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“You’ve got issues, buddy, and I’m not playing this game. Let me the fuck go!”
He steps close, but I notice he never actually quite touches me. Just a hair’s breadth away. I realise, even when he kidnapped me, he was touching the vines, never actually touching me, and all the things I’ve heard about him flash through my mind. “You don’t like to be touched, do you? This is why you are restraining me—just to talk to me? What are you so scared of, dragon king?”
His growl is animal-like and, fucking hell, scares me. I shake all over. A vine slides up my chest, wrapping around my throat. Grayson’s eyes are like hardened chunks of ice. “Why do I keep finding myself looking at you? Searching for you? Why the fuck can’t I keep you out of my head?”
“That’s your problem with me?” I pathetically question, my heart pounding. The vines tighten slightly. “I haven’t done anything!”
“And yet you haunt me. You’re the first human, dragon, or fucking anyone I’ve wanted to touch. Why is that?” he demands, and I think he is actually confused.
I blow out a breath. “I don’t know, but maybe we can make a deal?”
He cocks his head to the side. “What deal?”
“I need someone to train me in combat so I don’t keep getting beaten up every other day in lessons, and you need to learn to be touched, and maybe how to chill out. I can do that for you,” I suggest, my heart racing. I don’t mention I might use those skills to kick them all in the balls and escape later on. “And then when you choose a bride, at least you’ll be able to stand having her close.”
His eyes darken, and he leans that inch closer, so close I can smell him. He reminds me of the forest I visited as a kid, earthy and rich. Grayson’s nose flares and he steps back, the vines disappearing. “We have a deal. I will come to you for an hour every other morning. Our lessons will be brutal.”
“For whom?” I ask with a smile.
He looks back before leaving. “Goodnight, brat.”
A door appears near me, and I quickly open it, stepping outside into a field with a tunnel on the other side. I walk across the field for a while, looking up at the millions of stars that are so much freer than me, before I sit down and cross my legs, resting back. I’m not surprised when Arden plops down next to me on the grass, lying back, resting his head on his thick arms. I am surprised that at some point, I’ve found him less frightening than the others. Or at least on the same level as Emrys. Lysander and Grayson scare the shit out of me.
“Well, that was an awkward-as-shit dinner, and there was no alcohol to make it better,” he groans. “Sorry about that. Emrys’s and Lysander’s mums brought all of us up, and we can’t tell them no. When they tell us to do an awkward meal, we do it.”
I turn my head to face him. “Where are your parents, then?”
He sighs. “Dead like most of yours. I’m all that’s left of the Fire Court royalty. You can call me one of a kind.”
He winks at me, but I can see through it, just for a second. “You killed my ex-boyfriend. You can’t try to be my friend now.”
“He deserved it. I’ll die on that hill, princess.”
I sigh. He might be a little right. I don’t think I can fully admit to myself what Finley, a man I knew for years, was going to do to me, without having a nervous breakdown. I shake my head, climbing to my feet. “I’m going to bed. Thanks for the weird meal thing.”
He climbs to his feet, touching my arm. He is burning hot where he touches me. “I would like to get to know you. I know I’m a flirt. I talk a lot, which most people find charming, but you don’t seem to. We met when I kidnapped you and killed your ex-boyfriend, but I still see potential between us. Someone I could imagine at my side at the end of all this. Maybe we could talk? Just hang out sometimes.”
Lysander’s threat floats into my mind. My grandmother, drowning deep underwater, a dragon’s mouth wrapped around her legs and pulling her down. That dream plays over and over in my mind as I look at Arden and see the vulnerability in his eyes. He is lonely. Even if every inch of me wants to shout no, to tell him that I have no interest in being his queen, I force myself to smile, for my grandmother. “I’d like that. We can talk now if you have time? Maybe you could show me around parts of the castle I haven’t seen?”
His smile is so big, bright, and playful that I almost feel guilty. I let him put an arm around my waist, pulling me against his side. I’m a terrible person for this…but I’ll be anything to save my only remaining family. Arden leans down closer to my ear as we walk. “Don’t say a word, but the water test will happen in the middle of the night tonight. Be ready.”
CHAPTER 7
I lie in bed, completely still and paralysed with unrelenting fear that feels like it’s wrapped around my throat like one of Grayson’s vines. Arden’s warning plays over and over in my mind, and every second seems to go by slower than the next as I wait for the Water Court test to begin. I woke Arty up and told her that the water test was tonight, and I wanted to tell Livia, but Hope was in the room when she came back late. Arty barely believed it anyway, especially when I told her it was a warning given from Arden. She said that we probably shouldn’t trust him.
Arty could be right, but I have the gut feeling he was telling me the truth. That he was warning me about what’s going to happen tonight because he likes me for some insane reason. Or just wants to fuck me before I die. Either one of those two reasons—most likely the second one. For those reasons alone, I can’t close my eyes. I can’t sleep. I stare up at the bed boards in front of me, staring at them but not seeing anything.
My own racing heart is distraction enough.
Softly, like a lullaby, I hear a creaking noise below me, and I sit up, digging my hands into the soft bedding. The gentle creaking changes into loud creaking, right before the bed underneath me disappears, and my scream rips out of my throat as I slam down into cold water, slipping and sliding down a tunnel. The tunnel spins me around in darkness, in circles as I slide down the walls, and I hear Arty’s scream above me, knowing she’s not far behind. Water sprays into my mouth, the rock walls rip at my top right before I’m suddenly falling, and I land hard on a stone floor, smacking my cheek on the stones in shallow water.
I lift my head, rubbing my sore cheek and looking around at the dim room. Every wall is thick stone, high and covered in glowing green moss, which is the only light. The ice-cold water is up to my wrist before I crawl to my feet.
Arty comes sliding down the whole tunnel after me, sliding to a stop, landing and not smacking her face like me. The tunnel we came out of disappears, leaving mossy walls in its place. The walls are too high to climb by the looks of it, but I walk over, touching the wet moss, which falls apart in my hands. We can’t climb out of here. The walls themselves are smooth underneath the moss too. I turn and help a shocked Arty to her feet. She wipes water out of her eyes. “I guess your dragon was right.”
“He isn’t mine,” I mutter, but it feels like a weak answer that neither one of us wants to argue about at this point. My boots clap in the water as I walk around the room, touching all the walls for some kind of clue.
“Look,” Arty whispers, and I turn to see her standing in front of two metal levers that have appeared on the wall in front of her. I don’t like this.
