Two
Clint hated coming to the service fair, but his Queen commanded it. Well, his Queen through her Master of the Guard. Clint may have been a Warlord Prince himself, but he was not going to argue with Fury. His job was to look through the hopefuls, and see which, if any, caught his eye. He would then pass his recommendations on up the chain of commands.
Exactly why they thought a Purple Dusk Warlord Prince was a good judge of character, he didn’t know. Perhaps it was a job to simply keep him out of the way. He wouldn’t put it past Fury, although he hoped Queen Maria wouldn’t be that manipulative.
He wasn’t even looking when he caught the psychic scent. It was silk and blood, teasing at his senses, drifting in and around his mind like a sweet, sweet fog. It was tenuous, insubstantial, but Clint wanted it more than anything else in the world.
There was no other woman who had affected him like this. No other scent that called so strongly to him, despite its vagueness. He felt himself rising to the killing edge as his senses, his mind sharpened. He would find the owner, and he would kneel at her feet.
A Warlord Prince on the killing edge was dangerous. A Warlord Prince on the killing edge looking for someone, was even more so. His path cleared, but Clint barely noticed, still searching, still trying to tease that silken scent into something stronger.
He kept casting out with his strength, but when he finally touched something, the shock stopped him in his tracks. It was dark, it was dangerous, venom coursing so close to his mind. It was red, blood red and spider silk, tattered and torn and yet intact.
The blank-eyed stare of the broken witch, huddled in on herself in the mud, sharpened as Clint continued to stare at her. She looked broken, and felt broken to his strength but she also felt whole to everything that made him a Warlord Prince. Standing at the level of Purple Dusk, he could feel her beneath him, testing him, brushing against his shields. He wanted to kneel at her feet, submit to him, let her chain him within the bounds of Protocol.
But not yet. Her slowly sharpening gaze warned him not to. The way that her psychic presence pressed venom soaked power to his inner web kept him calm, kept him from lashing out at anyone who had hurt his Queen.
He did the only thing that he could do. He dropped his shields, and let her in.