Forbidden Embers (16 page)

“I feel exactly the same way. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

“It didn’t exactly seem that way in the club.”

“I already explained that. You were going about things the wrong way back there.”

“And you think you know the right way?”

“I do, actually.”

“Really? So should I draw names out of a hat until I hit on someone whom I can actually stand and who can stomach being married to me, as well?”

“I don’t think you need to do anything that drastic,” he said with a smile.

Warning bells went off in her head at the smooth seduction of his grin, then started clanging at top volume when he shifted his weight so that he was sitting close enough for their thighs to brush. She told herself she was being stupid, even as her heart stuttered in her chest. After all, they’d sat like this many times through the years. Tonight was no different.

Except then he reached for her hands, brought them to rest on his knees. The warning bells turned to shrieks even before his thumbs started to stroke across the back of her hand, again and again.

“What are you doing?” she demanded, trying to pull her hands back from his grip. Inside her, her dragon woke up with a vengeance, snarling and growling at Thierren when it usually tolerated him. If she was completely honest with herself, she would admit that the beast had never particularly liked her friend, but that had never mattered to her before. Thierren had been nice to her when no one else had, when there’d been nothing to gain from it.

Or, at least, when she’d thought there’d been nothing to gain. Now she wasn’t so sure. Hadn’t she just been thinking yesterday that he was the one dragon she didn’t have to worry about? That he had no illusions—or delusions—about marrying her to get his hands on the crown?

Could she really have been so mistaken?

Had she put more faith in him than he deserved?

God, she hoped not. She wasn’t sure she could take it if that was the case. She’d trusted Thierren for years, had told him her secrets when she hadn’t been willing to tell anyone else. If all of those meetings, all that friendship, had just been leading up to a marriage proposal, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to take it. Not without crying—or at least not without taking a swing at him.

“Cecily,” he crooned, leaning down so that his lips were only a few inches from her cheek. As he did, she felt the last little bit of hope inside her dissipate. So much so that when he opened his mouth and started to speak, his words weren’t even a surprise.

“You know, I’ve never had any interest in being part of the royal family. I’ve never wanted the responsibility that comes with ruling a clan—that’s not really my thing. But I feel like I don’t have a choice—”

“You have a choice,” she interrupted.

“What?” He looked confused, and she realized she’d thrown him off his spiel.

“I said, ‘You have a choice.’ ”

“I know that. But I can’t just leave you to struggle through this on your own. We’ve been friends for a long time. I need to step up now and let you know that I’m here for you, any way that you need me to be.”

“Any way that I need you?”

“Yes.”

“Including going beyond the normal boundaries of friendship? You would take your affection that far?”

“For you? Absolutely.”

The words were sweet, exactly what she might have wanted to hear yesterday or last week or last month. But two days spent with her father’s
factionnaires
had made her more cynical, less naive. And if that hadn’t done the job, the calculating gleam in Thierren’s eyes certainly would. Though he was doing his best to look soulful, she swore she could see the avarice in his gaze.

The betrayal cut like a knife. Not for him or her or the situation they now found themselves in, but for the relationship she had once believed they’d had. For the friendship she had once valued above all others.

This time when she tugged at her hand, he let it go—probably because he thought she wanted to throw her arms around him and thank him from rescuing her from the big, bad wolves. Or, to be more precise, the bigger, badder dragons. But she was no damsel in distress, not anymore, and if he thought she was going to latch on to the first offer she got, then he was sadly mistaken.

“I appreciate that, Thierren. I really do. As this . . . situation unfolds, it’s going to be important for me to know who I can trust.”

He blinked a little at her tone, and she didn’t blame him. It wasn’t one she’d ever used with him before—wasn’t one she could ever remember using with anyone, actually. “I’m glad I can put your mind at ease,” he answered, but his smile was a lot more unsettled than it had been just a few minutes before.

“Oh, you definitely did that. I’m so glad I can count on your support from this point forward. It will make it so much easier to convince some of the other
Conseil
members.”

“Yeah, of course.” He cleared his throat. “But I was kind of hoping to make my support for you a little more public.”

“More public than a
Conseil
meeting?” She widened her eyes as she spoke, deliberately playing into the misunderstanding. She wanted to hear him say it—a part of her still wanted to believe in him, and she needed to plainly hear his betrayal, just to make sure she wasn’t making another mistake. “I don’t think we need to advertise that I’m taking over to the entire clan, not yet. As you said earlier, some might not be ready to accept a female ruler—especially some of the older dragons.”

Now he looked pained, his smile definitely strained around the edges. “That’s not what I meant. I was thinking along the lines of something more formal, more permanent.”

“Oh, really? Like what?”
Don’t say it, don’t say it, don’t say it,
she pleaded with him silently.
Please let me have misread the signals. Let me have made some terrible mistake.

But then he said it—the words she’d been dreading since he first took hold of her hands. “I think you should marry me, Cecily.”

She reared back in pretend shock. “Marry
you
? I thought you just said that you didn’t want to be king.”

“I didn’t. I mean, I don’t. But I can put aside my own desires and do this for you. I’d never turn my back on you when you need me.”

He wrapped his arm around her shoulder and she nearly puked on his shoes. It was bad enough that he wanted to marry her to cement his own position in the clan. It was another thing altogether for him to treat her like she was a brainless loser who was too stupid to see the writing on the wall.

