You can’t put Me first and put revenge first,” I explained. “Math. Two different things can’t be number one.”
He frowned. “Real life doesn’t work that way. I can kill Anure and then come back home to you. And do whatever else needs to be done afterward in whatever order you want to do it,” he added.
“What if I ask you not to kill Anure?”
Searching my face for the trick, he shook his head. “You wouldn’t ask me that. You want him dead, too.”
“Conrí. I am asking you, right here, right now: Please don’t try to kill Anure.”
“What?” Complete bewilderment had him sitting up and letting me go. “Why would you ask me that?”
I sat up, brushing at my silk skirts, hopelessly crushed and wrinkled. “Because if you’ll give up trying to kill Anure, then your focus will be on getting the captives out—and you’ll actually have a chance of coming home to Me.”
He darted me a surprised look. “You just called Calanthe my home.”
“Oh, Con.” I lifted a hand to his cheek, but he seized it in both of his, pressing his lips to my palm, the blood smearing there like the mark of a vow. “Of course Calanthe is your home, if you want it to be. I’m sorry I said otherwise. It was cruel of Me. I was trying to…”
“Drive me away,” he murmured, lips moving over my palm. “It nearly worked, too.”
“I can be savage, too,” I whispered.
“Very sharp thorns,” he agreed, tongue stroking over my palm and making me gasp. Then he lifted his head, gazing at me, stark emotion in his face. “Do you really love me, Lia?”
“I do,” I admitted it with resignation, like a confession. “I love you with everything in Me. I’m not sure I could survive losing you.” There. I’d given him my bleeding heart on a platter. May he feast on it.
“Love isn’t a weakness, my flower,” he said, drawing my hand behind his neck and tucking a strand of escaping hair behind my ear.
“You’ve called it a vulnerability,” I insisted. “Anure uses what we love against us. It’s a chink in the armor, the thin skin over our hearts easily penetrated by the slightest of arrows.”
He frowned. “Maybe both things are true. Love can be a strength, too, instead of a wound.”
I wanted that to be true. I was afraid it wasn’t. “If it’s not a wound, then why does it hurt so much?” I tried to smile and failed.
“Maybe because we haven’t been doing it right,” he said ruefully. “It hurts me, too. We seem to have a knack for screwing things up together. That’s probably some math, right? Add the two of us and we get something even bigger than the sum of the parts.”
I actually giggled, maybe from the emotional release. It hadn’t been easy to keep from telling him how much I loved him, and now that I had, it felt as if a dam had burst, allowing the waters to flow again. “Some kind of math, anyway.”
“I have a confession to make,” he whispered.
“Oh?” I braced for it.
“I don’t have a better plan,” he said. “I really wasn’t trying to lone-wolf it so much, but that was the best plan I could come up with. Everyone is counting on me to come up with some kind of strategy and I … just don’t know. Ambrose pointed out that my plan to rescue you was terrible—that only luck and his intervention saved it from disaster. Lia, what if I can’t do this?”
“Oh, my Con.” I breathed out the tension, then cupped his face in my hands. “That’s why you have other people. That’s one of the first rules of being in charge: You don’t have to do everything yourself, you only need to gather good minds together. You have an eye for choosing people. Use them.”
He made a sound, a kind of disparaging laugh. “I don’t know. Doesn’t sound very brutish and iconoclastic. I found out what it meant, by the way.”
I smiled at that. “Who did you ask?”
“Sondra. It’s not such a bad thing.”
“It’s not, and you could’ve asked Me.”
“You could avoid using words I don’t know.”
“What’s the fun in that?” I kissed him—and he seized the opportunity, deepening the kiss with dizzying speed. My head spun with the swift sexual hunger, the fire blazing between us as if fed by the brutal argument.
“You are a cruel woman,” Con said when he broke the kiss for us both to draw in gasping breaths. He pushed me back on the bed, slid a hand up my thigh under the silk petals of my skirts. “And I love you for it, Sawehl help me.”
“I love you, too, Con,” I said, still feeling the rawness of that exposure. “I didn’t want to, didn’t imagine it could happen—but it’s done now and there’s no going back.”
