35. Chapter 35
Chapter 35
T he journey back from my mother’s cavern felt endless. I had to stop and rest at least twice, but I didn’t know if that was because of the amount of time that had passed or because I was exhausted, body, soul, and mind. Every part of me felt drained of everything except the fire of bitter hate that was living in the center of my existence.
I was an empty oblivion wrapping gluttonous barbed wire arms around the ember of hate, letting a solemn funerary parade of ghost lights and Goose lead the way.
It had taken me hours to work up the courage to leave that dungeon. I filled up that time, walking every inch of that platform. With each new piece of her collection of items I touched, I lingered a little longer.
In the end, I had taken a small pack of things with me. A hair comb. The robe she had slipped off before I killed her. Clio. The teapot she served me tea with. A glass bottle of perfume. A left ear guard of beautiful silver with inlaid amethyst and silver stars and a golden cuff that was a simple filigree of twisting vines. And a length of twine that had been tied into a circular shape. I didn’t know why I had taken that. It seemed so benign, lying next to a crumpled piece of plain paper, but I wanted it.
Goose had been kind enough to carry the bag as we wove our way through the tunnels. I would have dropped it a thousand times over. Strength had not yet returned to my injured arm. I didn’t know if it ever would. The moment I felt her magic flee the chamber, the golden threads that sealed the hole melted away. The wound wept down my chest and stained the shirt I was wearing, the only tears I had left to me. It would need to be cleaned—and soon. Crawling through dark, filthy tunnels could not be good for an open gash.
When we finally crested the tunnel that led to the hallway where The Raven’s room was, I stopped. Goose’s massive head turned to me and regarded me with lens-flare eyes as the only visible part of his body.
“Goose, take the bag to my cubby in the warrens. I don’t want him to see them. Hide them somewhere. Somewhere, no one—not even me—will find them until it’s time.”
I had thought about how precious those items were to me. They were not the same as the beads that I had sworn to protect. These were different. They were my beating heart, and I would not have them vulnerable to attack or theft. I would rip the world apart from its roots if that happened.
Goose whined but slowly melted into the darkness with the satchel, leaving me with the ghost lights to finish the journey.
The room was dark, the door wide open. I couldn’t remember if I had left it closed or open, but I didn’t care.
I counted the ten steps, turned right, and counted three more. Our stride was different, though, and instead of finding my way to the head of the bed, my grasping fingers found the footboard. Exhaustion weighed me down as I walked my hands across the soft bedspread to the pillow and crawled up into the overly tall bed.
I curled up into the fetal position and stared into the darkness. No thought. No emotion. No pain could touch me. I was far away. I was off in another place and in another time. My mother’s voice kept coming to me in soft breezes across the meadow of my mind, and I finally fell asleep.
When I woke, it was to a radiating warmth. A blanket was tucked around me like a cocoon, and my head was pillowed on something hard but yielding. The lights in the rail of the room were lit but dampened to the soft whisper of a single candle’s flame.
The revealed room was torn apart. Every surface that my eye touched where it had once been neat and tidy was shattered or hacked into. Had I done this? I didn’t remember it. I didn’t remember anything but curling up on the bed. Had I unleashed the emptiness within me and shredded everything around me so that it matched? That felt fitting. That felt right. The mild annoyance of not remembering the act wriggled like a lazy earth worm in my mind.
Even the door was askew on its hinge.
“Where did you go, little bug?”
A jolt of surprise hit my dulled nerves at the gentle rumble of his deep voice.
“Out for milk.”
My voice was lifeless. Just as empty as I felt.
The arm that held me in place pulled me back into the hardness of his body. My eyes slid shut, and I let the warmth of him flow into me. It seeped into the cracks and corners of my emptiness. But it was a single tear in the dry ocean bed of my existence.
“Where did you go?” he asked again.
There was no blade to his voice, though. I expected there to be. His prisoner had broken out and went for a walk about without his permission. Shouldn’t he be mad?
