Bane of the Wild Hunt (Heart of the Tithriall #2)

35. BENEATH THE STARS

Chapter thirty-five

BENEATH THE STARS

Amira

I stood silently in front of the mirror while Sofia quickly got me changed into the delicate, pale lavender nightdress that she’d had made for this night. Much of it was sheer, which was why it included a long coat to cover me until Riordan got there. She unpinned my braids and plucked the flowers out of them before unwinding my hair so it fell in soft waves over my shoulders. She even removed the charcoal from around my eyes so I looked more like my softer, doe-eyed self rather than whatever griffin noble I had been trying to emulate.

Orion had apologized for his unkind words, but it had not lessened the anguish of old wounds torn open again, and I still felt about as brittle as he had looked earlier.

Helena shifted as if looking for the threat when tears began to well in my eyes, but Sofia merely gripped my shoulders to draw my gaze to hers in the reflection.

“Whatever Orion said to you doesn’t matter. He lashes out to hurt you because he hurts. But Riordan chose you ,” she insisted firmly, and I forced a smile to my face.

“I know. Orion… He knew what to say.”

“We all have scabs that bleed when they are picked at. But some of us are losing so much blood that we flounder in it and want to pull others down with us. You will not allow him to drown you too,” she commanded me.

I released a sound that was somewhere between a sob and a laugh as her words gave me an unexpected relief. Though I ached for Orion and his situation, I was allowed to prioritize myself. I needed to prioritize myself.

“Thank the gods for you, Sofia,” I said, reaching up to wipe the tears from my eyes.

She swatted my hand suddenly away. I stared at her in confusion as she quickly turned me toward her, but then she produced a handkerchief to absorb my tears herself with delicate dabs.

“Rubbing them will give you puffy eyes tonight!”

I laughed, feeling a little better, but all of us instantly sobered when there was a knock at the door. My heart was suddenly throbbing so hard that I forgot all about Orion.

“He is here,” whispered Sofia, grinning at me as she squeezed my hands. “Are you ready for him?”

“Yes,” I assured her, nodding in absolute certainty.

“Then I shall take my leave,” announced Helena as she turned for the door, but she hesitated before opening it. “For whatever it is worth, Amira, I am immensely fond and proud of you,” she told me.

“Do not make her cry anymore,” Sofia scolded her, but then my handmaid smiled at me with what I knew was similar sentiment before they went into the hallway.

I stood in the room, twisting my hands in my dress and listening to them bidding Riordan a good night. And then he stepped into the room, closing the door behind him and locking it before he turned to face me.

He was dressed much more casually than I’d ever seen. Usually he was either in his beautiful gold armour or in similar leathers to what Orion preferred. Seeing him in a cream-coloured tunic that belted low around his waist and was unlaced enough on his torso to give me a glimpse of his chest felt intimate all on its own. I wondered if this was what he usually wore under his armour.

The look of captivation in his eyes, the way he seemed afraid to breathe, was provoking. He stepped toward me slowly in a way that asked a question which I answered wholeheartedly with a welcoming smile. His every step after that was wider and more confident until he was right in front of me. He reached for my unbound hair and ran his fingers back through it with a grunt of appreciation. But I felt his hand tremble slightly, so I reached up to take it and looked at him in concern.

“I want you,” he explained with a half smile. “Badly.”

“I am all yours,” I assured him, and he gave me a fuller smile, but there was a contemplative look in his eyes as he brushed his thumb across my bottom lip.

“Are you alright? You have that… bruised look about you that I have not seen in some time.”

“Maybe it was the makeup I have been wearing lately,” I suggested, forcing a smile, but he shook his head.

“This is in your soul, Amira. An old wound reopened,” he insisted, his hand shifting along my jaw to cup my face tenderly as he stared down at me. “When these fears and doubts lay siege to you, I want you to tell me right away so I can banish them immediately,” he instructed me.

His words brought tears to my eyes again, but this time they were tears of relief and appreciation and love.

“Old habits die hard,” I said with a shrug.

I wasn’t sure why I felt a need to protect Orion except that maybe I was also protecting myself. I had said some things that were equally mean, and I could only imagine Riordan’s wrath if he knew how we hurt one another.

I also didn’t want our night to be tainted, and I didn’t think him getting angry would help matters with Orion. Things had been left in as good a place as they could be, and I wanted to see where things went from here.

