Chapter Fifteen
The days following Firo’s departure are not so dreary and lonely as I anticipated. His absence accelerates my training, likely because Luthian has more time now. He doesn’t mention what happened after Firo left, and I don’t either. It’s an unspoken agreement: that moment never happened.
Not all of my lessons are pleasurable, tormented or not. I spend a full day in mind-numbing, knuckle-splitting tedium with the housekeeper, who I now suspect is kept around for more than simply style. She has a mental library of manners and protocol, and she doesn’t want me to embarrass her.
In the evening, I’m fed by Luthian, teased, and tortured by him, but there is one boundary he never crosses. And at night, when my desire should be all but wrung out of me, I can’t stop remembering how I was fucked by Firo in that very same bed, the incredible intimacy of being face-to-face, breath mingling, bodies straining together toward ecstasy.
Why, I wonder, would Luthian pass up the opportunity to have me in the same manner?
He’s also stressed the importance of tenderness in the wake of our consensual violence. I worry that perhaps I don’t fully understand how to turn my emotions so quickly from a desire to inflict suffering to nurturing. I suppose I’ll simply mimic what I’ve experienced with my teacher, should the need arise. Luthian is a marvel, where such delicate care is concerned. I never leave an encounter feeling afraid or resentful, or as if I’ve done something reprehensible by enjoying myself.
Tonight, after a long session with a spurred whip, I lie across my bed while Luthian tends the wounds on my back. He passes his hand over the slashes he left behind, and my skin tingles as it knits back together.
“If anyone ever fails to heal you when they’re finished with you, come to me,” Luthian tells me. He doesn’t sound as he usually does, cocky and in good humor.
“Guardian? Is anything the matter?” Asking him is better than imagining the harm that could come to me, harm that someone might not heal. That is a concern for later.
He sighs heavily and trails his fingertips down my now-smooth back before giving me a pat on my ass. “Let’s get you into the bath.”
Usually, he would join me in the tub, but tonight he simply carries me to it and lowers me into the steaming water. He doesn’t remove his shirt, a black one with billowy sleeves and laces to draw it tight at his trim waist, or his black leather breeches.
I reach a hand out and touch his hip. “I like this, Guardian. You look very handsome.”
“Thank you,” he says benignly, but there is still a sense that something isn’t quite right. His smile is tight as he holds up two bottles of soap. “Stargrass or Sorrow Lily?”
“Sorrow Lily, please, Guardian,” I say and watch silently as he adds the soap to my bath. With a snap of his fingers, the water in the tub begins to froth, stirring up a cloud of suds.
The movement and temperature of the water is exquisite on my exhausted body, and I close my eyes and recline my head with a soft moan of contentment.
Luthian inhales suddenly.
“Did you think of something?” I ask, opening one eye, just a bit.
What I see freezes the breath in my lungs. Luthian composes his expression quickly, but it’s too late. I saw him. It was as if he looked at me through another faery’s face, for in that brief moment, he was unrecognizable to me. Every time he’s looked at me before, it’s been with a self-assured, almost cocky smirk. As if he delights in owning me, delights in holding me prisoner to our bargain. As if he knows something secret that he won’t disclose, and that secret gives him power over me.
But I caught him staring at me the way a lost dreamer looks up to the stars. The way someone gazes longingly at a thing they desperately desire but cannot have.
He clears his throat and turns away to face the fireplace. “We leave for the court tomorrow.”
My heart plummets to my stomach.
“So soon?” I squeak out.
He chuckles without humor. “It’s been weeks, Cenere. I’ve taken you as far as I can with your training. You’ve learned to be adaptable, obedient, and alluring. It’s time you try out those skills on a broader audience.”
I don’t want to.
Of course, I knew this was the end goal, the sole reason I’m with Luthian in the first place. I should be pleased that I’m moving a step closer to my revenge on Thrace. But I’m also a part of Luthian’s assassination plot. This feels quite a bit like stepping into a pit of broken glass carefully to avoid cutting my feet.
“I like it here, Guardian,” I say softly.
He turns to me with a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “I’m glad to hear it, honey flower. And I’ve enjoyed having you. But we can’t drag our feet. We have an agreement and a plan.”
“Yes, Guardian,” I agree in a whisper.
He kneels beside the tub and takes up a sponge, applying more soap to it. He starts at my shoulder and works his way down my arm, pausing now and again to tickle me with sudsy fingers. “Beautiful Cenere. I dare say you’re one of my finest creations.”
I blush. I thought I was past that now, but his praise lightens my blood, sends it floating upward in joy like dandelion seeds on a breeze. “I hope I live up to your expectations.”
He washes me dutifully, the way he usually does, but instead of magically drying me, he uses the towels beside the tub. I support myself with a hand on his shoulder as he bends to dry one foot, one calf, up to my thigh, then the other. For someone who doesn’t want to drag his feet, he certainly takes a long time doing something he usually does by magic.
Perhaps, I think, my throat thick with tears, he’s saying goodbye.
“Will you be with me at court?” I ask and hope my sadness doesn’t show.
He looks up. “Of course, I will be. You’re my ticket back into society.”
“And will you continue to advise me?” But what I’m asking, desperately, is will I be alone with you? Will this strange bond between Guardian and ward continue?
