Page 33 of Taken By Shadows

Lush curtains hung along the walls, offering waterfalls of colour throughout the pale halls. Draped in tyrian purples and cranberry reds, the walls could have looked violent if not for all the beautiful flowers in gold-painted vases dotted at each corner and on every console and hall table.

“Your bed chambers must be legendary with all the females who have begged you.” I reminded him of his quip earlier.

“No.” He didn’t turn but kept walking down another hall.

“Not legendary? What a shame to hear my husband-to-be is lacking in the bed chamber.”

I’d been admiring a tapestry to my left and didn’t notice the shadow that appeared in front of me until he blocked off any space around me.

“No. I don’t bring many people here.” His face was impassive as he looked down at me. “I won’t bore you with the details, but please don’t worry about your dear lord husband. No one has complained yet.” A rakish grin drew across his face as he leaned in a little closer.

I tried to ignore his nearness. “Killing people so they don’t complain doesn’t count as not complaining.”

His laugh was loud and full in the darkness of the still hallway. He pulled away and kept moving, but his laughter followed us through the corridors.

“I’m not calling you “my lord” you know.”

It was a ridiculous title. Anyone of some nobility carried a title. There were no lords, no ladies where I came from. So I wasn’t about to start calling him one.

We stopped outside a ceiling-height set of wooden double doors. The only light around us streamed from the picturesque window that framed the night sky.

“What do you want to call me?” Kaedian turned to me, forcing me up against the doorframe to keep from being pressed against his hard chest.

“Bastard would do.” I folded my arms to avoid getting any closer to him.

But he leaned in over me, a hand stretching above my head, hemming me in between the door and his body.

“How about Kaed?” His voice dropped a little lower, and the air heated around me. His eyes seemed to burn like blue wyvern fire; molten warmth contained within them. I felt his eyes go deeper than just where they looked. His gaze made me feel stripped, laid bare. And I struggled to breathe under the intensity.

Denora and Gavrin had both called him that. They were his friends. I was not.

“Not Kaedian?”

“Most people only call me Kaedian when they want something from me. And as you’ve said, you want nothing except to be rid of me.” He leaned in a little closer.

I hadn’t noticed until now, but he smelled like amber and something citrus. Bergamot and orange blossom. It was heady and bright all at once—a sweetness tempered with bitterness. I was filled with his scent while he pressed close to me without connecting.

“Call me Kaed.” His voice was quiet, steady but hushed like a whisper. The intensity in him had shifted. His words rested in the air, their weight settling into me. It felt like a request, not a command.

And with that, he opened one of the double doors and stood tall again. Freeing me from his cage.

Kaedian—Kaed—took a step back and offered the open door to me.

“Just like that? You’re letting me go?”

He held back a smile. I wondered what he looked like when he fully smiled?

“Hardly. My suite is just down the hall.” He gestured to the darkness, where I saw no door. “But if you’d prefer a cage, I might sleep easier. You might not, though.”

I stepped inside the room. “I suppose you’ll have to make do without your beauty sleep,” I jeered.

Some part of me expected him to invade the space he offered as my room. My quarters, not a cell. But he didn’t.

My eyes darted through the room in the navy light of the night. There were no manacles. No iron bars. No hard cot.

“Can I trust you, peach?” His voice hummed into the darkness, his eyes falling on me like he was coaxing me to play.

No, was my immediate response.