Page 68 of A Sweet Destruction

His hands fell to hers in a tight squeeze, one that demonstrated a deep familiarity, before he turned his attention to the man standing at the center of it all.

Hardly a man at all, I realized. The Prince was little more than a boy in his father’s clothing, nearly drowning in the loose drapes that hung from his lithe limbs.

He was slight, with bone-white skin and floppy dark hair that was just on the right side of neat to make it acceptable for a prince. His eyes were a blue so light it bordered on white, obvious enough even from afar.

The Prince looked too small for his clothes and too small for his features. There was something underdeveloped about him, like he needed a few more years to truly grow into himself.

“Oh, I would have been robbing the cradle,” Bellamy said under her breath, just loud enough for me to hear. A good thing Freya couldn’t, because she could never hide her laugh. We would have ended up in jail for treason.

Elijah turned, stepping away from the older woman—clearly a part of the royal family, if not the Queen herself, turning back to face us. A second later, as if in a practiced movement, six soldiers stepped out from the line of people surrounding us, with outstretched arms, offering to help us off our own steeds.

That sparked varying levels of compliance.

Bellamy took a hand, turning over her shoulder to shoot at look of warning at Soren, surely intending to preempt a threatening growl from him while he hopped down off Lucky’s back without bothering to look at the person who’d stepped forward.

Arthur accepted help with a smile, showing a steady confidence that I don’t think he fully realized he possessed.

Freya did her best to hide her skittishness, placing her hand in the soldier’s in front of her. Funnily enough, something happened between them that made him look terrified of her.

I didn’t have to look at Ford to know what he’d done. Similar to Soren, he couldn’t resist the urge to slide in a show of dominance, jumping off Shadow’s back. I bet he barely paid the soldier in front of him any mind—not from outright rudeness but because he was turning to me.

There was no mistaking the searing pressure on my back. The Bond would know Ford’s attention without a single sense to inform it, and attention he gave as I reached to take the hand of the soldier in front of me.

Her eyes were wide, unblinking—neutral only from force. She reached down to look at my outstretched hand, finding the snake of my Mark staring up at her. Quickly, enough so that I knew she was acting entirely on instinct, she jerked her hand away from me.

Her eyes flew up to me next, her jaw slack as she waited for me to…what? Why was I getting this reaction when I was but a faceless Vir soldier to these people, no different than the rest of our unit.

Sure, I had a reputation, but this was something different. I never forgot a face, and I knew I’d never met this woman, but it was clear she knew me.

Add that to the increasingly long list of answers we needed to get from this little visit.

Forced to ignore my curiosity and focus on the task ahead, I turned back towards Sky, making sure he was okay surrounded by so many new people.

I had no plans to leave him—a commonly shared resolve, I realized, when I saw each one of us standing in between the crowd and our individual horses, refusing to let someone unfamiliar touch them.

“There is an open field right behind that building,” Elijah said, voice booming over a suddenly silent crowd. He gestured with his chin to a sliver of grass peeking through the space between two buildings. One of which was a pristine shade of white limestone and adorned with an intricately carved facade. That was surely the center of this town, from which everything else flowed.

Despite Elijah’s words, no one moved.

“By the Goddess,” Elijah cursed, “I don’t know the way your people treat animals, but rest assured, no one here would harm them. Lest you forget they are native to Muli.”

There was something bitter around the edges of his tone, clearly residual resentment that animals that were born and bred on Muli had decided to bond with someone from another planet. I’d always thought it was a good thing, further proof that we were all the same at our core.

“Thank you for the assurance, Elijah,” Bellamy said, even as her knuckles grew white from the strength of her grip on Clover’s reins. “I’m sure you’ll understand our desire to see them well before our meeting.”

Elijah paused for a moment, before dropping into a dramatic bow with his hand slung over his chest. It was his horse that took action, trotting right up to Lucky and Clover and jerking his head toward the open field.

Lucky harrumphed, surely not at all pleased to be ordered around, even if they were kin.

A flash of white broke across everyone’s vision—Starlight.

Freya took several steps towards her horse, hands out in a last ditch attempt to grab her reins. Everyone froze, unsure what the massive beast would do.

Little, we all soon realized, besides happily bouncing off in the direction that Elijah’s horse had motioned.

At someone they trusted moving, the rest of our horses bounded off after Starlight, taking our packs with them.

Right.