37. Chapter 37
Chapter 37
I finished my bath in silence. Dumbstruck silence. The water around me never cooled, but I could not be bothered to find where the controls would have been for such a thing. I couldn’t even find the drain. I left the water there, murky with the muck and filth of Cricket, the blood of Sóna Mac Raith, and the film of naivete that had worked its way over me since I came to this rotten place. And while I could feel myself emerging from hibernation, found the force of nature that I had been before this nightmare, my thoughts kept connecting to him.
My fingers kept drifting to my lips, where they still burned from our kiss.
He had kissed me.
He had touched me with no glove and nothing between us but the skin we resided in. And it was a singular experience that defied all logic. I had been touched by so many hands in my life, had felt the skin of others against mine, but I had never felt whatever that was. It was like the universe had stopped and held its breath. I had been glass before he kissed me, and now I was steel.
It was confusing, and my head swam with the swirling sparks he had left me with. I didn’t want them, but I was getting tired of fighting against them.
“Little bug? ”
I was sitting in the wingback chair, naked, finger combing the long tangle of my golden locks, eyes fixed on the wildscape just out of reach, when he knocked on the door and opened it an inch.
“Come in, Raven.”
I wasn’t ready to see him again. I hadn’t sorted through the menagerie of wild animals that he had let loose within my chest nor the firestorm in my blood.
“I brought you some clothes. And dinner should be—” He stopped dead in his tracks when our gaze locked. “Caoilfhionn’s breath.”
“Nothing you haven’t seen before, Raven.”
Hunger banked in his eyes, and my body ached to let him loose on it.
“I’ve never seen you like this,” he whispered, setting a wine-red dress on the bed along with a chemise, a surcoat, and a pair of shoes. The comb he held, as well as the small pot of something, remained in his hand, though. “Can I brush it for you?”
“Only if you promise to pull it a few times.”
The flames within me took control of my tongue and said what had been floating on the surface of my mind.
“Little bug.” His voice turned dark and dangerous. “I’ve come to care for you.”
Emboldened by his response, I turned fully in the chair, so I was looking at him and not at the stunning wooded vista outside the open window. My toes barely touched the floor, but I kept my knees tightly pressed to each other as my fingers traced up and down my thighs, drawing his eye to them. I felt the electricity within me stir, answering to his nearness as I teased him, inching my knees apart slowly. “Is that a statement of fact or a statement of intent?”
He swallowed hard against the lust growing thick within the room with us.
“Yes,” he grated out, taking a step toward me. “First your hair . . . and then . . . dinner . . . yes. Food.”
“And if I’m hungry for something else?” I asked as my knees came full apart and let him lock his gaze on my slick center. I drew my finger down my inner thigh and dipped into my slippery, silken heat .
He watched, hypnotized by me, as I stroked my throbbing clit, sending unrestrained shudders through my body.
“Then, after dinner, if you’ve been a good girl, I’ll let you pick the bed or the Maw.” He loomed over me, his head dipping to be a whisper away from our lips touching again. His hand, covered this time in a sleek glossed leather glove, caught my wrist and held me still. “But if you keep doing that, you won’t have a choice at all, and I am ravenous for you.”
“Then, get down on your knees and slake your hunger,” I moaned, my hips rising to find friction against our joined hands.
“Feidlimid be good.” He groaned as his fingers explored my slick satin and slowly toyed with the sensitive flesh that burned for him. “Sóna, have mercy on me.”
There was something intoxicating about having this behemoth of a warrior at my fingertips, begging me for mercy.
I would be his merciful goddess. Just this once.
“Kiss me, and I’ll grant your wish.” I tipped my head back and waited for him to comply.
He never did. Instead, he untangled our grip from each other and took two steps away from me. “You aren’t in your right mind. This isn’t your choice. Get dressed, please. When you’re done, I’ll braid your hair.”
It should have burned, his rejection, but I could see that he was suffering as much as I was for his refusal. His normally sun-kissed skin had lost two shades and looked pale and clammy to the touch. He was clenching his fists, the knuckles of his glove stretching taut as he stared at me. He would have been better off running a ten-day marathon than he was staring me down and refusing to fuck me when I very clearly was begging him to do so.
“Remind me of this the next time you want me to come for you.” I cut him a glare as I pushed out of the chair and went to the chemise, pulling it over my head.
He stopped me, holding me captive with the chemise half over my head, and slammed his lips down on mine through the pale linen of the gown. I hadn’t been expecting it. I was totally off guard, and the sparks that lived within me sizzled back to life. “The next time I want you to come for me, little bug, you will be screaming, begging me to let you.”
