Ravenous (Taint of the Gods #1)

51. RIEKA

51

RIEKA

T here was no village hall. That had fallen to ruin centuries ago. Instead, every resident of Gerhold ventured into the castle upon sundown.

Bright lights and warm hearths illuminated the homes of the village like fireflies on a hill, but it was the castle that burned brightest.

It radiated warmth. Every fire, every scent, every smile. Even the way the villagers had greeted me felt warm.

Lady Kanyk, they had called me. And not like the children when they addressed me during baking class. Here it was spoken like a title. As if I were the lady to their lord.

Children I’d known to be missing only weeks earlier ran the halls filled with new life, no sign of the sickness upon them. Couples ate together in intimate huddles on the long benches. Drinking songs were sung without care. Even the elderly Blessed with their life-weary bodies wandered the halls with expressions of peace on their beautiful, aged faces.

I’d tried to enjoy it, being in this place, enjoying being back in the company of my friends. But not even learning Jonah and Kris where an item could eradicate the shadow that was hanging over my heart since my conversation with her.

The sight of Rhydian sitting with the Runners, smiling and laughing fuelled the ache in my chest. The same sight as our first encounter on the train.

If I could take back that day, take back all the days with him—if I could would I do it?

How quick my answer had come. How effortless of a response from my body.

I stood and walked over to where he sat with Eleen and the others, so free that my heart ached. “Is there somewhere we can talk?”

Rhydian had stood in silence as he looked at me. Then in silence, he led me through the castle.

As we made our way up a stone spiral stair, the steps beneath my feet worn, I delighted in the way in which the light glinted off the golden strands of his hair.

As we passed over the timber floors and tapestried walls of half a dozen halls, I noticed the way he slowed his steps so I didn’t have to rush through the unfamiliar castle.

And when something had caught my interest, he stopped and without a word let me admire it.

At the end of a long hall, a door stood ajar. Rhydian stopped before it and pushed it open, indicating for me to enter.

Only after I had entered did he seal the world off behind us.

It was a bedchamber. At least in part. A tall canopy bed stood off to one side of the room, heavy velvet drapes hanging in a deep earthy green. A series of floor-to-ceiling wardrobes stretched along the stone walls on either side. A copper tub like the one in his office sat by the window.

The other half of this room was filled with books. Hundreds upon hundreds of books stacked on the wall-to-wall bookshelves. This was where Rhydian decided to go. Behind a wooden desk the size of a large bed.

And where he continued to give me the silent treatment.

Knowing Rhydian wasn’t going to be the first to break it, I took another step into the room. “The children are not sick here,” I noted, unable to voice what I had intended to. The children felt like a more pressing topic of conversation.

Rhydian leaned back in the giant armchair he’d sat in behind his desk. “They are not. Whatever is making them sick, it is limited to the train.”

I nodded my agreement. “It is good that you brought them all here. Where it is safer.”

His mouth set into a hard line. “As opposed to selling them,” he said, fixing me with a scathing glare.

“You cannot blame me for thinking you capable, Rhydian. Or I would not still be here.”

Rhydian sighed. “Is that why you wanted to speak? To remind me of my greatest shame. Well, you needn’t have bothered. Your presence does that well enough.” He spoke so calmly, if it weren’t for his scent, I would not have believed him angry.

I took a step back, frustration edging my nerves. “If my presence bothers you so much. Then I’ll leave.”

His chair screeched. “Do I mean anything to you?”

Rhydian’s words turned my body to lead, cementing me like a statue to the floor halfway across the room. My heart tightened as his scent cruelly erased any other from my senses.

I kept my back to him. “You are the man who has sold me as a slave. You are the key to my freedom. What else is there to care about?” The words were cruel, spoken to cut. To shield me and prevent me from saying what I truly wanted.

His boots sounded on the floor in soft precise taps as he moved closer. “Then why come after me at the garrison?”

I spun around at his words, an answer caught on my tongue.

Rhydian took another step closer. “You would have been free of me. Your secret once again your own. No matter how long I think about it, I’m always left with the same conclusion.” He took another step.

“And what is that?” I asked when the heat of his stare threatened to burn through me.

