CHAPTER 33: THIRTY THREE

Valka

I should have returned when Leander told me to.

But I’d gone and grabbed a goblet from the servant’s tray. It was the sweetest thing I’d ever tasted and even if it made me dizzy, I couldn’t help but down even more of it. And it had been fine. Really.

Until Alfie found me.

"You’re a rather shy one," she’d said, appearing out of nowhere. She was dressed as all servants were. Black dress that swept across the floors and a white corset. On a night like this, the ropes of her corset were undone and the lace underthing she wore underneath pushed her cleavage into a sumptuous amount.

I thought sourly, if I had breasts like that, perhaps Rafe wouldn’t have dropped me.

I sighed into my goblet. "Not usually. My mother always said I couldn’t stop running my mouth."

Her doe eyes glittered, and something musty tinged her scent. It made me blink, trying to remember what that scent was, but it only awarded me with a blurred vision.

"War changes people, I’ve heard," she murmured and I started as her breath tickled my lips. I hadn’t even noticed her moving, or the hand that traveled down my belly, hard with months of relentless training. It wasn’t nowhere near as toned as Leander’s or Rafe’s or King Lucien’s, but I suppose it was enough to make the maid blush. "They say you felled an army of ten thousand with a flick of your wrist."

I caught her fist before it could drift lower and find the lack of hardness that a man would no doubt have from merely staring at her. She was beautiful, but I very well like men. Actually, I don’t know that, either. But I don’t feel tingles, not like the kind Rafe made me feel. Or the heat of lust being around the King overwhelms me with.

Rather than stop her advances, she seemed to like the feel of my hands around her wrist, her blush deepening. "If you’d like," she whispered, lashes low, lips puckered. "I could attend your needs. All of them, Sir Valerian."

Heat rushes up my neck from the many goblets of liquor I have drained. "That--" My words slurred. Gods, why did I drink so much? I’ve never even had liquor in my whole life. "That won’t be necessary, Alfie. Thank you."

The woman seemed deaf. Or maybe she was just determined to jump my bones. Her lips curved slow, sly. "You know my name." She twirled a curl around her finger. "There’s a wager, you know. For the first woman who breaks you in."

When she says ’break you in’, my mind travels to that one vision. King Lucien’s hand around Ilya’s neck and her screams that felt pain and unending pleasure. I shake my head with an irritated scowl. I haven’t been able to get the images out of my head all day. "I’m flattered--"

She presses her chest against mine and steps on her toes, her lips brushing against the curve of mine in a soft kiss. "I don’t do this for the wager. I’m not like them. I do this because I am in awe of you. I... I like you."

I jerk back and as a result, I slam into someone behind me. "Sorry," I start to say, but whoever they are, they push back at me, causing me to slam into Alfie and another row of guests. Alfie stumbles, but I don’t get so lucky. Elbows and hands ram into my rib and I begin yelling, frustrated, while they yell back at me to watch where the hell I’m going.

And as the Goddess would have it, the next person I’d collided with was Nath, who upon recognizing me, looked at me with bloody murder. And my fight or flight instinct had kicked in.

Now, I burn.

A scream tears from my throat as I dance in circles, patting down on my clothes. "Put it out! Put it out!"

From my periphery, I catch sight of the King. Seated, watching, laughter spilling from him, sharp and delighted. More life in his wicked eyes than I’d seen since the Selection began.

No one moves. Not the Lady whose flames ripple across my skin, not a member of the Council. They watch, frozen, as the flames devour me My tunic curls to ash, the fabric around my chest and hips turning to smoke. My cries break into ragged desperation.

It takes a moment to notice the utter silence.

Or the fact that the fire didn’t burn as it should. It burns the clothes off me but it sizzles when it touches my skin, before vanishing completely, like a wall of water had been doused over it.

Not heat, not pain. Nothing. Only the stink of charred cloth. The fabric around my breasts gone. The ugly briefs I’d doned this morning, gone. Just me, skin charred with smoke, breaths trembling as it finally clicks.

I’m fucking naked.

And I scream, falling back. My bare ass hits smack into the ground. I don’t know where to cover. My breasts, my ass, my thighs or my face. My arms shoot up anyway, wrapping around myself as a thousand eyes pin me in place. Confusion. Interest. Shock.

Margot shoots to her feet, as does the rest of the council. "Oh, for the goddess’s sake, someone fetch a damned robe!"

But I don’t hear them. My gaze locks on Lucien’s.

He isn’t laughing anymore. He looks at me as if he is sculpting me in his mind, violet eyes gone black, tracing every inch of me. Breasts, hips, thighs, the trembling between. He lingers. Twice. Repeats, as though he cannot quite believe what he’s looking at.

I’ve never felt more vulnerable in my life. Being stripped apart by a single stare. It isn’t even heated or tinged with desire. It is clinical, almost like a physician running a physical diagnosis and coming to a conclusion that his patient, is indeed female.

For a moment he doesn’t move, seeming carved out of stone.

And when he does, it is swift, in that eerie way he does. His gilded coat drops on my shoulder, the crowd as enraptured as I as he lifts my chin with a fingers.

Slowly, his lips tilt into a dark smile.

"You dirty, little liar."