Page 11 of Scorched
I wait for him to sway. To blink. For the hitch in his breathing, the first flutter of his magic failing.
Nothing. Not a flicker.
He looks at me. His gold eyes are bright and steady and his mouth curves into the first real expression I've seen on his face—not a smile, exactly, but the shadow of one, the kind that lives in the lines around old eyes and means something I can't read.
"The compound on your lips," he says. "Copper base, with—is that nightshade distillate? And something else." He tilts his head. "Foxglove. The foxglove is what targets the regeneration pathway. That's clever. Most people use hemlock for that step and hemlock is blunt. The foxglove is elegant."
My stomach drops through the floor.
"The application method is even better," he says. He hasn't moved. He hasn't stepped back. He's standing four feet from me with my poison on his cheek and he's looking at me the way my grandmother looks at a well-forged blade—with recognition. With respect. "A kiss. So the target doesn't think to check for a chemical delivery because the contact is intimate. That's beautiful work. Where did you train?"
My hands want to shake. I'm not letting them.
"I don't know what you mean, Your Majesty."
"You do. And it won't work on me—nothing designed for standard Fae regeneration touches an ancient. You'd need something keyed to fire magic." His gold eyes hold mine. "That knowledge has been dead for six hundred years. Or it should have been."
He reaches up and wipes his cheek where my lips touched. Looks at his fingers. His expression hasn't changed—still thatalmost-smile, still that steady warmth that's not warmth, that's heat, that's a fire burning low and certain under old stone.
"Exquisite," he says.
My stomach floods with heat. It rushes through my chest, sits behind my ribs, spreads low.
My face burns. My cunt clenches hard enough that I have to lock my jaw to keep my expression from breaking.
I hate it. I hate the way the word sounds in his mouth. I hate that he means it.
I hate that no one in my entire life has looked at my work—my real work, the killing, the craft of it—and called it beautiful. My grandmother's never used that word. She's said adequate and sufficient and you survived, so the technique held. She's never said exquisite. She's never looked at what I made and seen anything worth admiring.
He's admiring me. Not the cover. Not Lady Sophie Moreau. Me. The part that makes things and ends things and has spent twenty-six years being told that the making and the ending are the same skill and neither one deserves praise.
"The blade at your thigh is also exceptional," he says. "I can feel the quality from here. The fire magic in this court responds to good metalwork and yours is singing."
My blade. The one I forged at three in the morning in my grandmother's workshop. The one that's been humming against my leg since I walked through the gates. He can feel it. He knows it's there and he knows it's mine and he's telling me this while my poison dries on his cheek and his gold eyes watch my face for the reaction he already knows is coming.
"I purchased it from a dealer in the eastern territories," I say. My voice is level. My pulse is not.
"Of course you did."
He picks up his wine glass. Takes a sip. Sets it down. Everything unhurried, everything deliberate. Nine centuries ofpatience in the set of his shoulders, in the way he sets the glass down without a sound.
"I'm hosting a demonstration in the Royal Forge tomorrow morning," he says. "For the festival guests. Metal-shaping, fire work. The kind of thing humans find impressive." He looks at me. "I think you would find it more than impressive. I think you would understand it."
I should say no. I should go back to my rooms and regroup and plan the next attempt and put as much distance between myself and this male as the court allows. My grandmother's voice is in my head—do not let him close enough to reach—and he's been close enough to reach for three minutes and I haven't drawn the blade and my body is leaning toward him the way it leaned during the waltz, a fraction of an inch that I can't seem to control.
"I would be honoured, Your Majesty."
"Ignatius," he says. "You are in my gardens and you have just tried to kill me with a kiss. We are past titles."
I turn and walk away from him. I don't look back. I walk the length of the garden path and through the glass doors and down the corridor and into my rooms and I lock the door and sit on the edge of the bed and press my hands flat against my knees.
Exquisite.
The word sits in my chest like a coal. It burns. Not the ache between my hips—that hasn't stopped since the great hall and I'm learning to carry it the way I carry pain, as background, as something I won't look at directly. This is different. This is in my ribs, behind my sternum, a heat that has nothing to do with the fire magic in the walls and everything to do with the way he looked at my work and called it beautiful.
No one has ever praised the deadliest thing about me without fearing it.
I sit with this for an hour before I can sleep. When I close my eyes I see gold. When I press my thighs together the ache sharpens and I clench my jaw and hold still and don't touch myself and don't think about his voice saying exquisite and don't think about what my hands want to reach for when he is close.
