Free Wicked as She Wants by Delilah S. Dawson

be a girl, but don’t forget that I’m a man.”
    I put a gloved hand to my mouth, to the place where his cheek had rasped against mine. He had stolen my first kiss, the bastard. Just another reason to make him pay. His hands hung at his sides as his eyes searched mine for something he didn’t seem to find. I felt dizzy and weak, hungrier than ever.
    “The only thing I need is blood.” I was surprised at how tiny my voice could be.
    “Keep telling yourself that. You kissed me back.”
    “I didn’t.”
    Finally, his eyes released me, and the moment snapped like a snagged thread. I stepped back, my handsflying instinctively to smooth hair that was no longer there. He stepped away from me, too, his boot nudging his leather satchel. It clanked lightly, and my eyes were drawn to it.
    “I can smell when you’re lying.” He gave me a crooked smile. “And I saw what you did to my room. Don’t ever touch my things again, or I’ll put you right back in that suitcase where I found you.”
    “The feather and the coin—” I started, but he cut me off with a finger in my face.
    “Never speak of it again.”
    The words fell, heavy as boulders, to the ground. For all his threats and promises, they were the darkest words he’d spoken yet. And I found myself determined to discover what such an odd creature could hold so dear.
    Since I had no belongings to pack and no preparations to make, I spent the next bit of time scratching Tommy Pain’s belly and studying my sister’s ring in the bright lights of Reve’s mirror. Any Bludman could tell it wasn’t paste; the dark diamond oozed power and rarity like a fine perfume. And Mr. Sweeting had been right about the topaz stones—they were colder than ice. But they weren’t the seat of the ring’s power and magic, other than the magic of inheriting a matriarchy that was currently in thrall to a monster.
    A monster called Ravenna.
    She had come to our country as a traveling mystic. With her ink-black curls and dusky skin and huge, almond-shaped eyes, she had seemed a harmless curiosity. From the villages of the Pinkies to the back doors of the Blud Barons to the gates of the Ice Palace she had gone,winning over everyone she met with charm, cleverness, and a low, sweet voice like winter wine.
    The first time I saw her, I was but a pup, dancing through the gates of the Sugar Snow Festival. Children were allowed to enjoy the festivities and performers and treats on the palace grounds in the evening, but we were always herded back into the castle to lie in bed long before moonrise, ears straining to hear the first waltz of the Sugar Snow Ball. Later, after all the children were asleep, the adults danced a dance so beautiful and mysterious that no one ever spoke of it. But it was twilight when Ravenna found me there by the palace wall as I galloped around my nursemaid among the wagons of the caravan.
    “Tell your fortune, ice princess,” a low voice had murmured from behind the indigo silk of a star-strewn tent.
    “Go ahead, little beauty,” my maid had said. “See what the famous Ravenna can tell you of your future greatness.”
    Ravenna had been but a lapdog then and harmless. She had smiled at me, teeth bright against her honey-colored skin.
    “Give me your hand,” she had said, and I still remembered how my temper had flared, that this common foreigner would dare demand anything of me.
    “You can’t make me,” I had answered, my pert little nose in the air.
    And she had laughed a laugh like icicles chiming in the wind and said, “Then there is your fortune, princess.”
    I had stomped and shrieked and wailed and threatened, but after that, she had utterly refused to take my palm and tell me of my future.
    My maid had comforted me and given me a cone ofbloody snow to suck on, saying, “The wildest things refuse to be tamed, sweet one.”
    Now, years later, after all I’d seen, I wondered which of us she had meant.
    “Bonne chance, chérie,” Reve called out the