Rhydian took another hesitant step towards me, his eyes never leaving my face. “The same reason you gave me this.” He held up his right wrist, revealing the leather marriage band I’d given him.

“You care for me. Regardless of everything. You have grown to care for me.”

I closed the distance between us in an instant and stared up into those oceanic eyes. “A wolf does not care for her prey.”

I turned once again, resolved to end this conversation, only for Rhydian to reach out and grab my hand, halting me. My body reacted to his touch, the skin raising in goosebumps, my stomach fluttering.

“And yet the prey cares for his wolf.” Rhydian breathed out the words so effortlessly I thought I’d imagined it. With every word he spoke, every caress of his thumb on my hand, the tether he had on my heart tightened. He moved closer, so close that his breath brushed at my cheek.

“You are the bane of my existence. And you are existence itself. Without you Rieka, I simply cease to be.”

My voice was no more than a whisper. “You do not mean that.”

“Oh but I do.” He chuckled softly. “If I had known you only in a dream, I would choose endless sleep if it meant being with you. I am so irrevocably in love with you that you could kill a thousand gods and I would still love you.”

Desperation lived in those eyes, a plea for me to understand him. To know the words he spoke were not a lie. I reached up, my hand trembling as I cupped his cheek. “Do not say things you do not mean, Rhydian,” I begged as he leaned into my touch, his lips kissing my palm. “Words have consequences.”

Rhydian straightened, a determined look in his eyes. “So do actions.” He pulled out the pin that fastened his hair, the golden waves falling loose upon his shoulder, and held it as one would a knife. “We had a deal and I lost.”

He sliced the tip straight across his palm. As the blood dripped on the cold grey stone between us, he made an oath.

“I, Alastair Rhydian Imaris Kanyk, son of Eydis Imaris, descendant of the Hemopathic Line of Agiron Imaris, swear to the one I know as Rieka, that for as long as I live, I will never let her be claimed, enslaved, or chained against her wishes by another living being, be they Human, Tainted or God. This is my vow to her.”

I was undone. Unstuck from the world.

The gods had made a man who possessed the exact words that could unravel my very soul and cast him upon me in such a manner I had no other choice but to love him.

But was I even capable of that any longer?

The words came out slowly, tentatively. As if I half expected him to refuse my request. “Lock the door.”

Rhydian’s eyes searched mine, a question held there. If we did this, there was no going back for him.

I took a deep breath without taking my eyes off him. “Please.”

He brushed past me, heading for the door. When the lock clicked, I turned around to find Rhydian staring at me.

“Kiss me.”

Rhydian crossed the expanse of the room, took my face in his hands and did exactly as I had asked. His lips touched mine and the world ceased to exist.

Never had I wanted a kiss more than this one. Never had I wanted to be kissed then I did right now. This kiss was more than just my body’s desperate desire to feel connected. Rhydian’s kiss—the way his tongue searched the contours of my mouth in some desperate plea to explore every part of me. It was a question posed to myself as much as him.

Am I still capable of being loved?

His hand roamed my back, the other sliding up my hip to beneath my shirt, heat swarming where he touched my skin. My breath shuttered. “Stop.”

Rhydian froze. His hands ceased their exploration of my body and he moved them, out from my shirt and off my body. He took a trembling breath as he stepped away from me, just far enough that our breaths still mingled in the air between us.

He breathed out my name. It was another question.

“I would like you to remove your clothes,” I said, unable to contain the quivering of my voice.

There was no quivering in his. “If that is your wish.”

The leather jacket which I had come to associate with him was shrugged off. Rhydian then lowered his hands to his waist where he unbuckled his belt, and upon pulling it from the band he untucked his shirt and lifted it over his head.

He removed his boots next, first one and then the other. Then he slid his hands into his waistband and dropped his trousers.

I’d seen Rhydian naked before. I knew what his body looked like, but there was something different about him. He was breathtaking. He was truly the most beautiful man I had ever known.

Or maybe it was me who was different? Perhaps I saw him differently now that I knew he loved me. Now that I knew I loved him.

I took a trembling breath and lifted my hand to his chest, where my fingers traced the runes of his Sul. An act of intimacy only permitted for one soul in a lifetime. His Dana.

