Страница 86 из 105
“It’s been mere hours,” I pointed out, yet I couldn’t help but smile as I rubbed my face into his clean shirt. He must have warped back to his rooms. That or he purchased a new one. It reminded me of an important detail I hadn’t overlooked. “There is a dress for me and no clothing for you.”
“That makes perfect sense.” He didn’t elaborate when I looked up at him. Fingertips soft at my chin, he tilted it back for his mouth to ravage mine.
I broke away after a sweltering moment, my voice breathy. “Where did you go?”
“Where haven’t I been?” Twirling a lock of my hair around his finger, he smiled at it. A crooked smile that didn’t climb and popped just one dimple. “I went to visit a sorceress who stole your blood and handed you no fate.”
His lashes lifted toward low brows, and my lips parted. Of course.
“You came here,” I said, knowing it was true before I’d even pushed the words out. “You came here just to find out your fate?”
“You know what they say.” He released my hair, the strands curling through his fingers and back against my chest. “Knowledge is power.”
I didn’t believe that was the sole reason, not entirely. “What made you visit her?”
Dade lifted a finger, tracing my brow with it, his eyes following his touch all the way down to the corner of my mouth. “Honest answer?”
I shivered. “Always.”
A quick, satisfied grin as he noticed. “I wanted to know what most of us wish to,” he said quietly. “If there was something else, I suppose.”
“Something else?” I repeated, and that finger drifted from my chin to my chest. “Besides revenge, you mean?”
His eyes gleamed before dulling, and he withdrew a step before turning. “Yes.” Cold washed in as I watched him walk over to the window, his large form nearly blocking out the sky. “It was that and wanting explanation for the intense attraction. I’ve heard of it, witnessed it countless times, yet to find myself mated to a Gracewood, a swan…”
“You didn’t know that,” I said, feeling my brow crinkle. “That I was a swan.”
“No,” he said, his back still to me. “But I suspected, scented that there was something more to you.”
“You were hoping to also glean what that was.”
“Indeed.” He set something upon the windowsill. “I believe this belongs to you.”
A strip of parchment. I hurried over, unraveling it and finding…
“Nothing,” I said, then frowned up at him. “She gave you a blank piece of parchment?”
Dade’s mouth curved. “Breathe over it.”
Still frowning, I slowly peeled my eyes from his and did as he said.
Gold dust fluttered into the room, sprinkling over my fingers at the edges of the parchment and onto the floor. One golden line at a time, the words appeared in a cursive so thick, I could barely make out what was written.
Dade read the words, low and as though he’d memorized them already. “When feather meets fire, vengeance will expire.”
“You received the same one?” I was about to ask him where it was when the parchment caught fire then disintegrated, falling in curls of black ash to the stone floor. “Did you know mine would say that?”
“No,” he said, bending down to swipe his fingers over the ash. It danced into nothing at his touch, and he brushed his hand over his pants as he rose. “But I had a feeling it might.”
His tunic sleeve slipped over his wrist as he straightened. I didn’t miss the tinge of brown upon his skin, and grabbed him.
He didn’t stop me as I folded the loose sleeve back and turned his hand, checking him for injury. I sniffed the air, no other signs of blood anywhere, then asked him, “What’s this from?”
He smiled and gently took his limb back, the cotton falling. “I had to climb a trellis.” He rolled his eyes. “Or ten, rather, as you lot seem so fond of the nuisance things. One of your feral flowers bit me.”
I laughed, then cursed when I noticed the sun dimming to a golden orange.
Dade skimmed his fingers down my cheek, then released a heavy breath and walked by me to the dressing room. “Let’s get you ready.”
“But what are we going to do with you?” He could wed me wearing his cotton tunic and pants, I supposed, but I had a feeling that was not what he’d have preferred.
I smothered a snort, laughing again when he opened my dressing room door. A shimmering blood-red vest hung inside, a black shirt of rich silk underneath and matching colored dress pants. “My,” I laughed out. “You have been busy.”
He gri
My mind raced back to that cave, my heart trembling. Still, I answered, “I thought you’d never ask.”
It finally sank in when the wide-open doors of the throne room loomed up ahead. That this was truly happening.
Dade was already there. After dressing, he’d given me some privacy and time alone with my racing thoughts and heart, saying he’d be fine when wariness clutched at my vocal cords.
I’d already seen his attire, had seen him wearing it, but apprehension had kept me from absorbing it as wholly as I now could. Panic still swam inside my bloodstream, my heart a bell that rang deep and haunting in my ears, but all of it washed away when I saw him standing before the dais.
It wasn’t his fitted pants, the vest that sat snug over his sculpted physique, that drew too much breath from me and refused to give it back.
It was his eyes. Radiant, they drank me in as though I were a prized jewel he’d spent his life hunting.
And now, he could officially lay claim to me.
That heated gaze floated from my slippered feet, the tiny bows upon the toes catching the lace of the matching cream gown I’d chosen over the ruffled mess my mother had selected for me. A tiny rebellion, maybe, but if I was really doing this, if this was actually happening, then it would happen in a dress I’d chosen for myself—one that made me feel more like myself.
Small, barely detectable until the light caught and revealed them, beads speckled the free-flowing skirts. The bodice was tight but not uncomfortable, silk ribbons crisscrossing over my chest and at my back, and lace belled sleeves cupping my shoulders.
Dade’s eyes paused at my hands, which were clasped before me, fingers gently entwined around a cluster of black roses. They then crawled over my chest to my face.
I met his shocked stare, biting back a smile and then remembering I’d brushed red rouge over my lips.
“I did not expect the roses,” he murmured in my ear when I reached him, fingers sliding over mine and stealing between them, linking as I stopped before him.
“I did not expect any of this,” I surprised us both by saying.
Hesitant, he nodded, his mouth hovering over my cheek. “I will make you happy. This I vow over all else.”
And the rough vehemence in those words, in his darkening blue eyes, made it impossible not to believe him.
Footsteps sounded, and I made to take a step back as my mother entered.
Dade’s fingers tightened around mine, and I scowled at him, but he wasn’t looking at me. Shoulders stiff and high, all affection and heat vanished from his eyes as he surveyed my mother, the closing doors behind her, then the rest of the shadowed room.
Daylight had faded, early evening throwing shades of orange and gold through the two arched windows on the far side of the room. Hydrangeas swayed outside them, their sweet scent unable to mask the tension brewing in the cavernous space.
Mother’s eyes, narrowed with enough malice to burn down the sun, slid from Dade to me. “Are you sure you want to do this?” Noticing my gown, she hardened her expression, lips thi