I didn’t answer him. What was I going to tell him? I went cave diving, found a big fucking spider, and my mother. Did you know that my mother is the goddess everyone thinks is dead? Oh, by the by, she’s dead now. I killed her. Still didn’t try to kill your king, though. Oh, I’m Fae, by the way. How do your people feel about enslaving your own kind?
He let the silence between us draw out and settle in to make itself comfortable on the bed with us. He merely tucked the blanket tighter around me and notched my ass into the crook of his hips, arching over my body protectively. Our breaths synchronized, and we lay like that for hours, not speaking, letting him hold me.
It wasn’t until the well of my tears finally refilled and managed to break free from my stranglehold that he spoke. “You can tell me, you know, little bug.”
There was a softness to his voice that had never been there before. Not when he held me while I stabbed him. Not when he had flirted with me. Never. The vulnerability, the worry, the need, and fear in his rumble reached into me and clenched its fist around the ruins of my heart. The rogue tears were joined by a deluge.
He didn’t shush me, didn’t ask more. He merely rolled me over and tucked my face into the heat of his chest as both arms encircled me and pressed me into the layers of his clothing. His legs wrapped around me in my little cocoon, and I was fully engulfed by his big body. His head was the only part of him that did not directly connect with me, and I wished it did. I needed the circuit to be completed to find the grounding like the open, angry arc of lightning I was.
I had the bone-deep need to be held by him in this moment, skin to skin. I needed it like a fever dream. My arms struggled within the restraints of the blanket to get to him. To hold him. To touch him. I needed it like air, more than air I needed just to hold him. I got past the first layer of his tunic before his hands gripped the blanket and pulled my arms away.
“No, Sóna. Not yet.” The rebuke was gentle, reluctant even, as if it pained him to tuck me back into the blanket and turn me back away from him. It hurt me, though. Each word felt like a bullet ripping through me, finding the last little soft spots that hadn’t been hollowed out yet. “I’m sorry, little bug, truly I am. I ache to touch you, but I can’t. Not yet. ”
My words refused to slip free, even though I wanted so badly to curse at him. To beg him to hold me. Just fucking hold me!
As if sensing it, too, he held me tighter, almost squeezing the air from me. “Tell me what happened, little bug. Please?”
“I can’t,” I whispered to the ghost who held me.
“Can you tell me how you got a giant hole in your shoulder, at least?”
“A massive spider.”
“Mmm, that makes sense. Were you in the tunnels?”
“Yes.”
“There’s plenty of them down in the dark. You’re lucky to be alive, little bug. They are deadly to even the strongest of Fae.”
His chastisement was a delicate brush compared to what I knew he was capable of.
“I’m not.”
“Then you are an especially lively ghost.”
“I’m pretty sure I died.”
“Can’t have. This isn’t heaven.”
“Then it must be hell.”
“Perhaps.” He sighed and squeezed harder. “Is that what has you so upset? That you died?”
“Seems like a sensible thing to be upset about.”
“It is. But it was only temporary, didn’t seem to stick. So, nothing to be upset about. Did you kill the spider?”
“Yes.”
“A great warrior lays in my arms. I’m proud of you.” He nuzzled my hair, and soft sparks followed the course of his nose against my scalp. “What else happened?”
“I . . . I can’t talk about it yet.”
The tingles ran down my spine and settled somewhere near where I might have tombstones.
“But you will tell me? Eventually?”
“Yes. Eventually.”
“You can trust me, Sóna. I know it often feels like you cannot, but I have never lied to you, and I intend on never doing so.” He tucked his nose into the crook of my bare neck and placed a single firework of a kiss that sizzled across every nerve in my body there. “I cherish you, Sóna Mac Raith.”
My throat seized up, choking off the response I should have given him. I should tell him I hate him. I should tell him I need him. I should tell him that, when he’s not near me, I feel like I am losing my mind.
“Rest,” he murmured, and the lights dimmed until we were cradled into darkness.
I let my eyes slide closed. Let the sense of comfort and the security of knowing nothing could or would harm me while he held me, rock me to sleep.
