Page 47 of Sharpest Court

“You wanted to ask about my father earlier. I saw it in the tension of your shoulders.”

My back stiffened further, and Keil laughed under his breath, the sound as soft and sweet as honey. He splayed one hand between my shoulder blades, where my crumpled blouse provided a layer between my bare skin and his. “Relax for me,” he murmured.

My muscles automatically untensed under his touch, and the sound he made—a deep hum of approval—brought my specter nearer to the surface, thrumming and liquid-warm.

“It’s about Rheya, isn’t it?” he continued, removing his hand. “And that, according to the world, I should currently be rotting in a cell because I’m the former emperor’s grandson.” He shifted closer, and my body jostled. “You can ask. None of it is a secret.”

I was considering how to word my question when his fingers grazed my back, and I flinched at the coolness of the salve.

“Sorry,” Keil said. Then, as though securing my comfort was second nature to him, he followed the touch with a brush of his specter, the warm ripples chasing away the cold.

To distract myself from the urge to arch into his touch, I asked, slightly breathless, “Did your father raise arms against Rheya after he was overlooked as heir?”

“Never. He was the youngest of four sons and never planned—nor wanted—to be emperor.” Keil’s callused fingers worked along my back as he spoke, each touch echoed with a warm brush of his specter. “His brothers, however, resented being cast aside for a young, lower-echelon noblewoman. But, contrary to rumors, they didn’t raise arms against Rheya. Being cowards, they planned an ambush while she was away from the palace. Since Rheya possesses a thin specter, they considered her an easy target. But she was better trained in physical combat than any of them.”

“She killed them?” I asked, without the bite of accusation; I was too familiar with murder in the name of self-defense.

“She didn’t need to. They’d planned to target her with a timed ignition of ithoric, the explosive. They died in their own eruption.”

The story inked itself over the tale I’d always heard. The tale of the Wielder who’d strongarmed her way to the throne, then punished those who’d tried to win it back. A tale created to take a young woman’s rise to power and twist it into something ugly.

“What happened to your uncles’ children?” I asked, my back now tingling pleasantly. “Your cousins.”

“Like Val and me, they were allowed to keep their estates and titles. But some, like their fathers, bore a grudge against Rheya. My eldest cousin, Finbar, was caught passing information to rebels a few years ago. Rheya exiled him from the mainland.”

“Didn’t he have royal immunity?”

Keil’s fingers faltered. Then he said, slightly strained, “Finbar gave his royal immunity to his mother many years earlier.” Before I could analyze that odd beat of hesitation, he spoke again. “His mother was a Hollow, originally from Banarrat, so Finbar journeyed there after his exile. Arun lobbied for Finbar’s execution, but Rheya couldn’t hang the grandchild of the man who’d handed her a crown.”

I pondered in silence, stifling my next question.

Keil chuckled softly. “Go ahead. Ask.”

I rolled my eyes, then shifted my head to conceal my expression. “Rheya wouldn’t execute the grandchildren . . . But would she barter them away in marriage alliances?”

His fingers paused, and I held my breath, my heartbeat suddenly resonating down my torso. It was the story I’d heard in Daradon, likely another rumor. But surely Keil wouldn’t be hesitating now unless—

“Is this your way of asking if I’m engaged to be married?” he asked, a lilt of humor in the words.

I tensed, mortified at being caught out. Again, Keil laughed under his breath, infuriatingly composed. He resumed his work with the salve, his touch even gentler now, lingering around the curve of my waist.

“The answer is no,” he said, and I tried not to exhale too loudly with relief. He added quietly, punctuating the statement with a tender graze of his thumb, “There’s nobody else.”

His words resounded in the quiet, holding so much meaning.

Then Keil’s fingers journeyed further down, halting just above the waistband of my trousers. “I need to reach your tailbone,” he said. “Can I lower this?”

And suddenly I was back on that riverbank, my hands buried in his hair, his lips planting hot kisses down my neck.

Every part of you, he’d said, with this same gravel in his voice. So beautiful.

While it had always felt a shade too easy to lower my guard around Keil, I’d completely laid myself bare in the moment of our parting, believing we would never meet again. But now, knowing that he couldn’t unsee the whole of me, that he could strip back my layers once more . . . The notion terrified me.

And it terrified me even more to acknowledge how safe I felt alone in this room with Keil. Because it meant I could melt again at any moment, ice thawing in his arms.

“Yes,” I breathed at last.

He was gentle as ever, folding down the fabric of my waistband to bare the tenderest point across my tailbone. His breath hitched when he saw what must have been a bruise.