Page 67 of FoolSilver
“I was testing you, cadet. Teaching you a lesson so you stay sharp. Even behind these walls, safety is never a promise. There are still enemy agents inside them. You’re quick on your feet, I’ll give you that. Though you’ve got Coldiron doing half the work.”
And she’d handed me a piece of that Coldiron to keep me alive in case one of those edges ever came for me. But thanking people wasn’t in my nature. She was my cadet. Serving the Covenant and its heirs should be a soldier’s whole purpose; she didn’t need a medal for doing her fucking duty.
“Keep at it, cadet,” I lectured. “Don’t idle. Don’t read trash. Be diligent. Stay alert, every hour of every day.” As I realized that I’d started to repeat myself, I added a punch to conclude the business. “And don’t be a disappointment!”
I turned on my heel and left her there, seething behind me between the shelves.
If I didn’t get myself out of that room in the next breath, I couldn’t promise I wouldn’t shove her against those shelves, or drag her to the nearest desk and bend her over and fuck her right there in the stacks.
My control was hanging by a thread, which was obscene, because no other woman could ever make me lose my shit like that. Somewhere down in my bones, I believed that Max Morning carried something stronger than the deadliest charm ever cast, and it was coursing right through her fucking witch blood.
Chapter 26
Max
Seven o’clock. Dinner with the heirs at Elenmoor—the weight of it had sat in my chest like a swallowed stone all day.
A room with four alphas alone would set anyone’s teeth on edge, make them want to bow or bolt, especially when the heirs didn’t bother to leash their power.
But their power wasn’t my concern. What kept me on edge was simpler: I was back at the base, having picked up where things left off with Nikolai, and now I had to sit across from the other three and pretend nothing was going on. I’d kissed Aelindor. Had climbed into Caspian’s lap and flirted with him at that bar Bryn kept raving about.
I’d wanted to come clean with Aelindor about all of it, the tangle I’d let myself slide into with each of them behind the others’ backs. But then Lady Vaelith had walked into our private training, and there hadn’t been a better moment since.
Of course there isn’t,the demon said, a chuckle riding under the words.There’s never a better time.
I ignored it.
I’d told Frost I could skate to Elenmoor on my own. I knew every alley in the compound by now. He insisted on driving me anyway.
I wore the clothes Nikolai had bought me. Soft, dark, well-cut. I’d only ever seen clothes like that on other people. I’d flushed when he handed them over at his penthouse, told him that he didn’t need to give me anything, that I already had more than I’d ever owned. In the mine I’d had two sets of rags to my name. As a cadet, I felt rich.
“Providing for you is a privilege,” Nikolai had said, kissing my jawline, sending a pleasant shiver down my skull. “You’ll have to get used to having nice things, Max.”
I’d pressed the clothes to my face in my bunk after the other cadets fell asleep. They smelled clean and felt softer than anything I’d ever touched.
The other cadets all had extra clothes, even dresses, beyond uniforms and casuals. I wouldn’t spend my stipend on looking pretty. Powder and lipstick struck me as a waste, the way the other women spent their pay. The men spent theirs on drinks and dates.
Mine would feed and clothe Missy. And when we got the other kids out of Crimson Ridge, the rest of my allowance would go to them. That was what money was for.
We passed the academy block and the training field, then the commercial row at the heart of the compound, and kept going north. Further out, the packed road gave way to old stone, the high outer wall running along one side while the forest closed in on the other. The banners of the four houses hung slack from the ramparts in the evening air. Out here, near the Fae quarters, the noise of the fortress fell away until I could hear the tires on stone and not much else, and the cold off the trees found its way through the window glass.
Then Elenmoor came into view, pale against the treeline. It carried a stillness the rest of the compound didn’t have—the quiet weight of ages in the stone and the forest, as if the place had stood there long before the fortress grew up around it.
Caspian shot out the front door before the jeep had fully stopped, all that restless wolf energy rolling off him.
“I’ve got her from here, Major,” he said, already at my door.
“Of course, Your Highness.” Frost nodded.
Caspian held my hand and pulled me inside the mansion. His grip ran warm, like banked coals, and the heat of it climbed my arm, solid and pleasant.
The prince led me through a wide entrance hall, pale floors, tall windows, a hush so complete it pressed against my ears, then up a curving staircase and along an upper corridor until we stopped before a set of ivory doors.
Aelindor’s suite. I felt the other heirs inside before Caspian’s hand reached the door, bright points in the matrix of my head, powerful and magnetic. My pulse climbed into my throat. Something pulled me forward to meet them, coiling low and humming in my belly.
“Easy, lioness. I can see how nervous you are,” Caspian said.
I frowned at him.