When I awoke again, I was still in his arms. Time had no meaning anymore, and I was an aching, hollow body.
“I know you don’t want to talk, little bug. But can I talk at you?” He was whispering the depth of his voice rumbling my back.
I nodded as a response. He was right. I didn’t want to talk. I didn’t want to feel better. I wanted to wallow in my misery. The last shred of hope had been torn from me by some cruelty I didn’t understand, and all I had left to me was the hatred burning in my heart.
“I know that whatever happened in those tunnels has sunk its fangs into you. I know it’s not the spider, though we will soon need to get you up and get that wound cleaned. I don’t know what it was but know that, whatever happened down there, in the dark, I will be here for you. When you want to talk, when you want to scream, when you want to hit or bite or slash, I will be here for you. Nothing you can do or say can make me leave your side. It might seem that way, but there are things you don’t know, little bug. Things I can’t tell you yet. I know you know what oaths are and how they can bind a Fae to certain paths. When I can, I will tell you everything. Right now is not the time. But even the oaths I have sworn will not keep me from you. ”
“I’m not your girlfriend, Raven.” I opened my eyes and watched the way the dim light played across the broken pieces of his furniture.
“No, you’re not. You’re more than that.” The band of his arms tightened.
“I’m just a daoire to the Ard Rí you’ve got a particularly strange obsession with. You’ll get over it.”
“Is that what you truly think?” I felt him rise behind me, saw his face hovering above me. His hair was unbound for the first time since I had met him, letting the gold strands glitter in the soft light. Pain, anger, and disbelief sparkled in his forest eyes.
“Did I do that?”
“What?” he snapped.
“Your room. Did I do this? I don’t remember trashing your place. If I did, I’m sorry.”
“You’re deflecting.”
I rolled to my back, wincing as my weight fell flat on my wound without any support. “And? Does it matter? What do you want from me, Raven? Do you want me to crack open my chest and let you finger-fuck my soul? Will it make you feel better about the way I come for you when you’re slicing me up? Will it make you feel better if I tell you I love you and you pimp me out to your friends? Will it make you feel better about holding me prisoner if, every time you see me, I’m on my knees and worshipping the ground you walk on? Will you feel like a big man if the untouchable, bitter Golden Pearl of the Ard Rí sucks your cock better than she sucked the King’s? Tell me Raven, what the fuck do you want from me? Because, frankly, I’ve got nothing fucking left to give so tell me so I can give it to you and you can leave me the fuck alone.”
I regretted the words the moment the poison daggers of them fell from my lips. I regretted the way they twisted his face with agony. I wanted to smooth it away. To apologize. To tell him I didn’t mean any of it. I wanted to whisper to him that I cherished him, too. I wanted to tell him about my mother. I wanted to tell him about my past so that he would understand how deep that knife had slid into me when it sliced her flesh. I needed him to know it all. I wanted to crack open my chest and pull out my heart, lay it at his feet, and tell him to take better care of it than I had.
“Oh, sweet little bug, bite all you want. I know what you’re doing.” He had put his gloves back on sometime while I was sleeping, and the soft suede of them dragged down the back of my cheek. “I was you too. I still am, in some ways. Bite before they bite you. Cut before they cut you. Rip and tear before they do the same to you. It makes us perfect warriors, perfect weapons to turn against our enemies. But I am not your enemy, Sóna, and you’ll figure that out eventually. Even if that takes a thousand years, you will figure that out.”
“I won’t live a thousand years.”
That was a lie, I didn’t know how long I could expect to live now that I was settling into the knowledge that I was, in fact, a Fae and not a normal, boring human. I didn’t even know how long a human in this hell hole would survive. Violet was at least two hundred fifty years old, and she was still spry.
“You beautiful little liar.” He curled a bitter smile and dragged the gloved back of his hand down my cheek again. “You are filthy, Sóna Mac Raith. May I take you to the baths? Get you clean and dress that wound?”
“Is there a reason it’s not closing on its own?” I didn’t move. I didn’t want to accept his kindness.
