Fortune Favors the Cruel - Kel Carpenter Page 0,59
but herself.
She didn’t want that, but what she did want … her gaze strayed to that pale hand, still curled around Lazarus’ forearm. She followed that thick bicep up, along his taut chest, to the hard set of his jaw, and finally to those eyes. They might have blistered her if she hadn’t cut herself off and slinked deeper into the cold.
As it was, she simply smiled. “Yes, I’m just fine.”
Demons & Doorways
“Darkness is a dreadful gift … and a sweet curse.”
— Lazarus Fierté, nobleman and dark Maji
Lazarus clenched his teeth so hard that had he been less aware of it, they might have cracked. She’d gone cold, right before his eyes, colder than she’d ever been with him. He didn’t like it—the way her magic pervaded the air and darkened the veins beneath her skin. It slithered up and down her arms like an animal protecting its master, ruthless in its quest to serve.
She wasn’t fooling anyone, certainly not him, when she loosened her grip around the boy’s wrist. She’d struck so sudden that the table went silent, though she likely hadn’t noticed. Lazarus said her name twice, and still, she didn’t respond. No, she responded to him. The boy that Thorne was enjoying putting in her path at every turn. The red-haired bastard leaned in, speaking low enough only Lazarus would hear.
“Just a vassal, eh?” He tilted his chin, giving Lazarus a pointed look before smiling to Quinn. She still had that look in her eyes, like a feral creature ready to strike. But she released Vaughn and patted his hand like nothing happened, and the table breathed easier for it. Never mind the terrible power she summoned without a thought and dissipated it just as easily.
“She and I have a contract,” he reminded Thorne through gritted teeth. He suspected what caused the outburst when her gaze hovered on the pale hand that touched him and for the first time in a long, long time, Lazarus felt something almost like … unease.
A restless anxiety stirred in him when her cold calculated gaze had settled on the hand touching him. It was the same reason he went back to the alley the night she was attacked in Ishvat. No one knew—not Lorraine, not Draeven, and certainly not Quinn—that he ripped the boy who had touched her into little, tiny pieces, scattering his entrails with a dark satisfaction coiling in his gut. No one realized how dark, how deep his fascination—his obsession—with her was beginning to run. Except maybe Quinn herself.
None of them had realized why he had been in a hurry to get out of that town come morning. They’d all just been content, especially Quinn, with leaving.
But now … he looked down and followed the trail to the beautiful woman on his arm.
Would Quinn do the same? he wondered, and he worried. This wasn’t good. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. Claudius said she would make him the greatest empire this world had ever seen … or destroy him. He’d heard the second half of the warning, all those moons ago, and it still hadn’t stopped his search for her. It never occurred to him why she would give or take to begin with, only that she would.
“And where does she fall with this contract when you become king?” Thorne mused, just a fraction too loud. He saw it the moment the words registered. She’d been leaning into the boy, Vaughn, listening to whatever he told her when she froze and slowly lifted her cold eyes to his.
“King?” she asked, looking between them.
“Of Norcasta,” Thorne nodded. For someone who was supposed to be his friend, he was doing a great job at dividing his vassal from him.
“King of Norcasta,” she murmured, nodding to herself. “I suppose it all makes sense now.”
Thorne leaned back, looking between the two of them. “He hadn’t told you?”
Her answer was clipped and curt, and above all, cold. “No.”
“I see,” Thorne said slowly, facing Lazarus once more. “I assumed your vassals already knew of your intentions. My apologies if I’ve overstepped.” Lazarus bit into a boysenberry, the usual tartness followed by sweet, lacking as he tasted nothing but ash.
“Oh, he tells me nothing,” Quinn said. She took the goblet in front of her, not even looking at its contents as she downed it in one go. Lazarus grimaced as her face screwed shut.
“She-wolf Quinn?” Vaughn asked.
“Oh, for the love of—” Draeven muttered, finally taking his seat again.