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“You were going to try and kill me,” he remarked.

I remembered the stiletto. It was now somewhere on the floor beside the bed—unless he’d magicked it out of my reach. Most likely, it was still where it fell. “We don’t need to talk about that,” I snarked. His nails trailed along my arm, leaving goosebumps in their wake.

What had I been thinking? There was no way I could have killed him. And supposing I had, did I really think I’d make some kind of valiant escape from a castle teeming with the undead?

My heart banged against my ribs. I didn’t really want to kill him. My temper tantrum was a result of our mutual stubbornness.

“What ended up happening to Kiam?” I asked, my voice soft.

Lukas pushed himself up and rolled onto his back. “You’d ask me about another man while my seed is spilling out of you?”

“That’s another thing we don’t actually need to verbalize,” I stated. A bit graphic, if you ask me.

He smirked and then he was on top of me, gripping my chin and staring down. The sheets were tangled around him, and he looked like a Greek God. “Don’t touch another man and you won’t have to worry about your friends. I’m the only one who gets the privilege.”

His hand smoothed down my neck, tracing a path all the way to my waist. Then he was gone, leaving me swiveling my head back and forth. “Where the hell did you go,” I grumbled.

He was nowhere in sight, so I went to the ensuite, intent on cleaning myself up. When I returned, with a fluffy white robe wrapped around me, he was standing by the desk, the missing stiletto on its surface.

When I reached him, he lifted it and placed it in the drawer where I first found it and waved his hand over the panel. I reached over and tried the drawer. It only budged about a half inch.

“I don’t know how you do that,” he grumbled.

“What? It's kind of pretty and I like having it around, just in case.” It wasn’t just the sense of security around Lukas that it had provided me. “But for real, where’s Kiam? He was pretty cool. Is he mad at you still?”

Lukas’s face clouded, and he tucked his hands in his pockets. “He is gone. Went back home.” He glanced at me quickly before tapping a couple of fingers against the desk. “He came back long enough to drop off a surprise for me.”

“You don’t sound pleased.”

He arched a single eyebrow. “I am not. Speaking of which, I need to check on something.”

He pressed a kiss against my forehead and hugged me against his chest, surrounding me with his warmth before he disappeared, again.

As soon as he left, I went back to the desk. I pulled at the drawer again and again, just like I do with the door. It opened. I kept the stiletto.

Why not? It’s beautiful.

CHAPTER 20

Lukas

Cassia’s scent surrounded me, and her blood soared through my veins, buoying me and giving me a deep sense of peace. She’d been marked and claimed. She was now untouchable by law.

That promise gave me the boost of energy I needed to get through the next couple of days, enhanced by sleeping by her side at night. Maybe “sleeping” wasn’t the right word, since I didn’t need it. Nevertheless, I held her while she slumbered, after taking my fill of her body and blood.

I had chosen well, even if she was a impossible brat at times.

This was probably the first time I ever entered the dungeons and jail with a smile on my face. The guard standing by the entry table paled upon seeing my grin—quite a feat seeing as he was typically near-transparent. I relaxed my face and crossed to the cell where Zaynan was interred.

He wasn’t there, and neither was the door. At least not in the same shape as I’d left it. The bars were curved down towards the floor as if they’d been melted and molded into a graceful slide.

“Guard!” I raised my voice.

The man hurried over. “Yes, my Lord?”

My hand raised and I seized his energy field, gripping him and dragging him to the cell’s entryway. “The prisoner. Why was I not informed?”

“Queen’s orders, my Lord. You were not to be disturbed.”