Page 45 of Throne of Ice and Blood
A jolt shoots through me, and fire burns through my core again. I flick a glance towards the closed door to his bedroom before I meet his intense eyes again. “I thought you didn’t want me in your bed.”
“I thought you climbed into it anyway.”
My heart pounds against my ribs at the memory of what happened between us when he locked me in his bedroom during the Atonement Trials.
Draven nods towards the open door to my bedroom. “You have thirty seconds to go and put on your nightgown. Then I expect you in my bed.”
Heat rushes through my whole body.
Licking my lips, I swallow. “Or what?”
“Or I’m going to throw you over my shoulder, carry you back there, and handcuff you to it.”
Forbidden desire shoots through me.
A slow smile spreads across Draven’s lips. “One.”
I dart into my bedroom. Grabbing the short silk nightgown, I yank it over my head and then snatch up a pair of panties that I didn’t have a chance to put on earlier. And before Draven reaches the count of thirty, I am indeed lying on the soft sheets of his luxurious bed.
The mattress shifts underneath my body as Draven lies down after shifting into his fully human form again.
“At least you’re not blocking half of the bed with your wings this time,” I mutter into the darkness.
Warm air hits my bare shoulder as Draven lets out a soft chuckle.
Silence falls over us. The moment I climbed onto the bed, I rolled over so that my back was to him. And for a while, I just lie there on my side and stare out at the darkened room. The mattress shifts underneath me again as Draven gets comfortable. I listen to his steady breathing while my heart does dumb things in my chest.
And before I can stop myself, I find myself saying, “Back then, you purposely shifted into your human form in the middle of the night and lifted me into your bed, didn’t you?”
He doesn’t reply. But his breath hitches for a second, so I know that he heard me.
“Why?” I ask, because I know that I’m right about this. There is no other explanation for it. I didn’t climb into the bed backthen, so the only way for me to end up there is for him to have put me there himself.
Still, he says nothing. But he doesn’t deny it either.
Blowing out a sigh, I pull the covers up higher around me while indecision pulses through me. I wonder if he would help me. He obviously cares about me in some capacity, and he did try to save me from this fate. And I know that he dislikes what the Icehearts are doing to us. So if I told him about the human resistance and the heist, he might actually help me.
While Draven’s breathing evens out again, I run that idea through my head several times. But I always come back to the same conclusion.
No, he wouldn’t help me.
I don’t know what happened to him that made him sell out his own clan in exchange for power, but he’s obviously too afraid of the Icehearts to ever dare defy them.
No. Regardless of his secret moments of kindness, I can’t trust him. Not with this. Against the Iceheart Dynasty, we are on our own.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
When Draven said everywhere, he truly meant everywhere. It has been almost a week since he issued that command, and I honestly thought that he would be satisfied by now. That he would just do it for a day or two to prove a point. But Goddess was I wrong. Every day, he takes me with him when he goes out into the city to hunt for the Red Hand.
Torchlight dances over the dark wooden walls of the tavern we’re in. The people who are renting rooms in the adjacent corridor quickly disappeared into them the moment that four dragon shifters in black armor stepped across the threshold. But the humans who were just here to eat or drink weren’t as lucky. Most of them are cowering down in their seats, trying not to draw attention to themselves while Galen, Draven’s former best friend who appears to still be his second-in-command, tortures a man at the bar.
I wince as another scream shatters from the human man’s throat.
“Who is the Red Hand?” Galen demands, his voice hard.
The man clenches his teeth.
Two steps away, Draven is leaning nonchalantly against the bar while he watches the brutal interrogation. Galen flicks a glance at him, to which Draven responds with a nod.
