The Rise of Deragon (The Deragon Duology #2)

4

Pandora

F or decorum’s sake, Heath and I walk without touching. He trails silently behind me to make it appear as though he’s covering my back—but when he opens the door to my suite and flicks one last glance to the vacant hallway, all facades fade away. The minute the door closes behind us, Heath captures my mouth with his own with a force I’ve never encountered before.

A rush of blood to the head nearly throws me off balance, and Heath catches me with ease. In fact, from there, he scoops me off the ground altogether.

I half expect him to lead us to my bed, but Heath carries me to the chaise instead. Then, when I prepare to lay flush against the cushion and have him clamber over top of me, he sits me down in a way that keeps me upright. Still, his lips never leave mine. “This makes no sense,” he murmurs.

“What do you mean?”

Heath’s hair is silken beneath my fingers but cropped just short enough to keep me from fully clutching onto it. He’s hesitant to rake through mine, though. “I’ve never seen a man on your arm, let alone in your rooms.”

“You’ve been keeping tabs on me?”

His mouth drags across the side of my face, his teeth pulling a desperate sound out of me as they tug my earlobe. Who knew that kind of touch along my ear would make my composure turn to dust? Heath doesn’t answer my question, though, saying instead, “How could anyone pass over your beauty?”

“That doesn’t matter now,” I say, and capture his mouth once more.

I start to move against him, aching for friction I know to search for despite having never felt it firsthand, but his hands don’t venture anywhere I want. Rather, Heath immediately goes for the buttons on the back of my dress, and my breathing hitches in a manner I don’t expect.

I should be excited. The anticipation should be making my body turn warm and supple—but all I suddenly feel is discomfort.

Where’s the touching and the sweet nothings and the build up?

“Wait,” I gasp. “This is all too sudden.”

“I thought you wanted—” he begins, then pauses, assessing his words. His face contorts in confusion, then hardens into frustration. “Do you want me or not, princess?”

My insides lurch at the question, at the rough implication in his tone. There’s no love, not even an ounce of adoration, only release—and likely for his benefit as opposed to mine. Holding out for a man that wants to please me might just kill me.

“Get out,” I groan, my original pursuit clearly unsuccessful and rather embarrassing the longer it sinks in. “I can’t be with a man that won’t even say my name as he kisses me.”

Fear flashes across his brown eyes, and for a sliver of a second, I think he feels contrite. Perhaps the harsh question was meant to be seductive, not demeaning. Still, even as he registers the mistake, he’s stupid enough to call out, “Wait, Princess—”

“It’s Pandora .”

In an instant, all the light leaves his eyes as if I just snuffed out a candle. I regret it to an extent, but I don’t say so aloud, nor do I apologize. The guard refastens his jacket and hurries out the door.

Slumped over the chaise in sudden self-pity, I heave a sigh of annoyance and wonder how it could’ve gotten to this point. Since when did feeling lonely turn into this ? And hell, the guard seemed nice enough this morning, but not nice enough to be such an airhead. Bleh!

I track the sound of his footsteps dissipating down the hall before I scream into a pillow, the material diffusing the sound of my humiliation. Once my breath runs out, though, I throw the pillow back to its previous spot and stare at the ceiling. Silence descends, and as I prepare to soak it in fully, a new sound catches my attention.

A subtle creak.

My eyes drop to my feet, wondering if a floorboard is loose and I put too much pressure on the ground, but I shucked off my heels the moment I entered my sacred space.

The creak sounds off again, and this time, my head snaps towards the door that the guard just departed from. Maybe Flora tiptoed down the hall and is playing tricks on me, waiting to chastise me for a failed fornication attempt. And yet, when I narrow my eyes, I see the latch within the strike plate of the door.

I’m closed in.

Alone.

And then—

“The voice of an angel,” a male voice I’ve never encountered drawls slowly from behind me. “With the face of an enchantress.”

I almost wonder if I’m imagining it—that is, until he finishes his phrase.

“And the spirit of a goddess.”

