Page 10 of Scorched
Ispend the night learning what my body does in a Fae court.
It doesn't sleep. It lies in the dark with the sheets kicked off because the heat in the room is unbearable even with the windows open and the fire in the grate burned to nothing. It runs hot. It aches in places I've never ached before—between my hips, low in my belly, a deep pulse that comes and goes with my heartbeat and won't be ignored no matter how still I hold myself.
I press my thighs together and that makes it worse. I roll onto my stomach and that makes it worse.
I lie on my back and stare at the ceiling and breathe the way my grandmother taught me. It doesn't make it better. It just makes me aware of how hard I'm trying.
My cunt is wet. It's been wet since the great hall. I've changed my underclothes twice and the dampness comes back within the hour—a slow seep that's not sweat, not anything I've experienced before. My body is producing something it's never produced and I don't know what it is.
I'm not going to think about the way his gold eyes found mine across thirty feet of crowded hall as though he'd known exactly where I was standing.
By dawn I've slept for perhaps two hours. I wash in cold water and dress and strap the blade to my thigh. The ache between my hips hasn't faded. I ignore it the way I ignore pain, the way I ignore fear, the way I ignore everything that's not the job.
The festival gardens open at first light. I've studied the layout from my window—terraced stone and crystal, fire-flowers that bloom without soil, paths that wind between hedges of dark growth lit from within by fire-blooms, their roots burning low enough that the early light barely reaches them. The gardens are where the guests walk before the formal events begin, where the political conversations happen that are too delicate for the great hall, where a minor landowner might reasonably wander while waiting for an audience with the king.
Where a minor landowner might reasonably be alone with the king.
I have a technique. My grandmother calls it the kiss—a compound applied to the lips, absorbed through skin contact, designed to bypass Fae regeneration the way the blade-poison does but slower, subtler, harder to trace. I've used it twice before, both times on Fae males in human territory. Both times it worked within the hour. The target's magic fails first, then the heart. It looks like natural decline. No one has ever connected either death to a woman who kissed a cheek and walked away.
I apply the compound in my room. It tastes like copper and nothing else. I press my lips together and check myself in the mirror—the dark wine colour is indistinguishable from fashionable lip stain, the kind a lady wears to catch a king's attention. Lady Sophie Moreau would wear this. Lady Sophie Moreau would hope for a private moment with the king in the festival gardens and would blush when she got one.
I walk out into the heat of the morning and I find him.
He's standing at the far end of the upper terrace, alone, leaning against the stone balustrade with a wine glass in one hand and the particular stillness of someone who has been alone for a long time and prefers it. The early light catches his horns and the fire-sheen on his dark skin and I notice, because I can't stop noticing, that the ache between my hips tightens when I see him. A clench. Low and hot. My body recognising him before my brain has finished deciding whether to approach from the left or the right.
I approach from the left. There's a fire-flower hedge on that side that partially screens the path from the lower terrace. If the compound works the way it should, he'll show no distress for twenty minutes. By then I'll be in my rooms packing. By the time someone finds him, I'll be on a carriage heading east.
"Your Majesty."
He turns. Gold eyes on mine. His heat hits me from six feet away—not metaphor, not nerves, actual heat pressing against my face and my bare forearms and finding the skin at my throat and sitting there. My nipples tighten. My cunt clenches. I hold the cover smile and walk toward him and I'm a professional and my hands are not shaking.
"Lady Moreau." His voice is low and unhurried, the way everything about him is unhurried, the way nine centuries of being unkillable makes every gesture an exercise in patience. "You've found the gardens. Most guests prefer the great hall."
"I prefer the quiet."
"So do I."
He looks at me. Not the way he looked at me in the great hall—that was across a room, quick, a flick of gold eyes that caught me and released me. This is close. Six feet. He's looking at my face the way someone looks at a blade they're considering purchasing—not the edge but the craftsmanship, the balance, the hand that made it. His gaze moves over my features withouthurry and I hold still under it because holding still is what I do best and because if I move I'll either reach for the blade at my thigh or take a step closer to him and I'm not certain which one my body will choose.
"You didn't sleep," he says.
It isn't a question. I don't answer it.
"The heat takes some adjustment," he says. "For humans." A pause. "For some humans more than others."
I take a step closer. The cover requires it—Lady Sophie Moreau, drawn to the king, a little overwhelmed, working up the courage to make a personal appeal for her border dispute. The step brings me within four feet of him and the heat of his body presses against me like being wrapped in something heavy and I can smell him—smoke and iron and char underneath, something that tastes like fire when I breathe it in—and the ache between my hips pulses hard enough that I have to lock my jaw to keep my face from changing.
"Your Majesty, I wanted to thank you personally for welcoming me to your court. The Ember Court's generosity is?—"
"Stop."
I stop. Not because the word is harsh—it isn't. It's quiet. Amused. The kind of word a male uses when he's heard the opening of a speech he doesn't need to hear the rest of.
"You don't need the performance," he says. "Not out here. Tell me what you actually came to say."
I look at his face. His gold eyes are steady and he's almost smiling and he isn't mocking me. He's giving me an opening. The professional in me takes it—I step closer, close enough to touch, close enough that the heat of him is everywhere, and I put my hand on his arm the way a grateful woman touches a powerful male who might help her, and I rise onto my toes and press my lips to his cheek.
It goes in. I feel the tingle at my lips—the strike of a match—and I hold for two seconds. Three. Long enough. I pull back and drop my gaze and say, "Thank you. For your kindness."
