Chapter Briar
Briar
I PICKED AT THE BLOOD BENEATH MY NAILS UNTIL THEY WERE so raw I couldn’t tell if it was Evres’s or my own. The day was silent, Maez gone to some part of the castle—or somewhere else entirely—I had no way of knowing. Either way, I didn’t dare go looking for her. Not now, not after everything.
I studied my warped reflection in the water of the fountain—long red hair spilling over my shoulders, bright blue eyes shining back at me.
I wore no paint on my face, no kohl lined my eyes nor rouge on my cheeks.
There was something tougher in my gaze than its usual softness.
No longer was I the perfect little doll.
Maybe this was truly who was there under all the smiles and faux pleasantries, maybe I’d always had this darkness lurking in me and I just needed someone to pull it out—to be more than what I was expected to be.
That I might want to be something more.
Ever since Calla claimed merem . . . ever since I saw them bloom into this confident leader, into the very best and truest version of themself . . . I began to wonder.
Maybe I could let myself be more, too.
I knew something for certain: I could be more than the doll, the puppet, the vixen.
And rather than taming the rulers of the world with my smiles and looks, I was more suited to tame them with my blade, my teeth, my claws.
I thought of the way I’d attacked Evres, of his mutilated body, of the way I threw myself at Maez still coated in his blood.
Of how much it delighted me to play into both her and my darkness.
It terrified me and liberated me in the same breath.
I dipped my hand back in the water, breaking the reflection, and kept scrubbing.
When I heard the scuffle of feet behind me, I knew Maez wanted to be heard. I looked over my shoulder and found her holding out a letter toward me.
“From Calla,” she said. “If you’d like to reply, I’ll make sure that it actually reaches her this time.”
She was guarded and unsure as I rose from where I perched on the fountain and took the letter from her hands. Her intense, dark eyes studied my face.
“Is it hard being parted from her?”
“Yes and no,” I said. “We were all each other had for so long.” I turned the letter over in my hands.
“But the plan was always for us to be parted, me remaining in Damrienn while Calla led an army to fight Sawyn with the allegiance of Silver Wolves at our back, and while those plans have irrevocably changed, I always knew our lives would take us farther from each other. It’s time we carve our own paths.
Calla has truly shined since stepping out from my shadow. ”
And I’m finding I might like the shadows.
“When we were in Olmdere,” Maez said hesitantly, and it hurt to hear the delicacy with which she remembered those times as if they were so far away now.
The sorrow panned through me as I remembered our little cabin and how she and I were so giddy, interrupting our everyday tasks for bouts of lovemaking, delighting in the fact we had the chance to be something more than the soldier and the Princess.
Maez took a step toward me. “When we were in Olmdere,” she said a little more confidently, “you said that you didn’t want to rule.”
“I don’t,” I replied with a shake of my head.
“You said you wanted a little house at the edge of the world,” she continued, tipping her head to the open window and the jungles that dropped to open air all around us.
“You said you wished we could be in a sanctuary of our own, where no one was knocking on our door, where we could just be together.”
My chest tightened, making it hard to take a deep breath. She remembered. I’d been lying in our bed, tangled in her arms, drifting off to sleep with my head rising and falling with each of her deep sleepy breaths. I’d thought she’d already let sleep take her, but she remembered.
“It was a careless, selfish wish,” I said. “Our court needs us; our family needs us. We all need to fight to protect Olmdere.”
“And then?”
“What?”
“Will it ever be enough? Would your life and service always be to your twin’s crown?
Because the world will never stop, it will never be perfect, and while we can do our best to make it so, at the end of the day you have to decide to give yourself over to the things you need, too.
” She scrubbed a hand down her face. “But perhaps it isn’t the place, but the person you spend it with,” she said, defeated.
“And I am not the woman you wanted to run away with.” Her eyes dropped to the paper in my hands. “I’ll leave you to read your letter.”
When she turned, I called out. “You had me kill Evres to prove a point not to me but to yourself.” She paused, and I knew my words connected. “You are stronger than you know, too, Maez. Help me kill Nero. Then maybe we can talk about our home at the edge of the world.”
“An ultimatum.” She paused and looked over her shoulder at me, bitterness on her face.
“If I’m your weapon, then I can be your lover, hmm?
If you can have my magic, then you will consider my heart?
” She kept walking and threw over her shoulder, “You will have all of me or none of me, Briar Marriel.”
All! I wanted to shout.
All . . .
I wanted to believe.
I PACED BACK AND FORTH OUTSIDE MAEZ’S BEDROOM DOOR, adrenaline filling my veins.
All of her or none of her. I knew the moment she said it which I would choose and yet it still took a great force of will to bring myself to her doorstep.
At every challenge, she expected me to turn and run, and I knew now that I never would.
And that probably made me a terrible person.
It probably stripped all the good I’d ever done .
. . if I ever had done any. It was Calla who was truly the good one.
They had saved our homeland while I’d been a cursed damsel.
Maybe I’d never be all the things I’d been raised to be.
Maybe I needed to finally shed the skin of that pointless potential.
I balled my hands into fists and let out a growl of frustration. I was sick of overthinking this. I was tired of trying to find the morality in a relationship where there was none. But I knew I wanted Maez. And I knew she’d have me if only I asked.
Finally, I stopped pacing. I planted my feet decidedly in front of her door and banged on it like I was threatening to break it down.
When Maez opened her door a second later, her eyebrows were raised, her expression intrigued.