He watched me for a long time. I could see the gears turning in his head as if he had noticed something and was putting pieces together slowly. “The spider. What did it look like?”
“Huge. It would easily fill this room. Maybe thirty feet total? Blue. Black spikes. Red roses for eyes. But the petals had eyes on them. And it was cold. Really cold.”
He sat back on his heels and watched me. “You really did die.”
The sentence was a soft whisper, as if he hadn’t even meant for me to hear him.
“Told you I did.”
Was that a shiver that ran down his spine?
He collected himself and took a deep breath. “That was a mourning spider, Sóna. Not the deadliest of them all, but that sounds like it was a broodmother. Somewhere, down in the depths, you’d find an egg sack. They eat Fae and magic. Spit up the soup that’s left over into the egg sacks to incubate their young. The temperature they are at when they are nursing their young dictates what comes out of the eggs. Cold breeds soldiers. Hot breeds more mothers. If she was hunting, that means she has brood somewhere, now that she’s dead they will die off soon as well. How she survived down in the darkness without a source of magic to feed her let alone feed her well enough to mate and lay eggs, I don’t know.”
“So, how many Fae does it take to feed one of those things? I’m thinking of going back down there and raising one of them as a pet. Need to know how much Fluffy will eat.”
“Depends. Your average Fae? Six to ten a year. A royal? Two or three for the whole brood. If she happened to get her hands on an ascended? One could feed thousands of broods if she kept it alive and restrained long enough.”
My mother had been down there in the dark with that creature for easily two hundred years. How many times had she been fed off of? How many times had that foul thing bit into her delicate flesh and drawn the magic from her? How many broods had she raised on the strength of my mother? The thought alone made me sick.
I let my eyes squeeze shut against the image of those massive fangs sinking into her throat and chest. She couldn’t die by that alone. Magic wouldn’t let her die from a spider. It required iron to do the job. Iron and someone who was dead. It had required my hand to do it.
“Can I take you to the bath?” He was already moving off the bed before I could answer him.
I wanted to wallow in my filth a little longer, but something told me that he wouldn’t be letting me, even if I said no, so I merely nodded.
His arms slid under my blanket and lifted me and my warm cocoon up to cradle against the firm rest of his chest. He scooped up a small satchel and tucked it into his belt. “Not the communal baths. This might be my room, but it is not my only one.”
His chest expanded on a deep breath, and a shaft of weak sunlight pierced the darkness around us in a column from ceiling to floor. He stepped forward into it, and I felt like the world dropped out and all that was left was the warmth of a summer day and the blinding sunlight.
When we stepped clear of it, we were in another place, another room. This one was somewhere within the palace proper, as the two massive windows that let light in overlooked a forest of trees that expanded out beyond the horizon. It was an opulent room, garish compared to the austere well-crafted elegance of the one in the prison. This one was decked out in greens and golds, with a shattered crest over the enormous bed. Even cracked and broken, I could clearly make out the sigil. A black mountain with a golden sun breeching behind it and, atop that, a falcon.
It hung in a place of pride over the head of the bed as if to remind him always of his family’s disgrace.
He set me down gently in a velvet wingback chair and tucked the blanket around me. “I will draw my lady’s bath and then leave her to it. Something tells me that you wouldn’t want me hanging around. You need time and space. And I’ll let you have it. But I will be right here, reading. If you need me for anything, you need but call.”
He kept to his word. The bath was steaming hot and scented with floating flowers and oils when I stepped into it. There was no door that separated us, but he had adjusted the curtain shield and the massive copper tub so that I was in relative seclusion. If I peeked around it, I could easily see him, and as he promised, he was sitting in the very chair he had sat me on, his handsome face tipped down into the pages of a large leather-bound book. I couldn’t read the language it was in, but he was engrossed, and that allowed me time to think.
I pored over the details of everything I had learned. From Daróg’s true name to the bits and pieces of what happened during the war. Why I was brought to the human realm and what I truly was. Who I truly was.