Riordan leaned closer to kiss my forehead and cheek. “I’ll gladly go to war with your old habits. They cannot have you. Not any part of you,” he maintained firmly and pressed several more of those sweet kisses along my jaw. “For tonight, I want to take you away,” he admitted.

“Oh? Where would we go?”

“I told you that I wanted to make you mine out under the stars,” he reminded me. “And I want to be somewhere truly private where no one will try to interrupt us before I’m finished with you,” he added more seriously.

I had to bite my lips together to try and stop myself from smirking but was unsuccessful.

“But what if they have an emergency?”

“Amira, if this city burns to the ground tonight, it will just have to wait until tomorrow afternoon,” he growled playfully, but his wings fidgeted in real agitation.

I could not help bursting out in laughter, his warmth and teasing chasing away the dark feelings from before.

“I don’t care where we go as long as I am with you tonight. Take me wherever you want,” I invited him.

Riordan made a rough sound, a harsh hiss of assent in the back of his throat, and did not hesitate to sweep me up into his arms. He walked to the window while his magic surrounded us in a shroud of impenetrable energy.

“A ward to prevent them from seeing us go,” he said as the curtains were drawn aside by a breeze that smelled of mountain air, and then he stepped into the night. I hugged him tight as his wings spread, and he took to the sky in a powerful leap that made gravity feel inconsequential.

I watched the city lights fade as we flew high and far away from everything, his wingbeats and steady breaths the only sounds I wanted to listen to.

After some time, Riordan began to descend, and I saw that we were dropping toward a glade in the middle of the dark forest. The moonlight danced across the blades of long grass as they swayed, and the night was filled with the vibrant and familiar sounds of nature.

Riordan landed, light and agile, shifting my weight so I was not jarred before setting me back on my feet. A pulse of magic erupted between us and expanded over the glade into the forest. I thought it felt like another ward.

“No one, fey or griffin, will come near,” he confirmed. “Now close your eyes.”

I did as he asked without question, and I felt his magic blooming in the air around me again like the sky was being lit up with lightning.

After a moment, he leaned near, slowly so he did not startle me, and swept me back into his arms. I meant to keep my eyes closed, since he had not asked me to open them yet, but then I felt him crawling onto something that seemed soft and pliant.

My eyes popped open in surprise, and I saw that he’d transformed the dark forest glade into a scene similar to the dance floor under the open night sky. There was an enormous mattress under his knees that was on top of a marble dais with stairs to elevate us above the tall grass. The cream-coloured sheets were embroidered with gold and looked so soft and pristine. I saw four marble pillars, like bed posts at each corner of the mattress, which were wreathed in vines and roses. Hovering above us was what looked like a canopy of fireflies drifting listlessly as they gave off a soft and romantic light.

I looked up at Riordan who was eagerly watching my expression, and he smiled when he saw my reaction.

“This is… It’s perfect,” I whispered, suddenly rather grateful that I had never done this first with anyone else. Nothing, and no one, could have compared to this.

Riordan set me on the mattress, and he seemed so massive when he lingered over me with broad shoulders and wings that stretched wider than the mattress. But the way he kissed my neck and chest while slowly pulling my legs down so I laid beneath him made me feel safe. Delicate and precious. He was twice my size, even more than that with those wings, but the only worry in my mind as he drew close was whether… I’d be any good at this. I’d always thought I would be afraid during this moment because of what happened to my mother, but I was not.

Riordan lowered himself onto the mattress next to me, and I looped my arms around his neck as he put a hand under my thigh to angle me a little more toward him.

“Tell me you want this. That you want me ,” he begged, and a strangled groan escaped me as I nodded vigorously.

“I want you,” I assured him roughly before leaning up to kiss him hard and ravenously.

And it felt like magic unfurled between us. White-hot lust stormed through my veins, consuming any lingering doubts or fears, and burned me all up until I was nothing but flame for him. My hands began to move of their own volition to unbelt his tunic so I could get them underneath and against all that warm, muscled skin. And I could not help the visceral groan of appreciation that tore out of me when I finally ran my fingers over the powerful body that I’d been craving for weeks. Gods, I could spend forever just touching and exploring all of him.

