40. Mercy
40
MERCY
W olfgang’s weight is still heavy against my back, my clammy palms sticking to the window. Breathless. I feel the slow glide, the wonderful ache of his cock sliding out of me. His release trickles down my thigh, my skin still humming with palpable desire.
He carefully tugs my dress down. Something about the tenderness of his fingers has my heart squeezing woefully. I linger on the feeling, my usual instinct to plunge it back into the depths of myself seemingly absent tonight.
“Wait here,” Wolfgang mutters softly.
Straightening to my full height, I turn to watch him. Brown hair disheveled, strands falling over his forehead, his trousers still unbuckled as he walks over to the long dining table. The image of him like this, unkempt, wild—it humanizes him. His wolfish face revealed under the Vainglory mask.
I felt my own mask dissolve tonight. Yet, the fear of Wolfgang seeing me like this does not consume me. Instead, I feel alive. Real.
Picking up a white cloth from the table, he dunks it into a silver carafe full of ice water. He returns to the window with a sly grin and an arrogant strut.
His steely gaze remains glued to mine as he slowly lowers himself to his knees in front of me. The same painful squeeze wraps itself cruelly around my heart. His smile turns heady. Strong hands smooth up my thighs, pushing my dress back up to my hips.
“Let me wash away any proof of me,” he says with the heat of a thousand suns. There’s light-heartedness in his tone. I hate it. Somehow loathing the thought of washing him off of me. Let him linger. Let him seep into me and sink into my bones.
But I say nothing.
I suck in a small breath when the cloth touches my burning skin, still cold from the ice water. Wolfgang’s other hand grips me tightly on the thigh, his thumb digging into the tender flesh just under my harness.
His gaze is now trained on his slow, meticulous movements. Over my thighs. Across my sensitive slit.
It’s then I feel it.
Between the hot breaths of his lips near my skin, his touch echoing the pleasure of how it felt to have him sink into me, knowing we were no longer dooming our fates, but sealing it instead.
Death summons me. Beckoning.
Wolfgang must feel my energy shift. His touch stutters, watchful eyes lifting. “What is it?”
I fix my dress, stepping away from the window as Wolfgang stands close by, flicking the wet cloth on the floor without a care.
Death drifts over and through my senses, and my skin breaks into goosebumps. “I need to go,” I say quietly.
Wolfgang’s hand snaps out as soon as my words are pushed out from my lips. Fingers curling around my wrist, they create familiar divots, his hand always finding my wrist lately.
“You’re not leaving my side, Mercy,” he says sternly, his eyebrows furrowing with concern. “Especially now, with the threat to our lives at its highest.”
“It’s calling me.” My voice should sound like a steel rod, unbreakable; instead, it sounds weak like a handful of straw.
I feel pulled apart. As if Wolfgang is holding my life force between his fingers. If he wanted to be cruel, he could ball his hand into a fist and turn me into dust.
I look out the window evading his questioning gaze. The rain streaks the window, blurring Pravitia and its shimmering, glittering lights.
“Is your god speaking to you?”
I shift my attention back to Wolfgang, his hand still holding me. Keeping me close.
“Yes.”
Letting go of my arm, he fixes himself with righteous resolve. The tug of his shirt into his trousers. The buckle of his belt. The smoothing of his lapels. It’s all done with such aristocratic grace that I realize then that Wolfgang has always been destined to rule. Has always been destined for such grandeur and worship.
I’ve always hungered for power, but I wonder if I’ll ever revel in it like Wolfgang.
There’s a melancholy attached to the feeling.
When he’s finished, his hair coiffed back to perfection, he offers me his hand. “Shall we?”
My stomach swoops in surprise. “You can’t come with me,” I say, my tone just as taken aback.
His laugh is dismissive. “And why is that?”
“Because …” I trail off unsure, after a long beat I shake off the feeling. “Because this is an intimate act, I worship alone. It’s how it has always been.”
His offered palm is still between us. He reaches for me. Gently takes my hand in his and lifts it to his mouth, his lips still swollen from our kiss and warm against the thin skin of my hand. His gaze sparkles with levity, gold winking when his smile turns wide.
“Well, my ruin, it’s the dawn of a new day.”
The rain is still coming down in sheets.
As usual, I’ve left Jeremial to sit in the idling town car a few streets down.