He was pulling away, and I could not tolerate that. Could not tolerate the way his body left mine cold when it was not pressed to me. My leg rose and hooked around his hips, drawing him back flush against me. His resistance was tissue paper in a monsoon, and his lips found mine again through the linen that both blinded and restrained me. The hot brand of his hands found the small of my back and crushed the scant bits of air between us.
His lips burned mine, scorching the fabric, and I could almost smell them burning as the sleek sensation of his glove slid down the back of my thigh and hooked my other leg up around his hips. He held me aloft without a single twitch of exertion, cradling and kneading the flesh of my ass as I ground down into the rock-hard bulge held back by the leather tie of his breeches.
Every undulating slide of my slick core against the fabric was accentuated by the power of his massive hands guiding and the thrust of his hips against me. Even the slightest friction created by us snaking against each other, l was driving me crazy. Any thought that was not him and this moment evaporated the moment his lips touched mine.
The sun within me burned away all thoughts of what he had done. What it meant. Who he had made me.
All I could think of was this. His flesh against mine, and our bodies locked against each other.
Once again, it was he who had the willpower to rip himself away from me, but he didn’t go far. The gentle press of his forehead against mine as we panted ragged breaths, trying to fill rebelling lungs with air washed over me with a sense of contentment.
“Kiss me forever, or I’ll suffocate under the weight of my need for you, Raven,” I whispered to him when I snatched a few breaths.
“Would that I could, little bug. Fuck, you make this harder and harder every day.” I heard the pain, the anguish, the need that sliced within me mirrored in his voice. “But I would have you choose me. ”
“Fine. I choose you, Raven. I want you. I want you so fucking bad all I can think of is how you’ll feel inside of me.”
I was beyond caring that there was a slight desperation in my voice.
“Soon, Sóna. Fuck. I promise you. Very soon.” He exhaled. “I want you, too. I choose you too. And I’ll always choose you. Forever.”
“Then, why won’t you fuck me?”
“I made an oath, Sóna.”
“Fuck your oath. Fuck me, or I’ll find someone else to do it.”
I felt the malignant twist of his lips into a toothy grin. “Oh, sweet little bug, please do. I would love nothing more than to crown you in a diadem of their ribs and bathe you in their blood so I can lick it off.”
“You’d have to touch me to do that.”
“I encourage you to test my limits, little bug. You’ll find that there is no depravity, devilry, nor debauchery I wouldn’t commit or participate in for you. Gladly. Without hesitation.”
Why did that make my heart race almost as much as when he finger-fucked me? Why did that make my pussy clench with desire?
He slowly lowered my ass to the bed and placed a tender kiss to my forehead. “Now, get dressed. Dinner will be up to us soon. I’ll have you dine by the window to watch the Fae sun set on the horizon of the wood this evening.”
“Romantic.”
“I prefer to balance my hedonism with all of the four food groups,” he drolled as I pulled the chemise down and spread it across my suddenly feverish body.
“And what food groups would that be?”
“The sound of your pleasure, the sound of your pain, the sound of your laughter, and the sound of your brutality.” He counted them out on his black-swathed fingers.
“That doesn’t sound like a very balanced diet,” I quipped back and finished getting dressed.
I made my way over to the window, where he had drawn over a table and two chairs, the window opened wide. It was a sweet little romantic table for two with a hauntingly beautiful scene beyond the wall .
“From this window, you can almost see where Lon di Lughae and Doire-na-Tuan are. If you were to fly straight into the sun from the palace, you would first reach Doire-na-Tuan and beyond the moors of their lands is Lon di Lughae.” He smiled down at me as he mapped out the manors that lay before us.
“And your court? Where were your lands?” I settled into the chair he pulled out for me, and he set to working a cream from the pot he’d brought with him into the long strands preparing them for the braid he promised.
“Directly opposite. If you turned around and flew with Lon di Lughae at your back, you’d first encounter Dealramh Léas, and once you cleared their fields and meadows, you would eventually come to Breacadh an Lae. It’s still there. Or was the last time I visited a few years ago. Ghosts haunt its halls where there was once the laughter of children and vines are starting to reclaim it, but it’s still there. I suspect that the Ard Rí would not allow it to fall into ruin. He’d want to keep it as a monument to those who would disobey him.”
I reached behind me, wrapping my hand around his tree trunk of a thigh to give him some sort of respite from the pain of the memories. “Why do you still serve him, Raven?”
He sighed deep and began slowly drawing a comb through the base of one section of my hair, taking care to isolate knots so he didn’t yank at my scalp. “A sense of duty? Punishing myself? Some hope that we could somehow erase the pain of the past? Oaths? I don’t know which answer is correct, if any of them are.”
“Do you think he will ever free me?”