Riordan could feel my frustration with being restricted by his clothing. He leaned back, hovering over me on one arm to jerk the tie loose at his side which held the tunic closed under his wings, and then stripped it off.

Leaving him immediately naked.

I sucked in a sharp breath when I got a brief glimpse of that godlike body, but I didn’t have time to appreciate him more fully before he was kissing me again.

I was immediately lost in the storm of voracious need that ensued, yielding body and soul to the rhythm of our pounding hearts, our gasping breaths, and needy groans. He supported much of his immense weight, but the feel of him moving against me, often pinning me to the mattress, with only my dress between us was electrifying. It was not long before our tentative touches had become surer, and our clumsy fondling grew confident and familiar.

But I wanted more.

I felt that magnetic pull, more powerful than ever as it urged me to join him somewhere outside my mind.

Riordan uttered a grunt that sounded pained and lusty at the same time.

“Not yet,” he hissed against my mouth before he began kissing a searing path down my throat and chest as low as my dress would allow him. My fingers drove through his hair with breathy encouragement, and my back arched. Almost as if it were instinct to urge him to my breasts that felt like they tingled in want of his attention.

Riordan gripped either side of my plunging neckline, and before I had quite realized what he was about to do, he ripped it. He tore the flimsy dress in half and removed it and my dressing gown from me completely.

I was momentarily in shock. I hadn’t believed Sofia when she said he was going to wreck whatever I wore.

The surprise was instantly forgotten when his mouth fastened around my nipple, sucking greedily as he palmed the rest of my breast. The sensation of his hot mouth shot through my body and seemed to pulse in my clit with every beat of my heart. He had sharp canines that nicked me, but it only seemed to heighten the pure ecstasy of the heat and eagerness of his mouth.

Riordan gave both of my breasts their fair share of his attention before shifting suddenly further down my body. My knees were forced wide to accommodate the breadth of him as he trailed his lips across my stomach just above my pubic mound.

I sucked in a breath of pleasant surprise, and his eyes flickered up to mine cautiously.

“Don’t stop,” I assured him quickly, even though I was nervous to have his face so close to my exposed sex.

Riordan was eager, but he took his time to savour my body and did not venture further than my lower stomach. Which was surprisingly sensitive as he kissed, nipped, and licked my skin. In fact, much of my body seemed unexpectedly erogenous with some stimulation. And now that there was more distance between us, I realized he was watching every reaction carefully. When he noticed me groan and writhe from the sensation of his teeth, he began to use them more. He was paying close attention to every hiss and sigh and every time I arched my spine for him.

“Riordan, I want… I want to touch you,” I protested, breathless with desperation, and he pulled himself away from me, his muscles tensing as if it were a struggle.

I sat up and pushed him backward without hesitation. Luckily, he had quick reflexes, and his wings dispersed into wavering, smoky appendages that disappeared when I pressed him down and climbed over him. Riordan was too captivated by my nudity to protest my rough handling. But sitting astride his larger, muscular frame, dusted with dark hair, made me aware of just how soft and delicate I was compared to him.

And yet I commanded the attention of this godlike man so wholly, and it made me feel wildly powerful.

He hissed in pleasure as I slid up his hips so his cock was nestled between my legs, and his hands tightened on my waist like he wanted me to keep moving. My intention had been to explore his muscular chest and abdomen the way he had done to me, but now I was curious about the thick ridge trapped under me. It was harder than expected, but velvety and supple, and it felt unbelievably good just sliding through my slick heat.

I glanced up as his eyes closed and he arched slightly, reminding me that it was also the first time he had ever experienced anything like this. And the reminder that he was irrevocably mine, that every intimate part of him had been saved for me, was a heady thought that made me feel almost feral in my craving for him.

I began to shift slowly back down his thighs, tilting my hips so my clit ran along his entire delicious length while I watched his face tense in pleasure. Once I felt the ridge at the head of his cock, I looked down and could not look away again as it finally bobbed free from under my pelvis and sprung almost straight upright.

My first thought was a bit panicked since it seemed even more prominent than I remembered from my quick glance in the Dominus prison. I wasn’t even sure how all of him was supposed to fit inside of me, but Riordan was watching my reaction, so I tried not to show uncertainty.