I kill. He collects.
I’ve been pulled to the harbor this time.
Wolfgang’s shoulder presses against mine under the wide umbrella as we stay tucked into a small alleyway, biding our time. I can barely make out the tent-like curves of Pandaemonium in the distance. We should be keeping to our respective neighborhoods as instructed, but death knows no boundaries.
I go where it calls.
I pull the collar of my long leather jacket closer to my chin while the sound of the deluge hits the umbrella with angry drumming. He must have noticed my discomfort, the cold chill of the rainy winter night seeping into my muscles. Without a word, eyes trained outward, he slips his arm around my waist and pulls me into him.
I don’t resist it, my feet shuffling closer to him as we wait in silence. The streets are quiet, smelling of damp earth and cold wind. Most of the citizens have been called to Aleksandr’s side of the city, his bacchanal still ongoing for the next three days.
A prickle at the base of my nape has my head swiveling to the left. I feel Wolfgang’s fingers curl into the leather of my coat, almost as if sensing the thrumming of my heart like a melody drifting in the wind.
There he is.
The one destined for death’s fate tonight.
His shoulders hunch up to his ears, his pace fast, head down as he tries to weather the storm with no umbrella. Another block and he’ll be passing right in front of us. Like an insect walking into a spider’s web, all I need is to wait and they come.
A few more strides.
Beside me, Wolfgang turns restless, as if fighting off a bloodthirsty urge to pounce. A similar urge buzzes through me as I count down the man’s steps.
It’s addictive in its nature.
The flavor of it electric.
Now .
I step into the rain and reach for him like the hand of death itself. I don’t bother covering his mouth. Let him scream. Let the stars above hear his plea like a requiem.
I hook my elbow around his neck, my dagger unsheathed and pressing hard against his ribs as I pull him into the shadows where Wolfgang is waiting.
He’s thrown the umbrella to the ground as if needing to unfurl, to open himself to the skies while witnessing me. To let the rain drip over his face while I kill. To feel the wet chill of nature while I permit him to share in my worship.
What he doesn’t expect is for me to push him into the brick wall, the unsuspecting man pinned between us. Wolfgang’s mouth falls agape. The pelt of the rain, the screams of our victim; it silences his shocked puff of breath.
But Wolfgang’s eyes speak volumes, and I yearn to read every page of his book. The one I see now imprinted in his irises. His arms move naturally as if we’ve performed this dance before. They coil under the man’s arms, a deadly snake rattling its tail, keeping him from struggling away, his hands rising to his chin, opening his throat for me.
I’m quick. Impatient.
My sharp blade runs over the expanse of the man’s throat. His howls turn into something a lot more primal until my dagger slits his vocal cords, and then all that is left is the gurgling choke of spilled blood. His heart beats feebly, just enough for me to feel the warm spray of blood on my face. Wolfgang growls. Drops the man to the ground and spins me around so I’m now the one pinned to the bricks.
The man dies at our feet.
But there’s only death to witness his timely passage.
I’d rather witness Wolfgang’s glory instead.
How his eyes have turned black. His rain-soaked lips eager to reach mine. His hands repose on either side of my face, fingers dragging through my hair as he takes the breath right out of me. Let him have it. Let him be the reason I breathe.
I moan into his mouth, tongues hot and wet as his hips pin me even harder to the wall. My hands grip his jacket, pulling, pulling, pulling.
Closer.
Closer.
Closer.
Until we are nothing more but two halves of the same body. And that’s not close enough yet.
His palm shifts on my cheek, I feel the cold press of his signet ring against my skin. I’m not quite sure what compels me. But I break away from our kiss, the desire of having something of his to wear just as heady as the burning heat low in my stomach.
His eyes smolder. One eyebrow lifts as I take his left hand and slowly wrap my lips around his pinky finger. I suck it into my mouth, listening to Wolfgang’s low throaty groan as I drag my teeth over his ring, slowly pulling it off.
The thumb from his other hand smooths over my skin. Close to my nose, then below my eye. “What are you doing?” Wolfgang asks. His voice is hungry. Demanding.
I smile. Arrogant like him. And I don’t miss the surprise flitting through his gaze.
I slip his ring on my index finger, the gold now unexpectedly warm.
“Sealing our fates.”