Rhydian did not stop me.

I let my fingers trail down, mapping the contours of his chest, grazing them lightly over his nipple, awakening his erection. My touch lingered as I skimmed my fingers across the breadth of his chest and around his shoulders, circling his naked body.

Rhydian continued to stare, his eyes following me as I moved, the intensity of his gaze causing every nerve in my body to tremble.

His hand found mine, his fingers catching the fabric of my glove, and he fixed me with a heated gaze. I nodded my head, granting him permission to the question not voiced.

Rhydian removed my gloves and placed them on the floor with his garments. He ran the back of his knuckles down the material of my buckskin vest and upon reaching the fastening, he pulled. The shirt fell open, the air stirring my breasts. Heat burned behind his eyes as my nipples hardened.

I hadn’t intended on wearing so little, but the castle was Kindling heated and the layers that I’d worn off the train had been two too many, so I’d stripped down to my buckskin. Now I wondered if it wouldn’t have been more enjoyable to make him take each layer off slowly and savour it.

My skin tingled where his fingers touched as he slid the buckskin over my shoulders, his fingers ghosting down the skin of my arms as he let it drop to the floor at my feet. His eyes caressed me, his chest beginning to rise and fall in quick succession as he beheld me.

A moment passed and his lips parted, and I found myself unable to stop. I kissed him and every part of me that had been clinging to rationality fled. I wrapped my hands around his neck, and he lifted me into his arms, my body fusing with his as we crossed the expanse to reach his bed.

Never had I wanted anything more and never had I been so afraid to obtain it.

Rhydian laid me on the bed, drawing out a kiss from my lips, then trailed them down my body. First in the curve of my neck, along the length of my scar, then on the mound of my breasts until he was looking up at me where he perched atop my thighs.

A wicked grin emerged on his face.

He remained hovering over me, his hand caressing my body in one long stroke as he feathered his touch from collarbone to navel, his hand drifting down to the waistband of my trousers. He moved back up to kiss me, an incendiary kiss. All while he was sliding his hand beneath my waistband and between my thighs.

A pleasured moan slipped from my lips when his fingers entered me. I tried to catch my breath when he withdrew them, but he reinserted them just as quickly. His lips returned to mine, extracting a sharp gasp from me that turned into another moan as his fingers fucked me perilously close to the brink, threatening to unravel me. And just when I thought he would let me come, Rhydian left me on the precipice.

My pants and boots were quickly discarded, and he returned to his position over me where he paused as if suddenly startled. His hair hung loose, the golden waves tickling the skin of my shoulder as he hovered over me.

“Gods you’re beautiful,” he said, as I ran my hand through his thick waves.

I pulled him to me, his lips eager to consume, refusing to relent even when our bodies were finally pressed against one another. With ease, he sat up and lifted me to straddle him.

A cry and a whimper escaped me as he sucked at the sensitive skin beneath my collarbone, his hand roving the skin of my thighs where they wrapped around his hips.

Another whimper and his fingers are once again inside of me, readying me for him, this thumb working deliriously slow circles on my clit. I could feel his length against my stomach when he drew another moan from my mouth. Bracing myself against Rhydian, I rose up and welcomed him inside me.

Never once did his eyes stray from mine where I straddled him on the bed. Even when the ecstasy he kept out of my reach cried treason because he wanted me to take it slower, to relish in our bodies’ hunger for one another, he never turned from my gaze.

A possessiveness seemed to take over me then, a primitive drive that needed more of him than what I had been given. I hadn’t been touched in such a way, allowed control in this way for a very long time—it was nearly too much for my body to take.

Rhydian’s hands pressed into my back and in a singular move, he had us lying down on the bed.

Fevered moans spilled from my lips with every thrust he made. With our bodies prone against one another, a leg draped over his hip, our lips immovable from one another, I realised that Rhydian had torn at my carefully and meticulously built walls.

His lips crashed into mine when he made that final thrust and the dam inside me, the one I had been building since that night in Keltjar finally burst.

I’d grown accustomed to his playing with my hair. Somewhere between our first kiss and now, I realised it was his favourite part of me. Not my lips, or the lines of my body, or even my eyes. Rhydian had fallen in love with me, and it had all started with my hair.

