“Are you Anzi?” She leaped to her feet and reared up like a serpent about to strike, only to realize the voice belonged to none other than a pretty girl wearing a pale pink chiffon gown and bedecked in numerous small articles of silver and pearl. Loose blonde ringlets fell about her pale face, giving her an innocent yet womanly look, but the pale blue eyes that stared back at Anzi were more alarmed than sweet. Her hands were clasped and folded in front of her chest, and she stood half-turned away from when she had jumped in fright. One of the harem girls. Anzi relaxed and made sure her relieved exhale was slow and silent. No need to reveal her agitated state this morning to anyone. “That’s me,” she said. “Are you the one His Excellency sent to see me?” “No, but she’s fallen sick this morning, and all I know is that I’m to see you instead. I was hoping you could fill me in on what I’m to do.” Anzi blinked. She hadn’t been told? Even if an emergency had arisen and they had hastily se

Nosy passersby chose that exact instant to cluster around the scene, and now Anzi was on the wrong side of the circle of murmuring civilians forming around the disturbance. Not for long. She forced her way through with savage shoves, earning strings of filthy curses, until finally she caught Violetta’s gaze over the last several shoulders. The woman was still on the ground, kneeling in the dust and twisted to the side as she shielded the lower half of her face with a dainty hand. A thick drizzle of blood dripped from her chin, and Anzi’s face tightened in hot anger. Who dared? Violetta was her responsibility. Whoever was stupid enough to lay their hand on her was going to lose it. She wouldn’t even give them a chance to apologize, neither to Violetta nor to the Emperor whose charge she was. But before she could charge in, the woman sent her an almost imperceptible warning, a quick shake of her head and a bright, frightened look. It stopped Anzi in her tracks, and instead of leaping fo

Kai came to her first. He wasn’t supposed to. She should have been the one to go to his room an hour from now, according to the timecatcher hanging from the window in the sunlight. But for some reason, he was standing here and looking at her with a slow, lazy smile that almost made her close the door in his face in the compulsive need to escape from it. He was too much. She couldn’t do this. He was too early. She had needed the extra time to steel herself so she wouldn’t do idiotic things in his presence, but now he had stolen that from her. “Anzi.” She hated how he said her name. It made her bones shake and her eyes hot. “Yes, sir.” “Come walk with me. I’m lonely.” “Weren’t you with His Excellency and his advisors just now?” “I was. But talk of business and trade doesn’t warm a man any.” He extended a hand to her across the threshold, palm up, and she dropped her gaze to it wit

“You’re late.” “I’m early.” “Not to me.” Bastien pointed down the Cave’s sloping passageway. The scant light of the moon faded as the woven grass cover rustled into place, and the growing darkness made his sharp smile look even more sinister. Anzi followed the direction of his jabbing finger without another word. She had no time to waste on him. She was here on a mission, one more important than any argument no matter how irritating he was, especially since Bastien had laughed in her face last night when she spoke of soul bonds and a singular meant-to-be waiting for her in one of the dragon eggs. He had said she was being ridiculous, but if it made her feel better to think that way, he didn’t care so long as they found a good steed for her. Steed, as if dragons weren’t noble creatures with great intelligence even if it was different from that of humans. She knew it. She saw it in Colonel Bisset’s dragon every time she found herself at the center of the creature’s heavy gaze, somethi

When Anzi awoke, it was in utter confusion that she found herself wrapped in hard, solid arms and pressed back into a very bare chest. For several seconds, she had no recollection of how she had ended up in this unfamiliar bed with a man’s face buried in her hair and his hands perilously close to dropping below her hips. But she certainly knew who said man was in an instant. There was no mistaking the intoxicating masculine scent she could never get out of her head. Oh. Oh, that was right. He had pulled her into his bed and all but forced her to fall asleep against him. But how long ago? What time was it now? Her eyes widened in unadulterated shock when she realized it had to have been hours since. She was far too well-rested and soothed, and struggling still to rise out of the comfortable depths of delicious sleep even now. Wake up, she ordered herself, and she tried to pull out of Kai’s embrace so she could jump off the bed and onto her feet. Sleeping in the middle of the day when s