“I kiss you finally, and you’re suddenly ready to run away from me?” He teased, taking up a new section of my hair. “I don’t know, Sóna. To be honest, I don’t truly understand what has happened between the two of you. I was there, in the room, and I still don’t understand it. I’ve known the man since we were both children, and I have never seen him act like that with someone. He’s capricious, malicious, and vicious like the rest of us, but the way you gall him . . . I’ve never seen anything like it. He goes out of his way to strike at you.” His hands had stilled on my hair as if he was trying to pick through his own thoughts. “I do not like to ask this, little bug, but it has needled at me all this time. What did you do to him?”
I bristled under the question. It felt like he was blaming me for what was happening. It felt unfair, and I wanted to hate him for it, but the chilled effervescence he had left within me from his kiss refused to allow me to let go of the sweetness he’d imbued me with. “I don’t know. I went somewhere else while it was happening. I kept thinking of the last time I had sucked a dick. And I remember tasting someone else on him, and I wanted to be somewhere else.”
“Someone else?”
“His dick tasted of pussy.”
“Are you . . . familiar with that taste?” He was edging around the question like it might bite him if he did not approach it with care.
“It seems we have this in common, Raven. I haven’t had many sexual partners in my life, but they’ve come in all shapes and sizes. I cared more about the person inside the body than what the body looked like. I needed the person in the skin to hold my heart more than I needed them to have a specific set of body parts.”
“How very Fae of you,” he quipped and kept brushing.
How very Fae of you . The words rang in my head and sank in deep. Had I been living as a Fae without ever realizing it?
“Had I known that, little bug, I’d have been more discerning with who I selected for our third. I assumed that you, like most of the humans in the warrens, had a preferred gender of partner. And since you seemed to respond to me, I assumed it leaned toward the masculine.”
I snorted. “You picked well. Brittle Spear was . . . an experience I enjoyed. Though I will say that if that is your method of interrogation, you suck at it.”
“Oh, is that so? I’ll have you know that in this palace, hearing that The Raven of the Dawn is requesting a conversation with you strikes fear in the hearts of every single Fae and human alike.”
“Do you get a lot of great information from them? I can’t imagine you do. If you let me have my hands, I’d have had Brittle Spear begging to confess on his own just to be able to taste me more.” He tugged at my hair, drawing my head back to look at him as he stared down at me with annoyance and jealousy flashing in his dark-green eyes. “Scowl all you’d like, Raven. I fuck like a champ. Not my fault you refuse to sample the goods. Speaking of Brittle Spear . . . we both know it wasn’t him and that it wasn’t me.”
“Careful little bug, Brittle Spear still draws breath. Keep pushing me, and that could easily change.” There was no true threat in his voice, just a simple teasing jest. “Yes, though I’m still not convinced that it wasn’t you. You’re more than capable.”
“Oh, I absolutely could have. Thought about it more than a few times but didn’t have the opportunity.” He grinned and let my hair go so that I could relax my neck. His fingers started at the crown of my head and began what I could feel was a complicated, intricate braid. Nothing like the simple French braid I called my fancy braid when I was in Human. “So, there’s still someone out to kill the King for some reason. No idea why—he’s obviously a wonderful dude. So, you’ll need to do more clever interrogations now that you’ve pinned it on Brittle Spear.”
I could feel him narrow his eyes behind me, the suspicion dripping into his words. “Yes. I will.”
“You suck at interrogation.” His fingers tightened in my hair, and I hissed on a snicker. “Let me help you.”
“No.”
“Weren’t you the one that said you were happy to share me?”
“On my terms.”
“Tsk. What about my choice?”
“You’ve already made it.”
His fingers didn’t let up their tight hold on my hair.
“What better way to make sure I don’t find a nice stiff, warm seat on someone else’s cock or face all while keeping me safe and freed of suspicion.” I tightened my grip on his thigh, digging my nails into the fabric as the pain in my scalp began to throb much lower than he intended.
“Only with me?”
“Only with you. ”
“With who I say? When I say? How I say?”
“My dear sweet Raven, a girl could think you have control issues.”
“If I could control you, Sóna Mac Raith, I would be the most powerful Fae ever to have been born. You bend for me only because you want to, and I’m not stupid enough to think otherwise.”
“Then, you know I’ll agree to all your stipulations.”
“Say it.”
“I agree.”
The moment I did, the tension on my head eased. “Good girl.”
He finished up the braid, tying a black-and-gold ribbon into the ends.
I took hold of it, eyed it and then him as he found a seat. “Marking your territory?”
He grinned from his chair across from me. “If I was, I’d have clothed you in a golden gown with a black surcoat and adorned your braid with falcon feathers and placed a tiara of black agate upon your head. In due time.”
“Great. I’ll just be a walking billboard of your ownership, then?”
He shrugged and ushered a servant in who brought us our dinner. The conversation went quiet as they placed the dinner plates before us. It wasn’t one of the humans I knew from the warrens. I’d never seen him before, and I noted that for later. As soon as the door closed, The Raven turned back to me and continued as if the conversation had never had a pause.
