CHAPTER FOUR
“What do you mean, she lives?” Cassiane ignored Devious’ dispassionate stance as she questioned his performance. He stood rigid before her, hands clasped at his back, eyes forward, his gaze locked on the wall behind her desk. Considering the lethal hunter she knew him to be, banded in corded muscle and leather and weapons, how had he been unable to expire one human woman?
She leaned heavy into her palms on the leather blotter before her and stared at the crest of her family ring. The unexpected death of her father had dropped the reins of power squarely in her lap. Now, as Mistress of Shedim, her people needed her to be a leader, not the broken-hearted orphan she was in actuality.
Shifting to sit in her father’s leather desk chair, the upholstery practically swallowed her up. She tented her fingers, hoping the confidence she portrayed would come. “By your account, the Sumerian broke faith with negotiations and slaughtered my father, your leader. Correct?”
Devious dipped his chin in answer, but his gaze remained locked forward.
“And you realize that for us to show weakness to our allies and enemies only invites chaos into our already tumultuous and uncertain lives?”
Another nod, the muscles in the warrior’s square-cut jaw flexing.
“Then we need results, Devious. An eye for an eye. A life for a life. Killing the wife of the Nephilim commander is the first step in my plan to destroy his world as he has destroyed ours. The way we handle this sets the tone for our future.”
“And she will die, Mistress, I swear it. This wasn’t my fault. Three Watchers escorted—”
She raised her hand and he clenched his jaw shut. Devious was many things: cunning, deadly, intelligent, most assuredly determined, but he also avoided accepting responsibility for his shortcomings. It was a most unattractive character flaw. For good or ill, a true male owned his actions. “If I were my father sitting here before you, would you make excuses?”
Something flared in his eyes, but vanished quickly.
“Apologies, Mistress,” he said, clasping his hands at his front, “but if your father were here, he would know what it means to face three Watchers, and I would not need to explain.”
The breath she’d been holding froze in her chest as she forced a smile. “So, because I have never gone on a hunt to the Human Realm, I could not possibly understand what it means to go up against our enemy? Is that what you’re implying?”
“I wasn’t implying a thing, Mistress,” he said. His cold stare shifted to meet her own, the intensity of his glare strangling her somehow.
Cassiane picked the Shedim Master’s Dagger off the desk and ran her fingers along the steel of the blade. There was something oddly hypnotic about the way the warm light of the sconces danced up and down the surface of the blade as she pivoted the tip against the vulnerable flesh of her finger. The weapon had belonged to her father, his father before him, and her grandfather’s father before that. It was hers now, a fact the males of the castle would have to reconcile with.
Devious rocked on the balls of his feet, his mighty bulk shifting beneath the leather attire he wore to the Human Realm.
With a quizzical eye, she traced the military cut of his dark hair, the line of his leather jacket as it stretched over his broad shoulders, the fit of his pants from his trim waist to the strain of dark fabric as it clung to his muscled thighs. What was the allure? The females of the castle went on about him. Frankly, she didn’t see it. Not once had she found her heart aflutter or her flesh warm with the needing of him. Never had she felt a throb of femininity wakening for him . . . or any other male, for that matter.
He shifted again, and his lips pursed tight.
“Devious, if you have something on your mind, by all means, out with it.”
His dark eyes lit with consideration as he picked his words. “You are out of your depths as the Mistress of Shedim, and you don’t even realize it. A lamb in a world of wolves. Stryker insulated your life and your reality, and everyone within the castle walls knows it.” Devious wet his lips, and when she offered no argument, he appeared to gather strength to continue. “As females go, you are relatively sharp and run the castle with compassion and an efficient hand, but you would do well to leave it at that.”
Relatively sharp? She tightened her grip on the hilt of the letter opener and bit back her urge to speak her mind fully. “I see. And what, pray tell, would you have me do to rectify the situation we now find ourselves in?”
“In the interest of our race, you should honor your father’s wishes and wed me. Then you could tend to the needs of the civilians and leave the ruling of the hunters and soldiers to someone capable of leading them. It’s the only way I see us surviving.”
She fought to harness the laughter burning in her chest. Arrogant ass. His opinion didn’t surprise her, but she was saddened by it all the same. “So, I should keep house and let you handle the important issues of our people, is that it? Take my place as the dutiful Mistress while you, the new Master of Shedim, handle all matters of gravity?”
He straightened. “That was your father’s will. As my female, I would allow you to—”
“Allow me?” She leapt over the desk in a flurry of swirling skirts and lodged the dagger’s point squarely at his crotch. Her fangs extended, and the tips tingled with the urge to rip flesh. “My father wanted a great many things, Devious, but until I agree, I am not your wife, and you need not allow me anything. Since I asked you to speak freely, your opinion shan’t be held against you, but let me illuminate my position. The notion of the Mistress being wed to the Master’s Hand is an antiquated tradition. The decision is, and will always be, mine.”
In a blur of movement, Devious grabbed her wrist and bent her backward against the edge of her desk. He overpowered her without effort, her escape impossible. “You are foolish if you believe you have the strength to command my men and lead the Shedim into the next phase of the uprising.”
He pressed closer, looming over her like the great mammoth he was. “Don’t misunderstand your father’s motives, Cassiane. The suggestion you and I marry wasn’t Stryker’s way of providing for you. It was his way of ensuring the Shedim don’t become extinct.”
She strained against his iron grip, her arms tingling with the loss of circulation. “And a relatively sharp female like myself couldn’t possibly inspire confidence in and lead our people? Is that the truth of things, as you see it?”
“It is the truth, period,” he said, his voice rough, his hips pressing his arousal hard against her belly. Male heat filled the air between them as his cold stare fixated on her. Was he sizing her up for a shroud or for sex? His lips curled in a cruel smile. “You have no frame of reference to what our men face each and every time they go on a hunt. You know naught of the evils beyond these stone walls. The scope of treachery we deal with is beyond your—”
“My what?” she snapped, flashing her canines, fury dripping into her voice. “Beyond my intelligence? Beyond my ability? Tell me, Devious, beyond my what? Certainly, not beyond my power. That isn’t what you were going to say, is it? Because one call for my guards, and you spend the rest of your arrogant life in the dungeon as my prisoner. Or perhaps I’ll save you the humiliation and have your throat slit tonight.”
A long, bruised silence rose between them, but in the end, Devious chuckled and pulled back. “Apologies, Mistress. When the next opportunity to move on the Sumerian’s female presents itself, I assure you, it shall be done.”
Cassiane forced her trembling legs to move her behind the desk. Back straight, chin high, she reclaimed her father’s dagger and steeled her nerve. “Yes, well, I have a better idea.”