19. Chapter 19
Chapter 19
I shuddered, the knife of adrenaline carving itself over my nerves. I stared for far too long at the empty doorway, silently begging him to come back.
I wanted to scream at him. I wanted to rage at him for making me feel the way I did. I wanted to beat at his chest for every quiver of my knees. I wanted to bite at him for the way my heart was thundering in my rib cage. I wanted to fall into this sensation with him and blame him for the bad decisions I wanted to make with him.
I only began moving when the phantom sound of boots down the left hallway of the apartments chased thoughts of The Raven from me.
The room wasn’t going to clean itself, and I doubted I’d get a reprieve on account of The Raven being a distracting, handsome, infuriating, lickable, fuckable bastard.
It took me hours to clean the main sitting room. I had to hunt for where things should have gone. Not even the dust that had collected in some of the corners was helpful in locating the former resting place of a book, a tipped vase, a single discarded slipper, some sort of bell, and far too many dishes and platters and goblets encrusted with who knows what.
I had finally worked up the nerve to push the door to his bed chamber open and step in, when I could no longer find an excuse not to. I expected the King to leap out at any moment. I expected him to be lurking in every shadow, hunting me. But he was nowhere to be found, and the bedroom was as barren as the rest of his apartments.
I was collecting the last of his filthy clothing, which reeked of sweat and cologne of some sort that smelled like pencil shavings and oranges, when the ghoul himself finally appeared.
He was pushing a Fae woman into his bedroom, stalking her like it was all a game to him. He didn’t even spare me a glance as she tittered with coquettish laughter and fell across the bed.
I huddled in the corner, clutching his soiled clothing and frozen with fear, as he fell onto the lavish bedding and pinned her beneath him.
His kiss turned vicious, and I heard the soft plaintive whimpers of pain strangled by his lips. Her eyes connected with mine and widened before squeezing shut as his massive hand wrapped around her throat, and he used it to push off her.
“Please, Majesty . . .”
She was struggling to capture that seductive confidence she had when she burst into the room.
“Oh, yes, Lady White Dove, say that more.” He ripped her off the bed and slammed her face-first into the bed.
I winced at the force and began inching my way toward the still open doors of his bedroom, hoping he wouldn’t notice me.
A knife was produced from his leather belt, and he cut down the laces of her bodice. A red poppy of blood bloomed on her creamy back, where he had been a little careless. He bent over her to lick it from her, purring with delight, as he shoved the volume of her skirts up over her bare backside.
I had almost made it to freedom when he finally noticed me.
“Stay. Watch. You should learn how to please me, for when I deem you worthy to entertain me again.”
I didn’t want to be here. I wanted to disappear. I wanted to run. I wanted to slip between the cracks of the stone mortar and fall through the stonework into whatever oubliette this palace had.
I was frozen in place, though. Pinned by his baleful glare as he thrust into. Every time her screams and moans were contorted with pain, I flinched. There was an unseen umbilical cord between this unknown Fae woman and me. And as if it were happening to me, I could feel her pain and misery as the forgotten knife sliding between my ribs.
Angry tears of futile frustration gathered at the edge of my lashes as he slipped free of her slick depths, tiny speckles of blood adorning his proud cock. His eyes never left me, as if challenging me to try and say something.
My chin tipped up, and I gathered every ember of that fiery rage, pulled them into a single inferno that burned through my gaze, and let him feel its full force as he stuffed himself into his breeches to the soundtrack of her soft sobs.
When he strode out of the bedchamber and left the two of us, I still could not move. I yelled at my rigid body to do something useful aside from standing there and tremble in a toxic soup of rage and fear.
I hated myself for letting him see the creamy, tinted, watery depths of my anguish. I hated myself for not taking the dagger he had discarded on the carpet and taking the opportunity to shove it straight through his spine. I hated that, through all of it, I had said nothing. I hadn’t tested The Raven’s promise to guard me. I hadn’t even pushed the edges of the tongue lock. I had just stood there and watched.
When movement returned to me, I went to her and dabbed her cut gently with the hem of my skirt. “I’m sorry,” I whispered to her.
I expected her to curl up against me. I expected her to sob harder. I expected her to go still and quiet. I did not expect her to turn over with hate in her eyes, not a single tear marring her ethereal face.
“Don’t touch me, you disgusting fucking daoire.”