I reached out, and he drew in his breath hard before my hand even wrapped around him. He was firm and smooth as I stroked my fingers tightly from his base to where the tip widened into a mushroom shape. He was so especially sensitive there, and his hands clenched in the sheets while his cock pulsed in my hand. I hadn’t realized that his cum could seep out of him before sex, but I watched in awe as a pearlescent bead formed in the slit at the tip of him.

I was moving before I had really thought about what I was about to do, and I heard him gasp in anticipation just before my lips parted around the head of his cock. In my peripheral vision, I saw his head ram into the mattress, and his next groan was visceral as his fingers threaded through my hair and clenched. His girth stretched my jaw almost unbearably wide, and I had to use my hand to get to the base of him, but I couldn’t stop. Not when I could tell how much he was enjoying it from the guttural sounds he made as he writhed helplessly under my thrall.

“Amira,” he gasped my name, his voice ragged as if he had been punched in the gut. “It feels like I…”

I was pretty sure I knew what he could feel coming, even though I had never seen a man ejaculate. The way his abdominals and thighs were tensing, the way he was pushing his head into the mattress, and his chest rose fast with every breath… I was sure this was how it looked.

He gave a breathless groan, and his whole body tensed a second before he came. I hadn’t realized how forcefully he would erupt in ropy spurts up his chest or how visceral the release would make my mate. His groan was unapologetically loud and rough as he arched and twisted his hands in the sheets.

I had a strange impulse to taste him and leaned forward once he was done to lick the tip of him and then down his length again. The taste was an unexpected but intriguing combination of salty and slightly sweet which I could not help savouring until his cock was cleaned.

Riordan had yet to move and lay breathing so deeply that his stomach flexed with each heavy exhale. He finally tilted his head to look at me, and I smiled at the mixture of surprise and satisfaction in his golden eyes.

“Haven’t you ever…?” I began to ask, but I trailed off in pure astonishment when he shook his head right away. “Not even by yourself?”

Riordan’s brows rose at my shock, and then his eyes searched mine as he contemplated my question.

“I didn’t know I could… do that,” he admitted, and I followed his gaze as it lowered to the semen still speckled across his chest.

“You do know what we’re supposed to do tonight?”

“I only started to feel these urges after my curse was broken but always understood the basic function of sex,” he assured me. He conjured a damp towel to begin wiping the semen off his chest. “I also asked Ares for advice.”

“You asked Ares for advice?” I gaped.

“I wanted to please you. I asked Helena first, I thought perhaps a woman might be a better source of information, but she was unwilling to entertain the conversation.”

“So then you asked Ares .”

“Was that wrong? I have heard many of his previous lovers praise his talents—”

“Okay,” I interrupted him, unsure if I wanted to be told this information about my guardian whom I was quickly beginning to consider a friend. “So you really didn’t know you could do this yourself?” I verified as I reached out to touch his cock that felt much softer now. “No wonder you were prepared to let the city burn down tonight.”

“Do witches do it on their own? Have you?” he asked, flicking his eyes up to me with avid curiosity.

“Just by myself,” I admitted, wondering if he would be upset by that, but he merely looked fascinated by this.

He had finished cleaning his chest, vanishing the cloth as he sat up and threaded his fingers through my hair to draw me forward to kiss me briefly.

“What do you do?” he whispered, his lips brushing against mine, and I could barely catch my breath as I worked up the nerve to answer him.

“I just… touch myself,” I answered, and I knew what he would want before he could even ask me.

“I want to watch you do it. Will you show me?”

I was no stranger to masturbating, although I hadn’t been able to do it in a long time, but I never imagined that I would do it in front of someone else.

“Okay,” I agreed coyly, and he released me so I could sink down onto my backside.

I realized I was actually excited to share this with him when I laid down, and Riordan moved back so he could see everything as I parted my legs. His gaze was hungry as he watched my fingers spread the lubrication from my arousal up over my clit to make my touch glide over it more smoothly. I could almost see him working out how we were going to fit together, and it was not long before his cock swelled again. It was clear to me now that the increase in size and hardness was actually a signal of his excitement which was why he seemed bigger than the first time I’d seen him.

I was already extremely aroused, and my body was incredibly sensitive, but the sight of him hardening again was even more provoking. I released a sigh when a tingle of exhilarated pleasure pulsed through me, and Riordan’s head lifted. My gaze darted guiltily to his eyes, but he’d already seen where I’d been looking, and one corner of his mouth lifted in a crooked smile.