There were pieces missing, pieces I would desperately need to fill in if I wanted to get out of here, but there was one thing that was certain. No matter what happened, I would be bringing this place and all its denizens to their knees. I would not just raise the House of Magic. I would not just find a way to balance magic. I would find a way to destroy every one of them, and that piece of crystal I had pulled from my mother’s grave would be the weapon I used to watch the life bleed out of Daróg.
“May I come in, little bug?”
I peeked around the curtain, and he had set his book down and was watching the curtained tub. He hadn’t moved, merely waited for me to respond.
“Yes.”
Only when I gave him permission did he unfold his huge frame from the chair and make his slow journey to my side, where he kneeled next to the tub. “I wanted to take a good look at the wound now that it’s clean. Once that’s done, I’ll leave you be if you’d like. I suspect after being in the tunnels for a few days, you could use the fresh air.”
“Is this where he thinks you spend most of your time?” I asked as he took a rag from the folded pile and soaked it. I turned into him, unembarrassed by my nudity. He’d seen it all already, anyway.
“It’s the room he gave me, yes.”
“He gives you a lot of things.” I watched him wince as if I had slapped him.
I didn’t want the threads I was tying together to be true.
“He does, yes. He has also taken much from me.” Soap was lathered onto the rag, and he began gingerly dabbing at the wound.
“What has he taken from you?”
“I’ve already told you what happened to my court. That was his doing. Every man, woman, child, daor, and beast alike. All put to the sword.”
The flatness of his tone was deadly. I knew it just as I knew that, when the tone drained from mine, I was just a hair away from striking. And yet . . . I did not fear him. Not even a little.
“Why did you do it?”
This was the one thing in all my brooding I couldn’t understand. Was he violent? Was he a bit deranged? Yes. All those things and more, but I had seen in him what he hid from others was the tenderness that was within him. He never spoke nor acted against others for the thrill of it. He had treated me well, even when there was nothing in it for him. Even human men would not treat someone they weren’t fucking as well as he treated me. Not that that was a high bar to set.
He sighed, his entire body collapsing in resignation. “In all this time, do you know not a single Fae has asked me that? Not once. Not my closest friends, those who grew up with me, not my lover, not even the Bandrui has asked me that. None of them have asked me why I led my troops into the destruction of the House of Magic. They have all written their own reasons and committed themselves wholly to the story they pieced together. And yet, even after all these years, my excuses and my justifications feel flimsy and paper thin.”
Rule #12 was true, even in Fae, it seemed. No one cares about the truth if it is inconvenient to them.
“So, tell me them.”
I wanted to hear from his own lips if he would be next to Daróg when I burned this place to the ground.
He drenched the rag and wrung it out. I barely felt the hot press of the wet cloth to my skin as I focused solely on him and what came next.
“I was young, Sóna. I was young, and I was foolish. I loved someone very dearly and believed all their lies, and all their causes were just and righteous. So, when I received my orders from them to raise the House of Magic to the ground, I followed them without thought. I didn’t consider what that would mean. I didn’t think about how it would affect the world around me or how it would even affect me. I didn’t think about anything other than my loyalty and my indignation that the House of Magic would stand against my love. All I thought about was defeating their enemy. Perhaps I did it as an act of love. Perhaps I did it as an act of loyalty. But honestly, Sóna? It felt good. It probably shouldn’t have. I probably should regret this most of all, but it felt so good to be able to unleash myself and test the limits of my strength. I was invigorated by the adrenaline of it all. I was blinded by it. Blinded by all of it.”
“So, you were just following orders? ”
I wanted the acrid taste of those words to bite him more than they bit me.
“No, I wasn’t just following orders. I had choice. I had thought and reason. I did what I did because I wanted to at the time. And I regret every single swing of my sword. Not simply because it was the death of my family. Not because it has hit this realm like a meteor. But because what I did wasn’t who I wanted to be. It was who I thought I had to be to be with someone.” He chuckled softly at himself, at the ridiculousness of youth. “I am ashamed of what I did, Sóna. I live every day with the consequences of my actions, and sometimes, I rebel against them, but mostly, I just feel deep shame. I wish you didn’t know this about me.”
