Page 64 of FoolSilver
By now she’d probably forgotten my face. Out of sight, out of mind.
I couldn’t allow that.
I needed eyes on her, to see what she was up to, so I could move against it the second it threatened the alliance. I was still the only one of us not under her spell. She’d already turned three battle-hardened killers into lovesick boys.
The library came into view. Pale stone, a wide sweep of marble stairs climbing to double doors twenty feet tall, the Zodiac Covenant’s sigil carved deep into the façade in gold and silver. Leo, Virgo, Sagittarius, and Aries wound together. Four houses made one.
It was where I’d held the Sorting. Hard to scrape that day off the inside of my skull: my fire eating her disguise away, layer by layer, until what hung revealed in the air was all woman, all curves, and for one breath I’d forgotten how to use my own lungs.
The memory sharpened the need to reach her.
I strode through the doors like I owned the air. That was more of the beast’s bearing than mine—his confidence bled into any room I entered, the alpha dragon’s need to claim the ground before anything else.
The Coldiron armguard warmed against my left forearm.
The first thing Aelindor had done when I walked into his residence was fasten it to my wrist. A gift from Max, he said. All it took to seal it was a drop of my blood and a measure of my pain. Max had already given her own blood to the metal.
My pain ran deep, and the place I kept it was black and bottomless. Coldiron reached in and found the memory of agony and loss immediately, settled like a fire curling around fresh wood, and then the warmth of the bond settled into the armguard.
Max had set an armguard on each of the others herself. With her own hands. Not me. She was avoiding me as much as possible, and I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction.
Stop being a dick to her,my dragon warned.
This from the beast who had once locked his burning eyes on her and let smoke curl from his snout. Now he wanted her even more than after the Sorting. Since she’d ridden him into battle, he’d been running his own filthy little fantasies about her.
The Coldiron shrieked in my skull.
Max! She’s here!
The armguard blazed with heat at her nearness. With her blood bound into the metal, I felt her like a second heartbeat—abright point in the dark of my head. Now I could map her exact location, a path lit end to end.
Civilians bowed as I passed. I didn’t even nod, taking the stairs two at a time.
Let’s go to Max,the dragon urged impatiently, already moving through me.
If I could feel her, she could feel me. But the dragon had cloaked us and was smug about it.
Sneaky bastard. He wanted to surprise her. When he put his mind to it, he moved as quietly as Caspian’s wolf, and by the time prey understood a dragon was in the room, it had already been burned or swallowed.
I found her on the top floor.
The space opened under a wide skylight, golden daylight falling across shelves that ran back farther than the eye could follow. Iron stairs spiraled between the stacks, the air thick with old paper and cracked leather warmed by the light.
She stood leaning against a shelf with a book in both hands, turning pages without looking up. Deep in it. Couldn’t drag her eyes free.
She’d changed since the mine. Still tall—barely an inch below me—but the gauntness was gone, replaced by a build meant for endurance and impact: long lines, full curves, a body that had learned to take a hit and hand one back. Midnight-blue hair to her shoulders, threaded with a strand of glowing white the Sorting fire had left behind. High cheekbones. Full lips parted around whatever had her so absorbed.
I’d gone hard in my fatigues before I could stop it. The way I hadn’t managed for any woman since the day she’d turned up at my fortress.
My dragon pushed up under my skin, lending me his sight.
We both wanted to know what had her so spellbound.
What? What the?—
Fuck.
She was hiding up here reading smut. Smut. While my soldiers broke their backs readying for war and the cadets ground themselves down in training, Max Morning had her nose buried in a dirty paperback.