As calmly as I can manage, I turn to glance myself over in the mirror, but the sight of black-gloved hands creeping around its gilded frame—opening the trick door to the castle’s secret tunnels—unravels my composure.

My hair stands on end, like I’m seconds away from being struck by lightning, and as I shape my mouth into a scream, the intruder does something unexpected. He extends his hand towards me, his palm up in offering rather than gesturing me to stay quiet.

“Come with me,” he whispers.

His voice .

Something stops me in my tracks about it, the sound almost otherworldly. Like somehow, his words are sung rather than spoken. Like he’s a sorcerer reciting a spell meant to disarm me—and I almost fear that it’s working.

“Who are you?” I find myself asking faintly.

He pries the trick door open just enough to reveal his face.

Only it’s not a face at all, but rather one hidden beneath a mask that resembles a human skull. The heightened cheekbones cut the shape of his face, and the hollowed eye sockets give way to storm-gray eyes that draw me closer just as much as they terrify me. If the eyes are the window to the soul, then staring at him is no better than standing in the midst of a blizzard. The only skin unguarded by bone is a stern chin and soft lips that starkly contrast one another, and I catch myself staring at them for too long.

“I won’t ask again,” I find the willpower to restate. “ Who are you ?”

A wicked smile curves along those lips. “A fool,” he answers mystically. “For I came here to kill a queen, but one look at you and I’m willing to trade you for her.”

I reach for the knife strapped against my thigh, an essential that my Aunt Venus insisted I always keep on me—and the stranger watches me. He doesn’t move a muscle other than the ones it takes to deepen his smile, as if my intentions of fighting back are adorable.

“Perhaps you aren’t your mother’s daughter after all,” he whispers, his words coated in dark, secret pleasure that makes my stomach turn.

Fury brews within my blood, thrums against my bones.

It’s always been a secret—that I’m the daughter of the unwed Duchess, not the wedded Queen Inherit. It was the role I agreed to take on to be installed as the royal heir. But the fact that this stranger—this assassin —somehow knows the truth . . .

When I subtract the logistics from the equation, my anger still brews. Because I am my mother’s daughter. I am merciful and kind and gentle. I’d pick flowers from the gardens before I’d pick up a blade. But I’m also incredibly wise, and it’s that realization that allows my hands to fall back to my sides, forgoing the knife.

My intruder probably sees the movement as weakness—that I am fragile and naive enough to allow his magnetic force to lift me from my chair and guide me towards the mirror, the coldness of the catacombs already creeping over my skin as I draw near.

But he couldn’t be more in the wrong—because it takes the same amount of strength to strike as it does not to scream. It takes strength to mimic awestruck wonder as opposed to displaying terror; to let him believe that he has lured me to him rather than reveal the conscious decision I make to step into imminent peril. There is strength in knowing that I may never come back from this.

“How is it,” I murmur, praying to the Saints that this stranger cannot read the lie in my body language, “that you make it so easy for me to step into someone else’s death sentence?”

I already know the answer, though. It’s what I’ve been trained to understand until the crown on Venus’s brow finally adorns my own: I am their final line of defense. Wearing the crown isn’t just a symbol for civilians to revere, it’s a reminder to me that should things go up in flames, it’s my job to secure their safety, even if it means ensuring my destruction.

To be vulnerable is to willingly walk into danger , I remind myself.

But perhaps the man is attempting to be vulnerable, too, because his smile falters and his outstretched hand faintly trembles.

“Because it’s not death that I will deal you, Pandora. It’s captivity.”

The fact that he says my name as opposed to my title is not lost on me. It may be a tactic to him, something to push me over the edge. To know that he watched with bated breath as I turned Heath away for that very reason.

But to me, it’s the only scrap of reliability I’m able to cling to as I place my hand into his.

The leather concealing his fingers grasping mine drastically shifts something in the atmosphere. His touch halts my heartbeat and turns my skin to ice. With a quick tug, the masked intruder pulls me flush against him, brings his other hand down upon a tender spot in my neck, and as I’m pulled into the catacombs, the mirrored door clicks shut and darkness descends.