“We all have our skill sets,” I said. “I thought you were planning to go steal from the king.”
One corner of his lips tilted up into a smile. “Fair enough. I can’t exactly blame you for being full of reckless, terrible ideas when I’m equally filled with terrible, reckless ideas. How can I help?”
“This is why I like you so much,” I teased him. “All right, I’ll find the recipe for the truth potion. Would you stay here with Lucien for a while? So he’s not alone?”
Caldren gave me a look that said why, and also please Gods no. But he just nodded, then headed back to Lucien. Luce needed company, and Caldren was very good company.
I headed upstairs to search for the book of enchantments in the library. It wasn’t there. I headed down the hall. Branok and Lynx must have taken it to make some potion, but what were they working on?
I tried the door to the workshop where Branok and Lynx must keep their potion ingredients, but it was locked. No worries; I’d carried my lockpicking kit with me tonight, just in case.
“Well, Honor,” a dark voice demanded behind me. “What are you up to now?”
Chapter
Forty-Two
Honor
I jumped like a frightened child, then turned and fixed Branok with a glare that did nothing to hide any of my embarrassment, or to dispel the faint, nasty smile written across his face. “How long have you been lurking in the shadows waiting to catch me doing something I shouldn’t?”
“Always,” he said.
I rolled my eyes. “Right, because you never sleep. I’m supposed to believe that you’re some kind of heroic figure.”
“Why not? The rest of the kingdom does,” he said lightly.
“The rest of the kingdom seems to be composed of idiots,” I said, then smiled at him. “I’m surprised you’re not the king.”
He frowned, obviously understanding I’d just crowned him the king of idiots without saying so directly. Then he strode toward me, pinning me against the door with his body. His big hands braced either side of my head. I lifted my chin, gazing into his steely green eyed gaze from a few inches away. I refused to be cowed by this ridiculous man. Heat crackled between us when we were this close.
“We just talked about how you were a potential danger,” he said. “Now here you are skulking around the castle at night. I thought you took the potential danger seriously, even if you’re innocent. But if you’re out at night, then it tells me that you don’t care about any danger to my friends.”
He leaned so close to me his lips scraped my ear when he murmured, “You’re not innocent.” His breath against my throat made me want to squirm.
“I don’t know what these enchantments are, Branok. That’s why I’m awake in the middle of the night, trying to figure it out.” I put my palm against his chest to push him back, but the solid-rock of his body wasn’t moved. “These aren’t my secrets. They’re your family’s conspiracies. The Olds’ conspiracies. They’re the ones moving in the shadows, aren’t they?”
“Don’t underestimate me, Honor. I have conspiracies of my own.” He chucked my chin, the movement condescending. His face was fixed with that faint, playful smile. But his eyes were cold and deadly. “Now, why don’t you tell me what you’re doing, trying to break into my workshop?”
“I wasn’t going to break into your workshop,” I answered.
“Really? You don’t happen to have a lock picking kit tucked into the pocket of your robe or your nightgown? If I search you, I won’t find one.”
“If you search me, you’re going to find something you don’t like very much,” I promised him. “Maybe I always carry one just in case.”
He kept looking at me as if gauging my reaction. Then suddenly, he burst into motion. His hands ran down my gown. The sensation of his hands on my body sent a warm jolt through my skin, and I flushed with a mixture of arousal and anger.
But I didn’t feel enough arousal to stop me from grabbing his shoulders and yanking him down into my waiting knee.
He was just as quick as I was, of course. He twisted to one side and my knee banged into the side of his temple at half the force, rather than the impact to his nose I’d intended.
“You’d think you don’t care about leaving me pretty.” He slammed me up against the wall, his forearm pressing my throat.
“I don’t,” I answered sweetly. “Because I already have your brother for the pretty face and he has a decent personality to go with it. I only need one of you.”
“You don’t know how much fun twins could be.”
He tried to pin me and search my pockets which gave me the opening to knee him in the groin. He cringed, but tried to hang on as I wrestled away. The two of us crashed to the ground and wrestled to get on top, but he managed to pin me.
“Not if you’re one of the twins,” I shot back.
“You’ll never know how much fun I could be, Honor, you don’t deserve me.” He finally managed to get my lock picking kit out of my pocket, dropping it on my chest. “This is exactly what every innocent girl carries around while she’s looking for a midnight snack, isn’t it?”
I rolled my eyes. “I needed the book of enchantments and it’s not in the library. I figured you’re hoarding it like you hoard everything else.”
“I’m a dragon,” he reminded me. “Dragons like to hoard.”
“Even dragons can learn to share.” Talisyn and Jaik had learned to share oh so very well.
“What’s the enchantment that you needed?” Branok demanded. He sat back on his heels grudgingly. As tall and muscular as he was, he seemed to embody a surprising amount of grace.
“I wanted to look for ways to uncover what the enchantments are that I’m carrying.” I said.
His brows lifted. “Lynx and I tried to help, and weren’t successful.”
“I’m not giving up because we had one bad day,” I said. “I need to know what these enchantments are and who put them on my body.”
“Likely story,” he said.
“And I was looking for something else,” I admitted.
“Of course you were. What is it?”
“Truth potion,” I said.
He scoffed. “A truth potion? Those are possible to circumvent. If you think that I’m going to believe you, just because you use one, you’ve lost your mind.”
“Branok, I’m not wasting my time trying to convince you I’m a good person. You’ve made it clear. You’re not accepting any new evidence. Arguing with someone whose core personality trait is always being right? It’s pointless. I don’t know why people bother.”
“Let’s make your potion,” Branok said suddenly. “But what else were you hoping to find in my workshop? You’re not just trying to figure out the enchantments.”
“I need to understand them,” I said patiently. “It freaks me out, not knowing what’s happening to me.”
“That’s how you plan to circumvent the truth potion, isn’t it?” he demanded. “You have more than one goal. You tell me one and it’s the truth, but it’s not the whole truth.”
“You seem like quite the expert on how to tell lies.”
“Well, I am a spy master. Lies are my life.”