She was torn between raking her talons down his face and telling him to go to hell. She wanted to do both, wanted to draw his blood so badly that she could barely breathe with the desire for it. But that wasn’t the way to get ahead with the Wyvernmoons, not with her father’s
Conseil
and not with him. He’d approached her like a gentleman—or the closest thing a slug like him could manage. It would be bad form to respond as anything less than a lady.

“That’s—that’s a very kind offer, Thierren.” She stumbled over the lie, got the words out from sheer will alone. “But I couldn’t ask you to make a sacrifice like that for me.”

He reached up, ran a soft hand down her cheek. “It’s no sacrifice, Cecily. I want to do this.”

Damn right, he does.
So much so that he was champing at the bit, impatience in every line of his body. As if talking to her, let alone wooing her, was just a waste of his time on his mad dash for the grand prize. That she had gone from being someone this man sought out to talk to, to nothing more than a means to an end infuriated her all over again. A way for him to get the power she had never had a clue that he craved.

Unable to bear his touch a second longer, she stood up abruptly. For one moment, she saw a flash in his eyes, a fleeting glimpse of the impatience and annoyance she could feel seething right below the surface. And then it was gone, smoothed away like it had never existed, and that, more than anything else, was the death knell for his suit.

He was faking everything. The affection, the concern, the care. Faking it all in an effort to get a ring on her finger—and one on his. The royal ring, to be exact. How stupid to find out that she had been hoping, even through this whole conversation, that he at least felt
something
for her, as she did for him. Not romantic love, as that had never been between them. But was affection too much to hope for, in all the time they’d spent together? All the discussions they’d had?

In losing her father, had she really lost everything else, as well,
everyone
else, as well? It seemed like she had, only she’d been far too stupid to realize it. That thought grated above all others.

Turning her back on Thierren, she walked to the window. Looked out at the dark night and tried to fight the sudden hatred for the Dragonstars that welled up inside her. In killing her brother, they had done this to her. In killing her father, they had taken away any hope she might have had for a normal relationship—not even a sexual one, but
any
normal relationship.

A part of her wanted to lash out at them, to hurt them as they had hurt her, and to hell with what was best for the clan. The
factionnaires
would love it, and it might actually get her some support from them. She could put together the biggest war party yet, could throw some of her own formidable magic behind it, could . . .

She cut off the rest of the thoughts before they could fully form. What was the point, anyway? Going after Dylan or his mate or his council, for that matter, wasn’t going to bring her father back. Nor was it going to change the situation she now found herself in as she attempted to navigate through the sudden avalanche of interest and nefarious intentions that seemed to be assailing her from all directions.

Thank God she’d been raised in the Black Hills, where avalanches were fairly common in the wintertime. She’d learned early on how to survive in an inhospitable climate.

She turned back to Thierren with a smile on her face. “You’ve given me so much to think about, I can scarcely wrap my mind around it.” She crossed to him, extended her hands and then forced herself not to flinch when he took them. “I knew I could count on you to have my best interests at heart, to try to help me when so many of the others were calling for my blood.”

The bastard didn’t even have the grace to look uncomfortable when he nodded and squeezed her hands. Instead, a smile bloomed across his face—the first real one she had seen all night. It only made her angrier.

“I’ll always look out for you, Cecily. I’ve been doing it your whole life, after all.”

No, he’d been looking out for himself her whole life. It was amazing how this new side of him tainted every memory she had of him. “I know you have, Thierren, and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your honesty. But I need you to go now. I have a lot to think about—”

“Don’t think too long, Cecily. They won’t wait forever, and you don’t want to end up at Julian’s mercy—either in the
Conseil
room or as his wife.”

Annoyed beyond measure at his attempt to rush her, she let a little of her true emotional state shine through for the first time. He blinked, seemingly taken aback by the malice glittering behind her royal smile. She was glad of it, liked this proof that Thierren didn’t know her nearly as well as he thought he did.

“Oh, don’t worry about that. I have absolutely no intention of ending up in a position where Julian has power over me. No intention at all.” She opened the parlor door and waited with thinly veiled impatience for Thierren to walk through it. “Now I must ask you to leave. I have much planning to do, and I’m afraid I can’t do it with you here.”

“But, Cecily, I had hoped that we could reach some understanding tonight—”

“Oh, I understand perfectly, Thierren.”

Her oldest friend blanched. “What do you mean by that?”

She pretended to be confused. “That you’ve explained things admirably, of course. Why? Did you think I meant something else?”

He stumbled through some ridiculous explanation, but she was no longer listening. She escorted him to the front door, suffered through a hug from him when all she really wanted to do was slide a dagger between his ribs, then all but shoved him out the front door.

She slammed it behind him. Then locked it for the first time that she could remember.

C
ecily leaned against the door she had just slammed and tried to pretend that her heart wasn’t breaking wide open. It didn’t work—but then, she hadn’t really expected it to. After all, she’d never been the most accomplished liar, and no amount of self-denial was going to change that. Not now that she knew where she stood. Not now that Thierren had shown her exactly how unimportant she was in the grand scheme of things.

The only thing that mattered to him or to any of the others was the fact that she’d been born a Fournier. Any affection she had imagined that they held for her was nothing more than an illusion—and one they couldn’t keep up as their own ambitions started to overrule their common sense. She’d thought it was her fault they had walked out this afternoon, that it was because of her mistake. But the truth was, they’d been waiting for an excuse to make her look like a fool. That she had handed it to them was her fault. That they had wanted it to begin with was completely theirs.