House of Darken (Secret Keepers #1)(82)

“Laous forfeited his life the moment he touched her. If my father hadn’t stopped me, your overlord would already be dead. The council will deal with him, and then when they’re finished … I will find him. Prepare yourself, you’re about to get a promotion.”

I’d never really feared Lexen, even in those first days of being a hostage, but his voice brimming with so much fury sent tendrils of adrenalin through my body. My instincts were telling me that he’d never hurt me though, and I wasn’t just saying that because it was pretty clear I was half in love with him. I had no delusions he cared about me in the same way, but he always protected me.

I would stake my life on that.

Gentle hands brushed across my cheeks and I pressed into his touch. As my eyelashes fluttered open, the hard, dark lines of his face came into full view. His eyes were on fire, white flaming lights filling the dark depths.

“Hey,” I said, my voice raspy.

Lexen’s hand briefly clenched on my cheek, before he gentled it again.

“Hey,” he started, before a rumble of anger shook his body. And the walls around us. It was already hot where we were, but Lexen was emitting even more heat. It was like he was a volcano about to erupt.

“I’m okay,” I tried to reassure him, but he seemed beyond words again.

Then he kissed me.

As his lips crashed into mine with more force than I expected, but also far less than I needed, everything stilled. The pain in my body fell away. The worries churning in my mind disappeared. My body burned as hot as Lexen’s as I pushed up into his hold.

He lifted me so I was straddled across his lap, our mouths clashing together, tongues sliding across each other, hands touching wherever they could reach. I was completely mindless; there had never been a kiss like this in my life before.

It was the kiss to end all kisses.

A throat cleared in an amused sort of sound and a sliver of clarity returned to me. And apparently to Lexen, because his hands gentled, as did our mouths. He pressed his lips to mine once more, slowly pulling away.

Sweet alien world. Did that just happen? Did Lexen Darken just kiss me like his life depended on it?

“I’m so damn sorry I left you alone,” he murmured as we both stared, breathing a little deeper than was usual. “I left you and those bastards stole you right out from under me.”

I lifted my arm, wanting to touch his face, but pain shot through my shoulder. Ouch … wrong arm.

Lexen’s head snapped to the side as he zeroed in on my white bandage. “What happened?” The question was asked slowly, deliberately, and for a second a shadow slithered across his face, like a specter of something more than the Daelighter he was.

“One of Laous’ men threw her off the incubation level,” Daniel said with bite in his tone. “She’s lucky she landed in the trees. Had she hit the ground at that speed, the land would have crushed her.”

Lexen didn’t turn to his friend, lifting his gaze to meet my eyes again. “What else did Laous do to you? I need you to tell me everything.”

Nobody would disobey Lexen when he spoke like that … he was scary. Wasting no time, stumbling once or twice, I told them both what had happened from the moment I woke in the egg cage, leaving nothing out. “And he has … or had a Draygo,” I finished. “That’s how he found out everything about the treaty. He used the power of the four houses by sending you all to Astoria. To find my family.” As I finished, a stony sort of silence filling the cave, Lexen finally looked away from me, turning to Daniel.

“Like I said before, prepare to be overlord,” he bit out. “Laous is a dead man.”

Daniel swore a few times, rubbing a hand over his face in a tired manner. “A Draygo? I knew that my father had a draygone friend who visited. Maybe that was why Laous killed him. To get access to the Draygo…”

“He needs to be stopped,” Lexen bit out. “And the council has to be informed of this new information.”

He stood without dropping me on my head. I’d never had a guy carry me like that before, with such ease, as if he’d forgotten he even held me in his arms. I liked it more than I expected. The independent woman part of me rebelled, but another primal part liked the way he wrapped me up tightly, holding every part of me together, sharing his strength and comfort with me.

Still, now was not the time for me to be carried. I wanted to stand on my own two feet. So I struggled to be let down, and he immediately set me down, keeping me close to his side.

“We need to move fast.” Daniel was serious as he glanced between us. “Laous is going to come for her, and he has way too much control over the justices. We can’t beat him here, in his territory.”

“Has anyone ever made it through the full six levels to reach the seventh?” I asked.

Daniel and Lexen both shook their heads.

Great. I should have guessed that. “So how are we going to get through it, then?” I asked, trying not to sound as pissed off and worried as I felt.

Lexen and Daniel exchanged a grin. The pair of them way too cocky and gorgeous for any girl to keep her sanity. “We’re overlord minors,” Lexen told me. “We have one or two tricks up our sleeves. We can’t hook to the network, but our individual strengths should be enough to get us out of here.”

Daniel started to move, walking to the rounded stone doorway of this cave. There was another stone tunnel behind it, and at the end of that everything looked red. As we got closer, the heat increased to the point where I started to feel faint.