“Who was your lover?”
I hadn’t looked at him since he started talking. Visions of her hand on his chest in the throne room. How familiar they were with each other. I already knew the answer. I already knew whose bed he was avoiding while he made me come for him. I needed to hear it from him so that I could purge him from my heart once and for all. So that I could scratch his name out of my blood and never hear it again. No matter what he said or did, the moment he admitted The Oaken Rose was his lover, that would be the last time he touched me.
He took a deep breath and sat back. The dark forest of his eyes found mine. There was a silent plea there. Don’t make me say this , they whispered to me. His brows furrowed as I watched him, unyielding. The benefit of a shattered heart was that you didn’t need to harden it against the hammer strikes of truth. He fidgeted with the rag, creamy with my blood. It was an unusual sight, to see such a behemoth of a man sitting with his ankles crossed under him on the floor of his own apartments, next to the bathtub of a simple slip of a girl begging her silently not to make him do something he didn’t want to do.
I let the echo of emptiness draw out between us. I would not fill it. I would not allow him to escape this any more than I would allow myself to escape this truth.
Finally, he exhaled a great puff of a dejected sigh. “I’m sorry, Sóna.”
His voice, once a stable baritone mountain beneath me that I could count on to ease my fears and bring a small measure of comfort, was soft, beaten, and as wounded as I was.
“Who,” I demanded again.
He ran a hand through his hair, tugging at the strands as if he could pull the yoke of what I required of him from his shoulders. When his eyes met mine again, they were wounded, and I could see plainly the knowledge that what he said next would shatter us forever. If there had ever even been an “us” to begin with.
“The Ard Rí,” he whispered to the ice-cold rag in his hand.
I fought the urge to blink. That was not what I expected. I had not expected to hear that vile man had been or still was his lover. My mind warred against the veracity of his confession. The small little glances, the ease they had with each other, the excuses for his behavior, the fact Daróg had killed every one of his family members, and he still served him. All these facts rattled around in my brain as I strained to keep them from falling into place.
“When I came to the Night Market, I had hoped to purchase a daor that the two of us could . . . well, that I could use, to get into his good graces again. When I saw you, I knew that you were something different. But I had promised him that I would be returning with a gift. You.” He was twisting the rag as he was twisting me. “You must believe me when I say that it has been decades since he and I . . . were close.”
“He killed your entire family, Raven.”
I was shaking. I couldn’t imagine lying down with someone knowing they killed your entire family, a family you had known, and calling it love. Even as I stared the man who had killed my entire family before I had even known them, I would never call what I had boiling within me for The Raven love. I was a twisted fuck, but I wasn’t that twisted. Was I?
“No. I killed them.” His head was bowed. He couldn’t look at me. “He might have ordered it, but they would have been safe if I had not done what I did to the House of Magic.”
“Who issued the order? ”
Ice churned in my veins and tumbled over cliffs.
“He did.”
“So, you were following his orders. So, he punished your entire family for you following his orders and you . . . you fucked him after? For how long?”
“He swears that he did not issue the order to raze the House of Magic. He swore that the order was to bring the House of Magic to heel. Not to destroy it.”
“And you believed him? How long?”
“He swore it.”
His voice was whisper thin, merely a suggestion of an echo of the strength he held.
“I could swear that my tits are as big as watermelons, and that doesn’t make it so, Raven. You know that as well, as I do. How. Long.”
He pursed his lips, gnawing on the edges of them. “A little over a hundred and fifty years.”
“So, you played his fucking whore for over two lifetimes even after he punished you for doing what you were told to do? That’s fucking sick. No wonder we fit together so well.” I looked away from him, hating the fact that I saw so much of myself in him at this moment.
I knew that he had destroyed everything. I knew that he was the reason that everything in my life was shit, yet even now, I longed to touch him, to kiss him, to climb on top of him and make him forget that Daróg even had existed in his heart once.