“Until you have your own heraldry, yes. And when you have your own symbols, I will bear them with pride of place.”
“Would you teach me about them?” I said, inclining my head toward the shattered crest above his bed while he served me a portion of the roast venison, potatoes, and a medley of other vegetables.
The venison looked repulsive.
His eyes followed my gaze, and he nodded, licking his fingers clean before leaning back to the bookcase a distance away. He searched it and then found what he was looking for. “I assume you can read. Most of the newer humans can. ”
He placed the book on the table. The title was embossed in glittering, curling, decorative copper letters. The Onomastic Priority . I let my finger trace over the raised letters, and he tapped his gloved finger on it. “This stays in this room. But you are welcome to come here whenever you wish, with or without me. I will grant you sanctuary here, which will allow you to walk the corridors freely and pass through the wards. Listen, little bug, no one can enter this room without my leave. Only you and I have access to this room. Not even the Ard Rí.”
His brows were drawn down as if to impress upon me some unspoken threat and promise. It was a haven for us both, a place I could access that Daróg could not get to me. A place where The Raven could keep me safe. Unlike the prison below. Unlike the warrens. Unlike anywhere else in this entire palace.
My heart thumped with a twisting sentiment I dared not name for the gift he had given me. I hadn’t had a safe place to call my own in all the time I had been here, and while I must share this space with him, it was safe from everyone but him.
We fell into a comfortable silence as I thought of what each of the sigils I had seen were and of the book that lay in my hands, waiting to impart its wisdom. I hoped that, somewhere within its pages, I would be able to find more information about the House of Magic and my parents, my lost lineage.
I set the book aside after I had picked at all the vegetables on my plate and pushed the slab of venison around enough to not draw his attention. I could almost imagine the pumping heart that had once flowed through the sinews and muscle.
“Raven . . . can any Fae alter the body of a human?” I tilted my head and sipped the milúll wine he had served into fine earthen mugs.
He finished his bite and washed it down. “Yes. For the most part. Humans are open conduits of magic. They lack their own, but they conform to our magic easily. Most Fae can also transform their own bodies or the bodies of others with their consent or if they are anam cara . ”
“What’s that? Anam cara? ”
I had heard that phrase before, hadn’t I?
“I think humans call them soul mates? It is a bit different for Fae. We have no concept of a soul like humans have. We are at our core magic that took form in flesh and blood for one reason or another. Our soul, as it were, is a heartbeat of magic. Not an individual but a piece of the whole. An anam cara is another Fae whose magical essence is akin to your own. It becomes bound up with each other, my magic would be the magic of my anam cara , and their magic mine because it would become indistinguishable from each other. Which would make altering their body as simple as sculpting soft butter.”
Jealousy twisted in my guts and shredded them along the barb of its hate. I wanted to ask him if he knew who his anam cara was. I wanted to know if he had found them yet. Was it Daróg? Was that why he was unable to walk away from him?
I couldn’t, though. I didn’t have the strength to hear that someone other than me was destiny bound to be in his life and in his bed. So, I pushed the bitterness down and pushed on.
“Could you alter my body?”
He frowned deep and set his cup down to watch me. Suspicion and distrust warred in his beautiful eyes, and I had to look away before they pierced down through me and found the tender heart of the reason I asked.
“I could if I wanted to. But I don’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because you are beautiful as you are.”
“But this is not what I look like. This is not who I am. This is what Rictus made me to look like.”
He hissed and leaned forward, “Sóna Mac Raith, you are the sun among the stars. Brilliant and bright, chasing shadows from their dark corners and scorching them with your beauty.”
“Stop saying that! I am not beautiful! I am what others have made me!”
“Then, they have done a masterful job, and I would no sooner mar that work than I would slit my own throat. ”
I glared at him across from the table, fire licking in my gaze. “What do you want for it?”
My tone had been a deadly gauntlet, and I waited for him to take it up.
“You would make a pact for this?”
He seemed genuinely shocked.
“For whatever you want. Anything at all.”
He narrowed his eyes further on me and crossed his tremendous arms over the broad expanse of his chest.
We faced off in a battle of willpower crackling across the discarded dinnerware. He wanted me to back down from this, and I wanted him to cave. I needed him to cave. It was an opportunity to reclaim my identity but not the identity that Cleena had given me, my true identity. No one would know but me. No one would be able to tell who I had modeled myself from but me. Not even the man that would sculpt me into it.
“I will not make you swear an oath to me on your true name or make a deal with me for this, Sóna.” I opened my mouth to protest, and he held up a single gloved finger. “I do not know why you want this, but it means something to you. I will know why before I take this path. So, when you are ready to tell me that, I will remake your body.”
That fucking bastard.