He wiggled his fingers against my hand, and I released him, flushing with embarrassment. Dain only smirked, one ear turning, then held his arm out so that I could take it correctly for an entrance. I did, trying to cool my cheeks, and felt Dain run his claw down along my pinkie. I didn't think he was trying to comfort me this time. I didn't think he even realized he was doing it at all, an idle gesture of physical affection.

That frightened me far more than even my growing ease around him. Dain Sundamar, the Beast of Phazikai, taking off his armor for me, and forgetting to put it back on. I'd asked him to, and he'd promised to, but the outcome of that promise was so much more than I'd anticipated. He wasn't only secretly not a terrible person. I thought that he was secretly a gentle person, someone who deeply wanted to be loved and cared for, and he kept making himself vulnerable for me.

I liked him. I enjoyed him. I wanted him to be happy. And he was giving me the power to break his heart, when what I wanted most of all was to leave him forever and return to my life.

Dain started walking with his dangerous, sensual saunter, and I fell automatically into my matching pace as we turned the corner, Zhiolas walking at Dain's left shoulder. At the end of the hallway, a pair of double doors stood wide open, opening into an enormous courtyard garden spangled with the bright colors of fae dressed to the nines in court finery. Compared to them, Dain and I stuck out like sore thumbs: Dain in his typical all-black, and me in casual dark jeans and a sunset-orange silk shirt patterned with leafy vines. A raven and a sparrow among tropical songbirds.

Nobody noticed us at first. Nobody was looking at the entrance into the palace. They were all milling around, holding little flutes of some sort of pale amber drink, and the gentle focus was on two women in spectacular coordinating gowns, one with her arm around the waist of the other, bedecked in gems and with a glamor of small, vivid butterflies fluttering around them. I glanced around, at the tables with their centerpieces of cattails and irises, the banquet table of fine food, and then back to the bower of flowers under which the women stood.

Oh, my God. This was a wedding. We were crashing a wedding.

"Lady Ralozana, Lady Qiynore," Dain said in a dangerous battlefield voice. "My congratulations on your union."

Total silence dropped across the Lesser Garden as every eye turned towards us. You could have heard a petal fall. The two newlyweds looked as if they might have preferred to remain unwed rather than welcome the crown prince to their reception, settling themselves as if for battle as Dain stalked across the garden with me on his arm.