Blood Oath (Darkest Drae #1)(12)

“Last night you left The Crane’s Nest after a meeting. Who were you with, and where can I find the others who were there?” he finally asked. His voice was different than before, like the warmth of embers on a cool morning, a beautiful rumble that calmed my frayed nerves.

“My friend. She lives just up the road.” The key to lying was to tell as much of the truth as possible and keep the important information concealed. Should I be able to reason like this? Maybe the breath thing wasn’t true, but then why had he unleashed a lungful on my face?

He chuckled, and more of his sweet breath surrounded me. It was more than his breath, I realized. He smelled good—his body or whatever—like sunbaked pine and dried sandalwood. I started to lean forward, and he sighed, shoving me back against the wall in irritation.

Get that a lot, do you?

“Who is your friend?” he snarled.

There was no way I would tell him about Dyter or Arnik. “Why? You want to visit her, too?”

He furrowed his brow, and the disinterest on his face lessened for the first time. “What?” He eyed me for a long second and took a deep breath, blowing it in my face again.

I frowned at him. “Can you stop that? It’s kind of really, really strange.”

He jerked, eyes widening, and took a step back, almost seeming to stumble as he whispered something in a different language, not taking his eyes off my quaking form.

Drak, I should’ve kept pretending, maybe I could salvage the situation. I smirked at him, feigning unfocused eyes, and said, “I can take you to meet Syla if you’d like?”

“Stop pretending.” He growled. “I can tell.”

A snicker escaped. As soon as it sounded, I slapped my trembling hands over my mouth. Mistress Moons! What was wrong with me?

The intensity with which the Drae studied me cocooned us, and the rest of the world disappeared.

“You can see me. You’re resistant to the droplets in my breath.” He studied me, his gaze intense and penetrating. In a low voice, almost to himself, he murmured, “It can’t be.”

He didn’t wait for me to babble an answer but brought his hand up in tiny increments, his expression rapt as he circled the back of my neck. His warm palm connected with the clammy skin at the nape of my neck, and I shrieked. Fire licked where our skin touched, the warmth spreading from where his hand tangled in my hair, sending tendrils of pulsing energy all over until I felt like I was crawling out of my skin. I screamed again, but this time the sound was muffled against his shoulder. I’d fallen, or he’d pulled me.

He ripped his hand away and stared at it with what looked like betrayal as I fell to my knees.

He swore long and hard again in the language I didn’t know. Some of the same surprise I felt was echoed within the guttural sounds he made. He sounded shocked.

“That wasn’t in the bedtime stories.” I squeezed my eyes closed to rid myself of black spots. What just happened?

“Where are you going right now?” he asked in a different tone. Gone was the disinterest. Something very different took its place in his expression. His gaze darted behind as he turned toward the fountain, scanning the dry space. “There are people coming.”

“Snake and Toady.” If my luck was continuing in the same stream.

“Who are Snake and Toady?” he asked in an urgent tone.

I batted his hands away. Why was my body drained of energy? The back of my neck was pulsing. I moaned, “My tails.”

What the hay did he moisturize his hands with? Or was this some other Drae power no one talked about?

His face froze. “Tails? Soldiers?”

I didn’t answer.

Anxiety crawled between us, originating from him. Was his magic finally working? There was no sense of compulsion, and I guess if I was able to contemplate lying, I had my answer.

“I was going home,” I slurred with fatigue. “Don’t kill my mum,” I said. “Please show her mercy. I’m just the soap queen. I don’t know anything important.”

He wasn’t listening. In the same way I didn’t pay attention to buzzing flies. The darkness reached for him as he grabbed my arm and yanked me toward the other end of the alleyway.

“Hey,” voices shouted behind us. “Halt!”

“Drak,” he swore in a hushed tone.

I stumbled to keep up with his long stride. He couldn’t walk me home; Mum was there. “If you’re going to kill me, could you please do it now?”

He didn’t answer.

I was terrified, tired, but I felt the first strains of anger begin to wriggle inside.

We ducked out of one alley and into another then crossed over into Harvest Zone Six and backtracked to a laneway near the square in Zone Seven before heading toward the Wheel where I lived.

“You need to get out of here.”

He spoke for the first time in several minutes.

What the hay was going on?

“Let go of me,” I demanded. I tried to pull away from his grip, but he held tight, his long fingers circling the entire width of my bicep with a strength that told me he could break my bone just from losing focus.

Irrik closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Why are you even in this kingdom? Do you want to die? You need to be gone. Right now.”

The intensity of his words made my skin crawl, and the burn of his stare made me want to quiver at his feet like a mouse before a hawk. What he was saying didn’t add up. “What?”