Will it become something else?
I startle myself with my own thoughts. I didn’t know that I wanted something deeper, some attachment to him. I don’t. My goal is to destroy Cadwyn Thrace, and I can’t do that if I insist on sentimentality.
“It would be fairly fucking difficult to pull off our plan if I didn’t.” A frown creases his brow. “Why these questions?”
Because of the way you’re looking at me. “I’m nervous. That’s all.”
“Cenere…” He sighs and stands, tossing the towel aside. The water evaporates from my skin and hair with a flick of his hand, and he pushes a few copper strands away from my face. “You are ready for this. You were born for it.”
“You were born for it.”
Something cold pools in my stomach. He granted my mother’s wish. Surely, he doesn’t mean…
But that would be absurd. I was born twenty-five springs ago. Mother counted by the crocuses, for they burst into bloom all around Elegwyn Manor while she labored. “You banished the winter,” she always said.
“How long have you been away from court?” I ask.
He looks to the ceiling for the answer. “It’s difficult to know. Five hundred years, perhaps more.” His eyes narrow. “Why do you ask?”
“Fashions may have changed. Customs.” I cannot meet his eyes. I want to ask how long he’s been plotting against the king. It might be better if I never know.
“That’s what I have Sarta for.” He smiles kindly at me. “I worry that perhaps you don’t trust my judgement in these things.”
“Of course, I do, Guardian,” I murmur.
“I’ll come to you in the morning, though, to reassure you. For your arrival, you should wear something daring, but without putting everything on display. Do you understand what I mean?”
“Now who doesn’t trust whose judgment, Guardian?” I bat my lashes at him playfully.
He chuckles and walks toward the door. I almost throw myself at his feet and beg him not to go. Once he leaves this room, everything becomes final.
“You’re trembling with nerves.” He reaches into his pocket and produces a flat stone the size of his palm, rounded and smoothed and gleaming with a ribbon of light. “This will occupy your time and help you sleep.”
My hand buzzes as if I’m holding onto a daisywing hive. The stone is in my palm, thrumming deep and steady.
“Make yourself spend. Six times, I think. Without moving the stone from your clit between. That spoils the fun.” He opens the door.
“Guardian!” My voice is too sharp. I calm myself. “How will you know that I’ve done as you asked, if you don’t stay?”
“I’ll know,” he promises darkly. “So don’t try to cheat.”
I do not doubt that he’ll know, but I wish he would stay. He leaves me without a further word, and I climb into my big bed alone.
The stone doesn’t know that I’m sad, that I’m frightened of what will come tomorrow. It vibrates cheerfully in my hand. With a deep breath, I spread my thighs and reach down to part my labia.
At the first touch of the stone against my piercing, I gasp. The sensation relays through the hoop, buzzing the delicate stamen beneath my hood. It takes almost nothing for the strange sensation to bring me to climax. But then, it doesn’t feel quite so good; I want to pull the stone away from my oversensitive flesh. My Guardian warned me not to, though.
How would he know? my mind pleads.
He must be watching me. I don’t know how. I cast my gaze around the room and kick the covers back, exposing myself without moving the stone away. I bend my knees and plant my feet against the mattress. The painful sensitivity passes and throbs into another climb. This one is sweeter, slower, and I rock my hips with it as it flows through my body in a gentle wave.
I reach my other hand down and plunge two fingers inside.
If Luthian is watching, let him watch. Let him see how I would respond to his touch if he were here with me. Although we haven’t spoken of that night, of how achingly close he came to giving in, that doesn’t mean I haven’t thought of it. I have a million times over. And I know he has. He must have. The passion between us haunted every lesson after.
I pump my fingers, press deep on that marvelous spot near my opening. It’s not enough. I sob in frustration.
Something cold touches my thigh and my eyes fly open. An object has appeared on the bed beside me, a glass phallus, as thick and heavy as Luthian’s own cock, gently curving upward. I recognize it at once.
He is watching. He is longing for me, as I long for him.
I bring the glass cock to my dripping core and plunge it inside, crying out in relief as another climax takes me. I thrust the instrument harder, deeper, faster, using my legs to lift me up in rhythm, meeting every stroke.
“Oh, yes, Guardian,” I whisper, and hope that he hears me. “Fuck me. Fuck me.”
My mind fills with a fantasy of the door slamming open, Luthian striding in and replacing the glass cock with its living counterpart. I want it so badly that tears fill my eyes. I pound the phallus into me, my arm aching, the stone buzzing.
“Fuck me, Guardian! Make me yours!” I urge.
But I am still alone when a fourth, a fifth wrack my trembling limbs.
“Please!” I cry out, my ass lifting off the bed as I fuck myself relentlessly. “Please!”
My juices coat my fist; it’s difficult to keep hold of the glass. Come to me. Come inside of me. We both want it.
But when my final climax is wrenched from my exhausted, sweating body, he still does not appear. A burst of wetness bathes my wrist and I scream out his name. Not “Guardian,” but “Luthian!”
The flames in the fireplace leap, and the hearth cannot contain them. They burn silvery blue, scorching the ceiling, and extinguish on an icy wind.
Once again, he leaves me alone and weeping for him.