That wouldn’t have mattered to her father, though. Only the d’Tierrza name mattered to him. Nothing else. No other name, not even that of the royal family, could be allowed to outshine it.
God help you if you had the misfortune to be born with that name.
The charities mattered to her, though. People mattered to her. She was related to him in name only, and if she’d at first cultivated heart and honor just to spite him, in the end, those qualities had been too pure to pollute and had instead molded her. Including the voice that told her all of this was wrong.
Hel broke her stare, unfolded her arms and lazily downed the remainder of her champagne. Effervescent and smooth, it bubbled gently down her throat while she contemplated the perfect crystal stem twirling between her fingers. Then, without turning her gaze back to the statue, she stopped twirling the glass and flicked her wrist, the action decisive and controlled.
The glass sailed toward her father’s likeness, spinning end over end in a perfect circle, before it crashed into the marble statue, shattering on impact. Bright clear pieces of crystal caught the light as they fell, filling the space with her own personal rainbow, all to the sound of tiny brittle stars cracking on the ground.
Suddenly, she heard a throat clear and the scuffing of feet on the paving stones behind her. In an instant, she snapped into full alertness, her wobble and dead father abandoned.
Behind her, the stranger quickened. She moved faster, feinting to the right and dropping into a crouch, before a large hand came around to catch her around the mouth. Her dress seam split as she executed the move, but she ignored it, spinning around to shoot her heeled foot out at the shin of her would-be abductor.
The person anticipated the move, though, jumping out of both her reach and sight. She tried to leap upright but lost precious time, slowed down as she was by her torn evening gown. Their arms, large and strong, came around hers, holding her tight in an iron grip.
This was exactly why she refused to wear dresses. She wouldn’t have been caught if she’d had pants on.
She slammed her head back toward her attacker’s face, but once again the stranger anticipated her move and shifted their head to the side in time to avoid her. Arms tightened around her. She lifted her feet, surprising them with her entire body weight. There was a grunt behind her, but the person held on, the powerful grip loosening only a fraction.
The fraction was all she needed.
She twisted down and out of the hold, dropping to the ground at the same time as she swept his feet out from under him. She could see that he was a man now. He landed well, but the move managed to give her enough time to put space between them and take a reasonable, if narrow, fighting stance.
He leaped from the ground effortlessly and advanced toward her, and for an instant, she was frozen.
He was stunning.
Well over six feet tall, his skin shone a rich, dark brown. His suit was impeccably tailored but not of Cyranese cut or style. Instead, it nodded toward their Sidran neighbors to the south with a long jacket and short collar.
In all her life, she had never been stopped short by another soul, and yet this man had paralyzed her. It wasn’t his clothing, though it fit him flawlessly, highlighting his perfect proportions. The bulk of the people who inhabited her world had been wearing bespoke couture since they could first toddle. It wasn’t his height. Her father had been a tall man and her cousin, the current king and her lifelong best friend, was a towering man.
The man was older than she was, his trim beard lightly salt and peppered, though his skin was as smooth as marble. His eyebrows were thick and black, and low over his eyes.
Those eyes. Something about them grabbed at her and pulled, urging her to move closer, as if she was his prey, helplessly ensnared.
He smiled, the expression filling his deep brown eyes with an arrogant gleam. The smile drew her eyes to his mouth, which was full. Her lips parted, dry suddenly, and she licked them.
“It seems I might have underestimated the difficulty I’d face in convincing you today...” he mused in Cyranese, his low whisper a skin-tingling bass that caressed her ears.
She shivered, breath hitching, as her body kick-started systems she’d been certain were defective after years of being dormant.
And then his words sank in.
He knew the effect he was having on her. And he thought he could use it against her.
Heat flooded Hel’s face, a combination of irritation at his arrogance and embarrassment at her stupefaction—because that’s the only thing it could be called, as stupid as it was—but this time she didn’t let her reaction to him slow her down.
In one smooth motion, she reached down, took off a heel and hurled it at his face, quickly repeating the motion with the other shoe before bolting toward the courtyard’s exit.
He avoided the first shoe, but not the second, giving her precious seconds of advantage.
They weren’t enough.
Beating her to the archway, he blocked the way and she halted, not willing to get within arm’s reach again. Without taking her eyes off him, she grabbed the ripped seam of her dress and ripped it farther.
His cocky grin returned. “Eager, are we?”
She flipped him a rude gesture and he threw his head back and laughed. The sound hummed through her bones before coming to a heated rest at her core, though she resisted the urge to press her legs together.