“You could… touch yourself too,” I suggested, feeling so much bolder than I’d ever imagined, but he shook his head before he rose to his knees and crawled closer to me. My heart began thumping in excitement, thinking he was going to crawl on top of me, but he lowered himself onto his side between my legs. He had moved to see me better, but he was now close enough that he could put his mouth on me if he leaned down just a little.

“My focus is on you, so show me how to touch you,” he insisted, and I agreed readily.

“This is the most sensitive part,” I began and indicated my clit by circling my finger around it.

Riordan was fully engrossed, so I made sure to use every technique I’d ever learned through trial and error on my own, and I told him what I was doing. I told him how it felt for me. And in the spirit of teaching him how to touch me, I decided to give him some hands-on practice.

“Will you give me your hand?” I asked, and he shifted wordlessly to extend his arm. I giggled at his eagerness.

I took his hand and considered his fingers, which were much thicker and longer than my own, before selecting his thumb for my purposes. I heard his breathing pick up in anticipation as I carefully guided him to circle my clit with the wide pad of his thumb. Having someone else touch me was very different, less precise, so I helped him verbally and physically, and he learned quickly.

“Curve your finger like this,” I whispered sometime later after he finally inserted one inside me. I showed him what I meant, and he tried to mimic me until my head was falling back on the mattress as I let out a long groan of enthusiastic approval. “ Yes , just like that.”

I soon forgot about teaching him, except for the odd verbal cue, and began to lose myself in the sensation of his increasingly confident touch. I could feel that desired quickening growing more and more forceful inside me once my focus shifted from teaching to enjoying him.

“I want to taste you,” he rasped, and I nodded.

“Yes,” I agreed breathlessly, and he lowered his head above where his finger was inside me.

I gasped and arched as his lips pressed against my clit, but it was when he used his tongue that I almost lost my godsdamned mind. It was the perfect combination of heat, softness, and pressure on that sensitive part of me.

He seemed to devour me, mercilessly consuming me like he’d been starving. He used his shoulders to hold open my legs as the pleasure rose, and I began to squirm.

“Don’t stop!” was the only coherent thing that came out of my mouth for several moments until the orgasm finally crashed over me. He didn’t stop, something I had never been able to focus enough to do while climaxing on my own, and it prolonged the sweet release until every last tremor of pleasure had been wrung from my body.

Riordan lifted his head and slowly removed his finger from inside me. He kissed his way along my inner thigh as he got to his knees and then began to crawl forward over me as he nipped his way up my stomach. I could feel the enthusiasm in his hands and mouth, and I knew that he was far from finished with me.

I lifted my legs, despite how heavy they felt, and used them to pull him closer until I felt the velvety head of his cock push against my sensitive flesh. He was not trying to push inside, he was merely coming closer to kiss me, but I could not help tilting my hips to receive him.

Riordan met my eyes with a slow and wicked smile before he shifted his weight to one arm so he could reach between us with the other. I felt him brush his tip against me in a teasing caress through the lips of my sex.

“Is this what you want?” he asked me, and I nodded, fingers digging into his shoulders like I could pull his whole body to move into me.

“Riordan, please,” I urged him when he did not move. I arched my back to inch my hips toward him, hoping I might impale myself, but he moved with me.

“I am going to take you wholly. Body and mind,” Riordan warned me, and I nodded immediately.

“I am ready,” I insisted, trying to convey the force of my need with my pleading eyes.

I inhaled sharply when he moved his hips forward, stilling my efforts to join us when I felt a slight pinch and a burning inside. He stopped when I flinched, but I had known it might be uncomfortable due to the sheer size of him. And in spite of the pain, I needed him inside me.

“I am made to stretch,” I urged impatiently.

“But it hurts you,” he objected firmly as he eyed my tense face with concern.

“I think it is unavoidable. You are enormous.”

Riordan remained unconvinced, and I thought I might actually scream in frustration when he sat back.

“Riordan—”

“This cannot be right. I will not hurt you, so let me try something else,” he suggested. When I nodded, he leaned over me to insert his finger again instead.

I arched in welcome, gladly relishing every stroke, but it was clear he was focusing less on my pleasure this time and more on exploring me inside. He circled his finger, pressing against all my inner walls until I could feel the stretch. Then he would relent and find that spot where the pressure felt best while teasing my clit with his thumb.