He stroked my thigh, sliding his rough fingers ever higher. “Done?” he asked with a smile.
“Done,” I breathed on a gasp as his hand brushed my sex, my hips lifting in the pure wanting and fiery love that had taken my mind so long to catch up to.
“You’re so wet, Lia,” he murmured, sliding his callused finger into my tender folds. “Do you want me still, even after everything?”
“I always want you. I can’t seem to help Myself.” I slid my hand to his cock, pressing hard against his leather pants. “The same for you?”
“Yes.” He shook his head, golden eyes full of chagrin. “There you are, screaming that you hate me and I’m hard thinking how gorgeous you are when you’re pissed at me and how badly I want you.”
“I don’t hate you,” I whispered.
“I know.” He brushed his lips over mine, a smile curving them when I moaned as a finger slid inside me. “I am a broken man, and I do lose my perspective. I’m sorry for that. I promise I won’t make killing Anure a priority.”
I stilled, reaching for his wrist to move his hand away from my sizzling sex, so I could think while I searched his face for the truth. “That’s not a promise not to kill him.”
“No.” He shook his head slightly, hair spilling over his shoulders. “If I can find a way to kill him without risking my life, I will. But the priority will be getting the captives and everyone on the team, including myself, home to you. Is that good enough?”
“A compromise.” I considered it.
“I hear people make them,” he said, raising a dark brow, humor in his eyes.
“Imagine that.” I supposed I could try.
“I’m trying to be honest with you, Lia—and that’s the most I can promise,” he said more soberly.
“All right, I can accept that. But in that spirit, I should tell you something also.”
He stopped resisting my grip, stilling and watching me warily. “What is it?”
I hesitated, aware of the drag of the crown on my hair, his big body taut above me. This would change things between us. The one truth we can count on is that things will change. “It’s early days yet, but I’ve conceived a child.”
He didn’t process the news immediately, then a wondering smile spread across his face. “The other night—when I fed you?”
I nodded, surprised. “How did you know?”
“I felt … something then.” He pushed up my skirts fully, sitting back to splay his big hands over my still-too-concave belly.
“You won’t be able to see anything yet,” I laughed.
He glanced up at me, sheepish, but eyes sparkling gold with delight. “I’m going to look anyway. Every day. When I get back,” he amended, remembering and sobering. “Is that why you’re telling me now—so I’ll be careful?”
“It occurred to Me,” I confessed. “But I’m also terribly selfish, and I wanted you to want to live for Me, not just for the child.”
“Oh, Lia,” he murmured, lowering his head to kiss me thoroughly. Then he gazed at me steadily. “Everything is for you. You call me broken—but that’s a step up from what I was before you. I was dead inside. You are my life. Never send me away.”
“I wish I could ask you to never leave Me,” I breathed, shocked at myself for confessing that.
“Only for this. I wouldn’t go for any other reason.” His hand flattened over my belly, and he leaned his forehead against mine.
Not only for this, I thought, because he would have to leave me for Oriel, too. But I would face that day when it came. I was tired of grieving for a future that had not yet arrived. When it did, I’d wish I’d appreciated this time while I had it.
“Even if I can’t go with you, I can help you craft a logical strategy. Speaking of, we should get back down to the Sand Salon and resume planning. Real planning.”
“They were taking a break for lunch,” he replied, sliding his hand over my mound to stroke me, so I arched in helpless pleasure. “We have time.”
“Yes, but—” I convulsed when he plunged two fingers into me. “Oh, Con.”
“Yes, my love?” he asked innocently, brushing kisses over my collarbones, then the upper curves of my breasts. “Did you need something from me?”
“Yes.” I writhed as he tormented me. “You.”
“Tell me you love me.”
“I love you,” I agreed, quite willingly.
“Tell me again.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, then lost my focus as he pressed the spot inside me that sent me wild, his mouth closing over one nipple, hot and intense through the silk. I writhed, then found my voice. “I love you.”
“Sweet indeed,” he murmured hoarsely. “One more time.”
I laughed, full of surprisingly intense joy that had nothing to do with the sexual pleasure—or only a little to do with it. “I love you, Con.”
“I love you, too, Lia.” And he proceeded to demonstrate exactly how much.