If I was a betting woman—and I was—my money would be on the day in the cave.

Now as I lay on his chest, the warmth of his body better than any fire, our bodies wrought with wonderful exhaustion, his fingers combed the black and white strands down my naked back.

“Is your first name really Alastair?”

Rhydian’s fingers paused their stroking and he spoke, amusement light on his tone. “That’s what you took from that speech, my name?”

I rested my hand under my chin so that I might look at his face. He was marvellously dishevelled. The result of my ravenous appetite. And he was all mine. “When were you going to tell me the part about you being a prince?”

Rhydian sighed, rolling his head back into the pillow, as if the topic of conversation was one that bored him. “I’m not a prince.”

I traced the line of his runes, the words that called him leader and protector interconnecting to one another. “Yet you call yourself descendant of Agiron Imaris.”

The last son of the last king of Kensilla, the history books said. Long thought to have died during the Marian 1 st Massacre. Entire Blessed bloodlines were wiped out during the military coup, including the Kensillan Royal Family. Or so the continent thought.

Rhydian took my hand and brought it to his lips to kiss. “It has been a long time since anyone has considered us royalty.”

“I think you and I live on different trains,” I said. It wasn’t hard to notice the passengers considered him more than a leader. Eleen had fought me because of his position. He was the closest thing the rail had to royalty.

Rhydian’s hand moved to my chin on his chest and he lifted it so our eyes could meet. “I am no one Rieka. I have a title to a kingdom that no longer exists, over a people who would rather serve sadistic gods than let me serve them. I am an Imaris in name and blood only. All I can offer you is my heart.”

I shifted from his grasp, sliding up his body until I could feel the feather-light touch of his breath on my face, and I kissed him. Slowly, to savour him.

“All I can offer you, dear husband,” I said when I released him, “is cake.”

Rhydian chuckled, the sound a stirring of butterflies in my stomach. “I’ll tell my mother.” He smiled, returning to that same joke from when we’d first met.

“Kris tells me this place was her idea.” I knew it was a hard subject for him to talk about, but his mother was part of him, so I wanted to know more about her and about why she built this place.

“It was. She found it listed in the train records as a vacation home. While she was a Runner she started using it to stock supplies. When my father was alive, they tried to convince the council that we needed to have a plan in place for when we freed the passengers.”

“The council didn’t approve?”

Rhydian took a long breath. “That law that dictates members of my family must remain on the train indefinitely from the age of twenty-five, she refused to do it.”

“But you said people died the last time that happened,” I pointed out.

A weight seemed to pass over his expression, a shadow darkening his features. “The law that entails that all Kanyks must claim the collars of their predecessor at twenty-five is a council law. The true law is that we can never leave, not permanently. The loopers you and Eleen use were made for my family, initially to allow us the ability to leave the train. But my ancestors discovered there was a forty-eight-hour time limit. If the Kanyk collar wasn’t back on board the train within that window of time, before the train’s tech system bypassed the looper, every passenger with a collar would be executed.”

I didn’t know what to be more shocked about. The fact Rhydian just insinuated that his family shared one collar between them, or that they had to kill one another to obtain it. In order to protect the passengers, Rhydian had to kill his grandfather.

The Core has done this. I’d spent enough time in Kensilla to know that major decisions like the imprisonment of thousands of Blessed were not made without their say-so. The Kensillan Gods had not only ordered the imprisonment of Rhydian’s ancestors, but they made them all murderers.

“Couldn’t they have just refused? Let the wearer die of old age and just leave the collar on the train without a wearer.”

“Not if we don’t want the train to stop. The Imaris collars are sadistic. They must be on a living person for the train to continue running. And before you ask, not just anyone will do. The collar only works on those with Imaris blood. Anyone else and the train stops and every passenger onboard dies.”

A thought suddenly occurred to me, a horrible little thought that made me grit my teeth. “They make you sacrifice your family for the good of the people you serve.”

His expression showed his disdain for the topic. “You sound just like my grandfather. There must always be an Imaris aboard the rail. He might be resolved to his fate. But I’m not. I refuse to let another generation grow up with the belief their sole purpose in life is to kill their parent in order to prevent the deaths of hundreds. I will not let my niece or nephew be born into that world. It’s why I’ve fought so hard to get this place established. To make it safe. We’ve all lived here at some point just to make certain of that. To ensure its safety and protection.”