The snap of the back of her hand across my cheek was almost as shocking as the lack of evidence of her plight on her face.
I fell to the bed, shock stealing any smart words from my tongue as she rose, adjusted her dress, fixed her hair, and let evil leak through her angelic face in the form of a sharp curling grin.
“And that’s how you fuck a King. Take notes, daoire girl. Or don’t. Suit yourself.” A false pout pulled at her beautiful face. “I do so hope the next time he decides to demean himself by fucking your throat, he’ll let me watch. Oooh, maybe this time he’ll kill you, and I’ll use your blood as lube while he fucks my ass.”
I blinked stupidly at her, holding the throbbing mark on my cheekbone as she sauntered out of the room. When the velvet bloodred train of her dress slipped out of the doorway, I stared at the emptiness. The silence around me felt heavy, oppressive, as if my confusion and incredulity had stepped from my back and was leaning on my shoulders whispering in strange tongues.
The sound of boots pounding on the wooden floorboards outside of the King’s apartments, stampeding toward me, ripped me from my stupor.
He was coming back. He was coming back for me. Panic, fear, and nausea wove itself into my blood and shot spears of adrenaline through me as I leapt from the bed. Frantic eyes darted around the room, hunting for an inconspicuous hiding place. He would not catch me again. He would not put his filthy hands on me again. I would not allow it.
The bed. The dagger. The floor.
It all happened so quickly. I didn’t register I was snatching the dagger from the lush pile of the carpet and diving under the bed until I was slamming my own hand over my mouth and clutching the blade in my trembling fist. This had worked last time. I had hidden just fine the last time. I could survive this. And if he came for me, I would turn his dagger against him or, if need be, myself. Either way, this would not go the same way.
Dark-brown boots thundered into view, paused at the doorway to the bedchamber, then left. But I could still hear them. They were running down the hallway on the opposite side of the sitting room. Searching. Searching for me.
The jet engine that was my heart roared its anger at the speed of the torrential flood of adrenaline it was being forced to pump through me.
The hand that had covered my mouth slithered down my body to root under my skirts. The Bandrui had said if he came for me again, if I had need, if I was in trouble, to call her with the favors at my side. The Ard Rí was hunting me through his apartments again. If there was ever a time I would need her, now was that time.
Trembling fingers took hold of the thin cord of beads and pressed one of the brass stars into the tender flesh with every ounce of my strength.
Please. Please help me. I screamed into the howling tempest of my mind and kept repeating it.
The brass star began to collapse under the weight of my grip and then crumbled between my fingers.
The boots were returning. The Ard Rí was returning.
Terror filled my eyes and spilled down my cheeks as the boots appeared again in the doorway.
“Cricket,” a masculine voice called, twisted and muffled by my own heart slamming against my eardrums and seeking an escape from my destiny.
“Cricket,” the voice called again with more authority and insistence.
I gripped another brass star, crushing it as I pleaded in my mind for help. I pleaded so hard that my silent prayer slipped from my mute, shaking lips.
“Sóna Mac Raith!” bellowed the voice as the star collapsed in my fingers.
It was wild with urgency, making me jump as the boots drew a foot deeper into the room and closer to me.
He must have heard the soft tink of the dagger striking the stonework below me when I jumped. The boots rushed toward me, and I squeezed my eyes closed as fear ripped all sense from me. I didn’t want to see what was coming. I didn’t want to see the way my blood spattered across his face as he beat me. I didn’t want to see it pool around me. I didn’t want to see my bones break under his hand.
The bed above me exploded. The futon-style mattress flipped up and over. The expertly carved walnut wood frame was ripped to shreds. Every last one of the ropes that held the mattress off of the floor snapped. And amid all this carnage, not a single shard of wood, feather, or rope touched me .
It wasn’t until two arms were snatching me bodily from my fetal position that I felt anything at all. And when they did, I was slashing, the blade a living extension of my arm. I was determined not to let the King find me as easy a prey thing as he had found me last.
I felt the blade slashing, felt it meet hard leather and score a deep hungry gash into it. Felt it kiss flesh and split it wide. I felt it sing across bone sheathed in flesh. The arms did not let me go, though, and I lashed out like a wild animal, striking out with fist and feet and blade, screaming with every cell in my body the sound drowning out anything else around me.