“You don’t understand, Sóna. I loved him.”
The fact that he said loved and not love shouldn’t have made my pathetic heart kick at the cage of my ribs. And yet it did.
I was pathetic.
“He’s a monster,” I hissed, finally looking at him.
Pain throbbed hot in his eyes, contorted his face, and sank its hooks into me.
“He is. And so am I, little bug.” He rose, taking the cloth with him. I followed him all the way up as he towered over me, just an enormous, wounded boy I recognized as far too familiar. “I cannot change my past, Sóna. As much as I wish I could. Now more than ever. It’s impossible. And I have spent and will spend, my entire life since then paying for my mistake. I am haunted by the ghosts of my past but with you . . . I . . . I don’t know I thought I could be different. I thought I could be seen as different. I hoped you’d never find out.”
“Is there more that I should know?”
He twisted the cloth in his hand. “I was betrothed.”
“To whom?”
“His sister, The Oaken Rose. We were to be wed by now. Two decades past. But no more.”
“Did you fuck her?”
He looked away. “She was to be my wife, Sóna.”
“Did you fuck her?”
Anger burned in his eyes when he looked back at me. “Yes. Several times.”
“Did you share her?”
“What?”
“It’s a simple question, really. Did you share her?”
“She’s his sister!”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I guess I know something you don’t know.”
Dark storms built in the sky over his evergreen eyes. “Explain.”
“The day that the Ard Rí was stabbed, I was in his room, cleaning as usual. I heard him bringing in another one of his whores. I was stuck into the corner as far as I could go. And when he appeared, he was making out with The Oaken Rose. He was balls deep in her when the Fae who snuck in stabbed him in the back. So, I assumed since you love sharing me that you would have shared his sister between the two of you. Silly me.”
Thunder struck as he reached out and wrapped his bare hand around my lower jaw, drawing me to him. Electricity arced and snapped where his bare skin touched mine. I felt a heat flowing through me, filling up an empty place in my soul I had never noticed before. The longer he glared down at me, the more lightning poured into me and sang in my veins as it was pumped through my body.
“Never repeat that outside of this room, Sóna Mac Raith. Swear it to me. ”
His voice was a sharp growl pushed through gritted teeth.
“Let me go,” I bit back through my own locked teeth.
“Never,” he hissed back. “Swear it.”
“I won’t protect your dick of a king, and I certainly won’t protect his whore of a sister. So. No.”
Stubbornness swirled with the gunpowder that flowed into me.
“Foolish woman! I don’t give a fuck about either of them. If he’s fucking her, I don’t give a shit. I don’t even care if they planned on fucking in our would-be marriage bed. He means less than nothing to me. She even less. You will fucking swear it to me because that is knowledge that will get you killed, and I have the weight of one mass grave on my soul, I do not want another so soon.” He gripped my cheeks and pushed them together until my lips bulged under the pressure. His gaze locked on them as he hissed his curses. “Do you not know it already, little bug? I would burn all of magic out of existence to keep you warm at night.”
He sealed his oath with a kiss.
I hadn’t expected the way his kiss crashed over me, liquefied my bones, and rebuilt me into something new and whole all at the same time. I hadn’t expected that the simple, vicious assault of his lips to mine would unmake me. I hadn’t expected that, the moment our lips touched, the very floor beneath us would shift, and all the firmaments I had built within me would come tumbling down around me.
“Fuck.” He hissed and ripped himself away from me like I was a white-hot piece of iron he had foolishly bumped into.
Passion, as sharp as the one that wound itself through me, reflected at me through the mirror of his deep-green eyes.
We were both panting, gasping for the air that we had stolen from each other, frozen in place. I, standing in a copper tub, dripping wet and bleeding from the newly reopened hole in my shoulder. Him, fully clothed and his clothing drenched from where my body had wantonly pressed against him. We looked like two statues, regretting both the kiss we had shared and the fact that it had ended.
Where he found the willpower when I could not, I don’t know, but he turned on his heels and fled the room without another word.