It was torturously wonderful, and he was so patient as he wound my body up again and again after every time he stretched me. I was teetering on the edge of what I knew would be a mind-shattering orgasm when he withdrew his finger only to add another when he reinserted.

“Oh!” I gasped, my body clenching and clinging to the added girth greedily. Every few strokes he would scissor his digits to widen my channel and then reward me with his thumb on my clit and his tongue on my nipples.

This time when he pushed his cock inside, the pinch and burn were so slight I didn’t even flinch, and his length glided in much more smoothly.

He had been withholding his pleasure until he knew it was not going to hurt me; I could tell by the way his face tensed and his breathing hitched. But once he was buried to the hilt, his eyes closed in pure bliss, he finally dropped his head to my shoulder to unleash a shuddering groan.

“ Gods , Amira. You feel good,” he rumbled.

He started to move, tentative at first to make sure I was still alright, but then we began to find a rhythm together until it felt like we had become one. And I was so relieved that he had not done as I’d insisted and kept plunging in when my body was not ready for him. This was so, so much better. Every steady thrust was pure bliss.

My body quickened, teasing me with the promise of an orgasm that danced just beyond my reach, but it was alright. Just being so close to him and feeling him delight in my body was enough.

Until he started getting close.

I could hear the change in his groans and feel it in the frantic increase of his tempo. And I desperately wanted to know how it felt to climax with him inside me.

So I slipped a hand between us, keeping it flat against my belly. With him driving into me relentlessly, his harsh grunts in my ear, and his enormous and beautiful body flexing and heaving against me…

All it took was a little precise pressure on my clit.

I cried out, louder than expected, arching and quaking beneath him as his cock seemed to drive my orgasm on longer and harder than I’d ever experienced before. The sensation of my sex milking him in spasms of the sweetest pleasure was unlike anything I’d expected.

He gave a vicious growl, more animal than I had ever heard him, and pinned me in place as he filled me with spurts of tingling heat. It was so intense for him that his invisible wings appeared again, hovering above me and shuddering in utter capitulation. He was completely spent, nearly crushing me when he collapsed against me.

And that was when the magnet between us, the tug that he had been resisting until that moment, suddenly surged. It pulled our minds together at such an undeniable force that it felt like my consciousness abruptly shattered into a thousand pieces that scattered in every direction.

And then it all fused back together into a single new form inside of us both.

Riordan lifted his head to look at me, and I could see myself in his eyes: my wide eyes, flushed face, and my mouth opened in shock. But even more astonishing was that I could feel him now like an extension of me. A new part of me that was interwoven so intrinsically within the old pieces that there was barely a distinction.

His thoughts were not distinct, but I knew that he had not meant to join us like this so roughly. He was just a vague feeling in my mind until he sharpened his thoughts into three words that resounded in my head in nearly the same cadence as his physical voice…

You. Are. Mine.

Orion

I had been taking my frustration out on the assassin for many hours now, and I was starting to think he really might not know who had hired him to kill the witch. I was almost out of steam, the burst of perpetual self-disgust having temporarily run its course, and in its vicious wake, I was left feeling a familiar numbness.

I sensed someone behind me. Helena had waited to see me until she knew I would be calm enough to engage in an intelligent conversation. She knew me too well.

“I am beginning to genuinely believe he does not know who his client was,” I admitted, wiping the spray of blood from my face with the back of my hand.

The assassin had lost consciousness once again, but I had not yet awakened him this time. His mutilated body dangled silently from the ceiling by his cuffed wrists.

“A pity,” muttered my mentor, but I could tell by her distracted tone that she had not come merely looking for an update on the assassin.

“All I really got out of him was that instructions and payment were left for him to find. He was told to strike after the first assassin when Riordan would be distracted,” I said in an attempt to prevent her from talking about my personal life. “I don’t think they collaborated directly.”

Helena merely grunted with interest, but I knew she was only waiting for me to acknowledge the real reason for her presence. After a moment, I finally turned to meet her eyes with a pleading look.

“Please, Helena, I don’t want to—”

“If you had behaved differently when she arrived here, you may have been with them tonight. Have you thought about that?” she asked me.

My breath blasted out of me like her words had been a physical blow to my stomach. It was a long time before I could muster the ability to respond.

