The Treasure Keeper by Shana Abé

Author:Shana Abé
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Romance
ISBN: 9780553591224
Publisher: Dell
Published: 2009-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

They had found him two days beyond Dijon. He hadn’t realized it was the coachman who’d betrayed him; all Hayden knew was that at some point during the night in the rustic inn they had settled upon he’d awoken to the tiny, persistent scratch of a pick working at the lock to his room. And even then he’d assumed it was just a common thief determined to ransack his luggage; France, he said, was rife with such rogues. Until he’d caught a whiff of saltpeter and nervous sweat. The oiled metal of the guns.

Hayden was full drákon. Although the council had instructed him not to use his Gifts unless his circumstances turned truly dire, he figured a quartet of sanf inimicus breaking through his door was dire enough.

“You Turned?” Zoe asked him, nursing her cup of too-strong tea. “To smoke or to dragon?”

“Oh, to smoke, of course,” he said, taking a sip of his own tea. They had moved from the front parlor to the drawing room across the hall, where there were frosted-glass lamps and a settee wide enough for them both. The curtains here were heavy damask, white with saffron flowers. “A dragon would have shattered that little matchbox of an inn to slivers, even without trying.”

“It was mostly spit and thatch,” agreed the dragon-boy, who had shunned the pungent tea for brandy. He sat by the fire once again. The engraved glass in his hand winked in constant, cinnamon sparks.

Zoe glanced at him. “You were there?” Twice since beginning his tale, Hayden had granted the boy the honorific His Grace, and once, His Highness. Sandu was Zaharen, obviously, from that clan of Transylvanian drákon that so worried her own. He seemed quite young to be both a lone hunter and a prince, but there was no mistaking that air of jaded, adolescent regality about him. He even held his brandy in a studied way, the stem and cup supported between two slender pale fingers.

In any case, Hayden would not be wrong.

“I was,” said Sandu. “The sanf were tracking your husband. I was tracking the sanf. Our sudden convergence was most fortuitous.”

“They weren’t expecting us both. We made short work of them,” Hayden said mildly.

She lowered her cup. “Are they dead?”

“Really, my dear. I can’t imagine you’d find any gratification in the details!” He leaned over to touch a hand to her knee and almost as quickly removed it. “Suffice it to say you need never worry about those particular humans. They shall not trouble us again.”

“Yes,” said Sandu, sending Zoe a short, candid look. “They’re dead.”

“I like this boy,” commented Rhys. “I confess it. I like him more and more.”

The ghost of Rhys had followed them inside. He’d taken a chair by the windows, as relaxed against the cushions as the young prince seemed to be, and up until now at least, he’d been silent.

She’d decided to ignore him. It was her only hope of slipping back into her normal life. If she refused to acknowledge him, if she refused to interact with him, perhaps he’d give up.

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