The arms wrapped around me, folded me against slick hard leather, and pressed my head gently against the sound of a steady heartbeat. I thrashed and screamed, fighting against the man holding me. He was speaking, saying something I could not translate into words. But my skin knew the words, felt the warmth of liquid seeping into it going to war against the rabid fear that lanced through me.
The sound of my heart began to slow, to die in its intensity, matching the one that pounded against my ear in a steady rhythm. The rumble of the masculine voice began to pair with the sensation of a chin pressing into my scalp, the warmth of a body pressed tight to mine. All along, the sensation of comfort dripping like an IV into my veins soothed me from feral cat to house cat. Slowly, I felt the need to purr, to curl deeper into the body.
As the sensation of comfort, hot chocolate next to a fireplace, won the battle against the fear the dam my tears broke, and I buried my face into the discomfort of the warm hard leather and sobbed. A flood of tears streamed, hot and brutal, from my eyes into it, soaking through.
The grip of the arms around me eased for a moment but returned, crushing me with a terrifying strength against him, and I felt us rocking.
“Ssshh . . . It’s okay, Cricket. Shhh . . . You’re safe.”
The warm thunder of his voice, The Raven, cooed. Each word rumbled through me and shook the last bits of my resolve, of my strength, free, and I went slack against him .
I didn’t feel like I had to be strong. I didn’t feel like I needed to guard myself. I felt at ease. I had never felt this sensation before. I had always been on guard. I had always been anticipating the next attack, no matter what form it would have taken. But here, in his arms, I felt his words were true.
I was safe. At least for this moment.
He rocked me and held me until the sea of tears dried up and boiled into a dry lakebed. Lifting my head from his chest, I surveyed the damage.
The King’s bed was utterly destroyed. Pieces of it lay in tatters all over the room. Sheets were torn. Bedding blistered and shredded. Feathers dusted every surface. What once was a triumph of craftsmanship was barely suitable to be kindling.
When I looked back to The Raven, I realized that he was not much better off than the King’s bed. The dagger I had attacked him with was buried hilt deep into the meat of his trapezius, blood welling lazily around the steel. His face had a slash that ran from the high arch of one cheek, across his nose, splitting his eyebrow, and fading into his hairline. His lip had been split on the edge of his bottom lip, and the gloves he always wore were in tatters.
Yet he did not push me away, did not react to his pain at all. He merely held me, even though, every time I shifted in his arms or he adjusted his grip on me, the dagger bounced and ate at the skin to either side of its blade. He must have been in agony. Yet he didn’t show even a single flinch.
The gloved hand of his uninjured arm rose and brushed away the deep fissures of my tears from my cheeks with the pad of his thumb.
“There you are, hell cat. Safe. As I promised.” A soft smile was given to me as he tipped my chin up to look me over. “Yes? Safe? Are you okay?”
His eyes took quick inventory of me, searching for any hair out of place, let alone any injuries. We both knew that the injuries he was asking about were unseen grotesque things that squirmed beneath the surface of my mind .
The fucked thing about emotional wounds that cut down to the bone and spilled your squishy intestines all over the floor was that they never showed on the outside. If they did, I would be a walking scar. A giant, festering keloid made sentient purely by the power of my stubbornness.
I nodded hesitantly. Was I okay? I didn’t really know. I wanted to be okay, though. I wanted to pretend that none of what had just happened had happened. It would be so convenient. Just fold it up like a winter scarf, place it in a shoe box, stuff it at the back of the closet, and forget it even exists.
After all, we all know that whatever lives at the back of the closet no longer exists. It cannot plague you anymore. It cannot haunt the tombstones of your heart and sneak up on you in the dead of night when you least expect it to leap. It merely fell neatly into the void and disappeared.
And I wanted very much for this tacky scarf to disappear into the void.
If it wouldn’t disappear, though. I was satisfied that the room around me—hell, even the man who I straddled and huddled against mirrored the shambles that were my insides. I was wrung out. I was shattered. I was breaking every single one of my neat and tidy rules. So, it felt fitting that nothing surrounding me was crisp, clean, and whole. If I didn’t get to be, why did they?
Guilt pricked at me as a drop of The Raven’s blood slid down his spattered face. He didn’t seem to notice, though. The rich greens, browns, and horizon gold of his eyes stayed locked on me as he tucked a strand of hair that had come loose from my braid behind my tipped ear. His gloved hands buried themselves into the base of my hair, and before I knew his intentions, he crushed me against his chest again. The vigor, the strength in which he did so felt desperate, terrified, like a man crushing something he thought was lost to him before it was snatched away again.