“Of course, I have thought about that,” I growled.

“Then why are you determined to be cruel to Amira? Riordan would hang you up right next to that assassin if he knew you made her cry earlier. I should have told him. He will hang me next to you if he finds out that I did not,” she chastised, but I only vaguely heard the rest of what she said after she revealed the witch cried after I left.

I made Amira cry .

There were times it felt like the self-loathing that raged so out of control inside me could eat me alive and flay the skin off the bones of anyone near me. It had taken me decades to learn some semblance of control so that I could manage friendships, but when it came to Riordan, it was like all that discipline evaporated. It had been like that from the moment I first ran into him in Ergastiri, and he recognized me from our brief encounter in the Rookery. When I’d punched him in the face, knocking the young prince to the ground, and then told him never to bring it up to me again. Which he had not done.

Since leaving the witch in the apartment, I had been trying to reassure myself that my impulsive words had not impacted her. There had been a shininess in her eyes that hinted at tears but none had fallen, so I was able to make myself believe she was unaffected by my putrid venom. But after what she told me about her mother, I supposed the only reason she seemed so resilient was because my words were nothing she hadn’t heard before.

She had been subjected to so much open disdain since coming to the Vale, but aside from occasionally retaliating against me, she had not appeared to react to much of it. She had only ever conducted herself with such kindness and empathy that I never would have guessed she carried such similar wounds to the ones that made me lash out. She must have found a way to overcome them because despite me spewing all this ugly rage at her, she still had not allowed herself to succumb to my level of vile spite. Instead, she had offered me compassion and hope.

The same as Riordan had done after I punched him.

I could still remember the stunned horror in the field after the prince fell into the mud, his nose gushing blood. And then I was tackled by one of the guards his mother had sent him with in the early days. The bite of a blade nicked the back of my neck, and I remembered thinking that they were going to kill me right there…

His voice nasally from pinching his nose, my future skiá had commanded them to wait, and then he got back up to his feet. I’d thought maybe he wanted to take some revenge upon me before they dispatched me, and I braced for the blows that would surely come.

But he merely held out a bloody hand toward me.

I could not seem to stop myself from hurting everyone around me, but especially people who deserved it least.

“So then why did you not tell him?” I demanded of Helena roughly, wishing that she had informed Riordan. I’d welcome my flesh being flayed and my bones being broken if it distracted me from this internal hell.

“Because I know you hurt. I know… it is complicated for you,” she added, her eyes dipping to the leather cuffs on my forearms that I never removed in front of others. Even her drawing attention to them made my heart spike in a panicked staccato, and my fists curled as I resisted the childish urge to put my arms behind me.

Helena was the only one who knew the truth of where I’d come from, and it was only because she was the one who found me at the gates of Ergastiri. Barely more than a child so badly beaten by a patron that I might have died if she had not been on duty that night. She had urged me to ask Riordan to remove the marks on my arms that had been magically branded into my skin, but I never could tell him where I came from. What I was before my life had been forever saved and changed in Ergastiri.

What I technically still was thanks to the brand that could not be removed from me without magic. I could not stomach the thought of him discovering the asinine truth.

The King of the Vale was bound to a fucking whore.

“It is no excuse to make that sweet girl cry, but I know that Riordan’s punishment is not what you need either,” Helena replied gently. “Much as you might crave it.”

“Much as I deserve it, I think you mean,” I retorted. “Helena—”

“I have watched you become your own worst enemy over and over for far too long, Orion. Amira is… kind. Patient and compassionate. She is what you need .”

“And yet, I have no desire for her.”

“Do not lie. It is insulting to both of us that you could think I would not see the way you notice her in the room,” Helena chastised. “ And ,” she added louder, cutting me off before I could refute her claim, “she notices you too.”

I hesitated, blinking at her in shock when her words had an unexpected effect on me.

“You are mistaken.”

“I am not ,” she insisted, looking offended again as her wings ruffled behind her.

“Even if you are not mistaken, even if you are right about her… being good for me, it still does not change the fact that I am not good for her or for anyone else!”

“Then you remain determined to be in your own way,” she muttered, shaking her head in disappointment.

“They deserve more , Helena! Both of them deserve more than a sullied… More than me ,” I spat in frustration, shoving past her before she could say anything more.