“Every Runner?” I was suddenly struct with the thought of Si’mon, Amida and Anika flying without walls, of Lex and Lera with sun on their faces instead of shadow.

“Apart from Wade and Sal, they have all lived here at some point.”

I rolled over in the crook of his shoulder, trailing my touch down his arms to entwine them with his fingers. “Sal I understand,” I said. Sal was the only Organic after all. “But why not Wade?”

Rhydian returned to stroking my hair. “Wade swore he’d never take a home unless Sal could live in it with him. Until they could find somewhere safe to build a home.”

Wade hadn’t struck me as the romantic type. But then again, I had believed him a cold-blooded murderer until very recently. I’d been wrong about a great many things. My biases had led me to all the wrong conclusions, about everything. Especially about Rhydian.

“I hate to break it to you, but if you want safe, I’d get rid of the schoolhouse.” It surprised me that for godless people, they thought it prudent to keep such a godly place.

Rhydian’s brow knitted in confusion, so I continued, recalling the symbols on the stone.

“There is Gods’ Tongue carved into the floor. It would be unwise to allow children in a building where the very words written beneath their feet are a god’s thanks for sacrificing souls in their name.”

If Rhydian was surprised by my willingness to acknowledge my connection to that tongue, he kept it to himself. He instead shifted under me as he stretched to get something from the bedside table. His hairpin dagger. “You’re not going to make another oath, are you?” I asked jokingly.

“No,” Rhydian said, sitting up. “I have made enough of those to last me a lifetime.” I watched then as he dug the pin into the skin of his palm. My body had been pushed to the brink of exhaustion over the last few hours not even my wolf cared about the scent of Rhydian’s blood.

A small pool formed where the pin was impaled. Rhydian removed the tip from his skin, letting it run into the palm of his hand. He closed his fist over the scarlet pool. There was a sudden spike in his scent that lingered only as long as his hand remained closed.

When he opened his hand, the small pool of blood was gone, replaced by a crimson crystalline shard.

He offered it to me.

Hesitantly I took the crimson shard, holding it up to admire in the light. If I had not witnessed it myself, I would easily mistake it for a jewel.

Rhydian returned the pin to the side table, satisfied that I was so fascinated by his gift he finally told me his reasoning for giving me a literal part of himself.

“Now we both have a way to find one another.”

Tears sprang to my eyes as I regarded the gift.

“You’re repulsed by it,” he said upon noticing my crying.

“Never.” Rhydian immediately pulled me towards him, tucking me into his body as the tears continued to fall. Tenderly he kissed my cheek, catching a tear as it fell. His lips feathered over my skin to catch another. And another, and another until finally, I had to speak.

My words came out in a whisper. “Thank you.”

“Whatever for?”

I wanted to tell him the truth, all of it. About why I ran, about who I was, and what I had done to get here. I wanted to tell him everything that led me to this moment in his arms, where I felt safe. I wanted him to know that he made me feel safe.

But I just couldn’t. So instead I raised my hand to his face, brushed his hair behind his ear, and told him the only truth I could.

“Thank you for loving me.”

I heard a snap of a branch breaking. The smell of anger saturated the air.

Alert, I sat up and spied the black wolf standing ten feet away in the long grass. Her golden eyes locked on mine. Fury screamed in her eyes as she hovered over the spilled basket at her feet. The air wailing around her.

He called my name.

I twisted to face him.

His starlit eyes were wide. His mouth moved, my name on his tongue.

Great crimson ravines appeared across this chest as though invisible claws had angrily raked through his flesh, the blood splattering my face.

He collapsed into my arms; my name coughed up through blood-stained lips.

He wheezed out a word breathlessly. “Please. ” Iridescent tears trailed from his terrified eyes. “Say my name. ”

A great bellow of a sob is dragged from my lips. “I can’t. ”

I raised my hand into the air and plunged it into his chest until I could feel his heart beating against my palm. And I squeezed as a raw blood-curdling scream ripped from my lungs.