“You want a lover?” I asked. “Then take me.”
Her eyes sharpened as she shook her head. “This isn’t what I meant,” she snarled. “I don’t want you to treat me like another one of your men. I don’t want you to fuck me just to get me to do your bidding. Don’t use your body as a weapon with me.”
I arched my eyebrow, full seductress now. “And what if I just want you simply because I’m sad and lonely and it feels good to have your skin against mine.”
She shuddered, eyes dipping to where my hands slid up my legs and under my skirt. I slid my undergarments off and let them pool at my feet before kicking them away. I lifted a hand to her chest, pushing her back to step into the room and shut the door. Maez’s eyes guttered as I held her gaze.
She shook her head. “This will just be one more thing you regret in the morning.”
“Or is it something you’ll regret?”
“I don’t regret anything.”
“If I do, I’ll deal with it then. Because right now, I don’t care.”
Her eyes widened with intrigue, the dark hair falling across her brow. “What?”
“I don’t care anymore,” I said. “I want you right now and I don’t want to think about the world and our mating bond and forever. I want you to touch me. I want my body to belong to you again.”
Her smile turned wicked. “And if this once again ends in tears?”
“It doesn’t matter,” I cut in. “Who cares if I cry afterward—you certainly don’t. You want all of me? Have it. Fuck me.”
She cocked her head, lust morphing her face. “You’re starting to sound a lot like me, Princess.”
“And you love it, mate,” I purred, watching her smile widen as I prowled closer, stopping when my skirt brushed the leather of her trousers. “So are we just going to stand here, or—”
Maez’s hands shot out and she grabbed me by the waist. Stumbling backward toward the bed, she hastily sat, yanking me into her lap.
Her mouth collided with mine, barely having time to close her smiling lips before our teeth knocked together.
She moaned against my mouth as her hand skimmed up my leg and squeezed my bare ass. She was so damned pleased with herself.
So was I.
I rocked against her, enjoying the friction of her rough leathers as her tongue explored my mouth.
“I fucking love your body,” she said, hands roving up and down my curves as if they couldn’t decide where to settle. “I love every dip and curve and dimple.”
Her kiss was so deep and all-consuming that every other fear drifted to the back of my mind. As she kissed her way down my neck and started kneading my breast with her rough fingers, I threw my head back.
“Yes,” I whispered like a prayer to the Moon Goddess high above us.
There was not a shred of doubt in me now. I wanted this. I wanted her. Desperately.
“Briar.” She groaned against my lips, balling handfuls of my dress in her grip and guiding my hips against her.
I loved the way she said my name, like she spoke to the deepest part of me, the part beyond the roles we played, just one soul to another, however dark and twisted—it was just her and me now.
Maez leaned back, dropping into the soft pillows behind her.
Her tight grip on my hips guided me forward farther and farther until I was straddling her head.
I gasped, rising up on my knees, afraid I was going to be too rough with her.
But her grip just tightened on me, and she pulled me down against her open mouth.
I cried out as her tongue lapped at my clit. The feeling from this position was so overwhelming I keeled forward, needing to grip onto the headboard to keep from shattering.
My thighs trembled trying not to suffocate Maez as her tongue lashed over my sex, but she was having none of it.
“Sit.” Maez pulled me down against her mouth harder until I was well and truly riding her. “I want to drown in you.”
A gasping moan escaped my lips at her heated command.
And damn if I didn’t want to drown in her, too, to lose myself so fully within her that all I could feel was us.
The ending and the beginning. Shredding to ribbons every barrier between us, tearing down the last vestiges of doubt until we were consumed by an equal power everlasting.
A deep groan pulled from my lungs as I dropped my forehead against the upholstered headboard, biting into the fabric to keep myself anchored as Maez worked my clit.
My whole body pulsed with pleasure as she sucked my swollen bud into her mouth, caressing it with her tongue, feasting on me as if I was her last meal on this earth.
I felt weighted down with lead and featherlight all at once, the only thing holding me to the world was her mouth on my body.
I started moving against her, rolling my hips, pushing harder, bolder as I chased my pleasure.
Her hands kneaded my ass, encouraging each movement.
When she moaned against my throbbing sex, I came, a fierce orgasm tearing through me and I screamed around the fabric gagging my mouth.
It was so world-shaking that every cell in my body felt like it ruptured into fizzing wine, melting like candle wax until I was nothing but sensation.
Wave after wave of pleasure rolled through me until I was shuddering, my muscles still beyond my control. My high-pitched gasps slowly ebbed to deep lungfuls of air as I tried to find my way back down into my body and my mind.
It had never been like that before. It had been good—Gods, had it been good—but this was something else, something sacred, something so consuming that it eclipsed anything else.
I crumpled forward, dropping on top of Maez.
I propped my chin on her chest to look at her as she wiped my release from her lips with a wolfish grin.
I wasn’t crying, I wasn’t running. I was here, and if she didn’t want to kiss the top of my head and hold me, then I didn’t care.
I would hold her. I would be everything I needed.
I held her gaze, wanting to see the impact of my words as I said, “I will never regret that.”
She chuckled, her eyes zipping with emerald delight. “Maybe there’s hope for us yet,” she said, letting it linger like a suggestion between us.
“Maybe,” I taunted. “If you keep doing that to me, I think so.”
She propped up on her elbows, her hands encircling my waist. “Oh sweet, little Briar,” she crooned. “That is only the beginning.”
Then she rolled me and pinned me back down into the mattress.