The sound of his heart was no longer steady. It was frantic, a swarm of pissed-off bees rumbling through the hive of his chest. Before I could take the full measure of it, he was pulling me away again .
“I can’t get you reassigned, Cricket. He insists. I’ll keep trying, but eventually, he will get annoyed with my attempts. Perhaps I can get another to work with you. Maybe he won’t be such a boar with someone else to stand witness to his cravenness. Maybe I can start dragging him out to more hunts. Maybe . . .” He was rambling, the adrenaline of the events finally cutting into him and riding him like it had me. I reached up to press my finger to his lips to quiet him, and he crushed me against him again, preventing me from doing so. “I’ll figure something out.”
“You’re the Captain of the Guard, Raven, not my guard. His. I’m not your burden to care for. I’m a daoire, remember?”
My cheeks were smooshed against the sticky blood slick of his leather armor, and I felt like a fish when I tried to talk.
A rumble of disapproval rippled through him bordering on a growl. “Your kin’tha. It didn’t attend you today. Where is it?”
I shrugged against him. “No idea. I don’t exactly tell it when and where to go. It just sort of does. I assumed until the Bandrui told me otherwise that you controlled it.”
He snorted and pulled me away from him. “If only. I’ve already felt that things bite more than once on our journey here. I bought you from Rictus, and he said it would not be parted from you. Slimy old bastard claimed that it was for my own good. As unhinged and feral as you were. He failed to mention that the moment he put you into the blasted thing, he too was unable to go near you without its approval.” He tipped my chin up so that our eyes met and lingered, though our lips had not touched the long passionate kisses our eyes shared felt more intimate than anything I had ever experienced. “When you see it next, explain to it that it should not leave your side when you are in the palace. In the warrens is fine—you are protected there, I suspect. But in the palace, you are not. His Majesty might torment your mind and force you to bear witness to all manner of heinous things, but with the kin’tha there, I can be sure that he will not ever touch you again. Well . . . not if he wishes to have an arm afterwards.”
We both snorted a laugh, and it felt like a shared shower. The horror all around us washed clean with that simple gesture .
I nodded my agreement to his request, and he slid his gloved hand from my hair, lingering at the tip of my long braid. Our gaze drifted to the spun gold being rolled through the tattered black leather of his gloves. We fell into a comfortable silence as we watched it.
“Well, I have an appointment it seems with the Bandrui, seeing as I fell afoul of a feral, armed hellcat,” he grumbled good-naturedly with a flick of the braid.
I had the good sense to look bashful. “Yeah, uh . . . sorry about that . . .”
The rumbling roll of his laughter blew over me like a gentle spring breeze. “Don’t be. I’m glad to see that if needed, you have the stones to wield a weapon against your enemies. It’ll help me sleep at night knowing that whomever is fool enough to sneak up on you will not walk away unmolested for their trouble.”
He picked me up from his lap. Even with a dagger stuck deep in him, it took him no effort at all. I might as well have been a stuffed animal or a kitten that he was setting on their feet.
“Now, go on back to the warrens. I will have one of the guards escort you. I’ll have one of the courtiers come in to clean this up. Tell them the King was so outraged that they would turn him down that he tore it apart. Even if they hadn’t turned him down.”
“Not going to lie, Raven. I have no idea why anyone would be so cock starved for him. It was pretty unremarkable.”
He snorted and pushed up from the floor. “He could have an acorn for a cock, and it wouldn’t matter. He’s the Ard Rí. Politically, the most powerful Fae in the entire kingdom, and that is not to even mention the cache of magic he has stashed away.”
“They need higher standards,” I snorted.
“They do indeed, Cricket. Now . . . off you go. I will see you in the company of a guard before I go to be healed.”
He escorted me to the door, and when the guard bristled at the sight of his injuries, he shook his head and gave me a long look. The guard nodded and extended an arm for me to lead the way.
When I looked back, The Raven had his back to me. He stumbled a half step, caught himself on a sturdy table, and trembled. Another guard was quick to his side and was lifting his uninjured arm over his shoulder when the pair disappeared from my view as we passed into another hallway.