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She turned her head to catch my gaze, her expression soft and open. “Of course, I will. I want to show you. I want you to help me.”
She’d never looked at me with so much trust. It tore something open inside my chest. It felt like a blessing, a precious gift. But this one wasn’t from the gods. It was from my mizrah, my mate.
I brushed a kiss on her temple. “But first, you have a visitor and then you must eat.”
“A visitor?”
“An ambassador from Issos.”
Her muscles stiffened yet again. “Is something wrong in Issos?”
“No. I believe your brother wants proof that I haven’t fed you to my dragon.”
She chuckled and leaned harder against me as Drak descended toward the back of the palace gardens. “Drak would sooner eat you before he’d eat me.”
“Undoubtedly.”
Then we braced for the landing, and I prepared to give her time alone with that fancy fae in my palace.
Chapter 27
UNA
“Is my father well, Athelyn?”I asked upon entering the windowless parlor where the Issosian ambassador was being kept under guard.
Goll and I had returned shortly before dawn. I’d taken a bath and assured Hava, who wouldn’t stop fussing over me, that I was perfectly fine. Hava had thought Goll had taken me away to beat me. But when she saw the bite mark when I undressed for my bath, she only smiled, glad he wasn’t too rough in hispunishment.
He hadn’t been too rough. Quite the opposite. He had handled me in the most wonderful way.
Hava had spread a soothing, minty oil on the bite wound, promising it would heal but leave a scar as the king undoubtedly wanted. I should’ve been appalled, but the thought only made me smile as well. She helped me get cleaned and presentable for the ambassador.
But Athelyn wasn’t an ambassador. He had been the leader of the Issosian Guard. He bore the looks of an Issosian-born, thelong white hair and violet eyes. His wings were pale blue, tall and strong at his back.
“Your father is much the same,” he said with sympathy. “Perhaps a little weaker than when you left.”
I swallowed hard at that. What he wasn’t saying was that my father would die soon. There was no doubt of it.
“Why have you come? What is wrong? You’re not one of my brother’s ambassadors.”
His expression tightened with even more sympathy as he took a step toward me then glanced at the door. Though we’d been left alone, he knew that Goll and Keffa were standing on the other side. Goll agreed to give us privacy, but he’d said he’d be waiting for me while giving a death-glare to Athelyn.
“I am now his second,” Athelyn said. “And he trusted this errand with no one else.”
“What errand?”
He glanced at the door again before he stepped closer and whispered, “Are you truly well? Are they—is he—treating you as an Issosian princess should be?”
I nearly laughed. I knew definitively that no Issosian princess had ever been stolen away on dragon back, dragged into a cave, and been pounded into pleasure by a wraith king. Byherwraith king.
“Yes,” I answered honestly with a sincere smile. “I am very well.”
Athelyn frowned. “Are you sure?”
I did laugh then. “Yes.” Then something occurred to me. “If you’re Baelynn’s second, what happened to Gael?”
Gael had been my brother’s second since the moment we became co-stewards of the kingdom, since Baelynn had been forced to take over the army when our father became too ill to manage it himself.
Athelyn clenched his jaw, his mouth a grim line. “Gael has resigned his station at Issos. He has returned to his home estate in Mevia to lead the House of Ryleen.”
