Chapter Thirty-Six
“Luthian!” I storm into the dark, cold great hall of his house, screaming the walls down. “Luthian! Don’t ignore me!”
There is no answer.
“I’ve done exactly what you asked of me!” I shout, tears raining down my face. “I did exactly what you trained me to do, despite our broken agreement. You owe me!”
“I owe you nothing!”
The room swirls back to life all around me. The chairs, tables, the fireplace burning and the candles glowing. Luthian stands before me in his dressing gown, hair unbound around his shoulders. His eyes are blank silver with anger. “You didn’t kill Arcus for me. You killed him to save yourself!”
“From the predicament you put me in!” I shout back. “Now, an innocent faery will be put on trial for the death of the king you assassinated.”
“The king I assassinated?” He laughs venomously. “I don’t remember assassinating anyone. You, however, have just admitted it to me. Perhaps you should inform the inquisitors of their mistake and free Kathras yourself. Or would you prefer that I did?”
My entire body is seized with the trembling that has come and gone in fits since I left what remained of Arcus. The excitement has exhausted me, the fear has made me restless. And now, to hear Luthian threaten me... Luthian, who I thought I loved...
“You wouldn’t,” I whisper, my vision wavering behind my tears.
“You have far more faith in me than you ever should,” he warns.
“And you underestimate me,” I spit back. “I would name you before my head ever touched the block.”
“You have a wish remaining. You could waste it on Kathras’s freedom.” Luthian shrugs coldly. “Unless you were saving it for something else.”
I was. In the back of my mind, even from the moment that Luthian and I ended our agreement, I’ve held that wish apart. I didn’t want to admit it then, but there is no denying it now. “You know what I was saving it for.”
“Was?” He arches a brow.
“Was,” I repeat. “Why would I waste it on you, now? When I see you for what you really are?”
Something flashes across his face, too quickly for me to read it. I think it could be sorrow. I hope that it is.
“You want to me to believe that you’ve fallen out of love with me?” His dismissive laugh stings my heart, for we both know the truth. I love him still, even in this moment.
“Believe what you will. It’s no concern of mine!”
He steps close to me, reaches out with those elegant fingers to trace the curve of my jaw. “One wish, Cenere. Two desires. Which do you choose? Kathras’s life, or my love?”
I swat Luthian’s hand away. My chest aches. I feel I may faint. But I hold his mirrored gaze, lift my chin in defiance. “Why would I ever want love that I must wish for?”
“Then say it,” he whispers. “Wish for his freedom. Deny my love.”
My stomach turns sour, and I barely manage the words. Everything in me fights against saying them. But it isn’t right to let Kathras die for what Luthian and I have done.
“I wish for Kathras’s freedom and safety.”
Luthian’s face falls. The silver in his eyes goes dull, then black. He grabs my shoulders, pulls me against his chest, and covers my mouth with his in a crushing, painful kiss.
I go weak. I don’t want to. I want to shove him away. I want to beg him to take back my wish. But I spoke the truth when I told him that I wouldn’t want to be loved because I wished for it. I sag against him, let him ravish my mouth with his tongue, thread his fingers into my hair to hold my lips to his. I work my hands between us to jerk the tie of his robe free, and my hands smooth up his chest to push the fabric from his shoulders. I feel his naked skin against mine; my clothing has vanished like it did so many times before. He pulls me with him to the table and sweeps place settings and candles to the floor, extinguishing the flames before they can catch the rug beneath our feet on fire.
Luthian has never been gentle with me. That was a part of our training and expected. But he’s never been as wild and hungry as he is now. I cry out in shock and pain when he slams me bodily onto the table, my head and elbows drumming the wood with cracking thumps. I plant my feet flat, arch up to rub my aching sex against him. I’ve wanted this. How I have wanted this. We’ve been so close, much closer than this, but I know he cannot stop. He will fuck me like it’s a punishment. He will fuck me like it’s revenge.
I know enough of both now that I do not fear them. I welcome his deep, battering thrust as he enters me and shout with relief at finally, finally taking him into my body.
He slaps his palm on the table beside my head, cursing. “How dare you! I never offered you my love, I offered you a kingdom!”
“I know,” I sob into his shoulder, locking my ankles behind his back, just under the space where his wings meet his body. I want to fall into him, and him into me, to remain in this moment of pain and anger and passion unrestrained forever.
“I don’t want you!” His cock plunges into me hard again, and the slick wood at my back pulls my skin. “I never wanted you!”
“I don’t care.” I kiss his neck, hold onto his hair.
He pounds into me, digs the fingers of one hand into my thigh as he braces himself over me. “I was better off before I found you.” But his hurtful words are less forceful now, and the sorrow in his voice is unmistakable. “I don’t want you.”
He does. He can’t deny it now, when he’s buried so deep inside me, helpless to make himself stop. I put my hands on his face, lift his gaze to mine.
His eyes are lit with stars in the night sky and lined with tears of quicksilver.
“I don’t want you,” he whispers again, and kisses me.
The table is no longer hard at my back; we’re in Luthian’s bed, lying between the sheets. When he lifts his mouth from mine, he says, “This wasn’t supposed to happen, Cenere.”
“I know.” I arch up, grinding against him. “But I wanted it to.”
He gives me exactly what both of us need. The two of us, no tricks, no toys, no games. Just the slow, deep stroke of his cock, my hips rocking with his rhythm. His hand between us, thumb circling over my clit with such skill that it seems unfair. I wish he didn’t know my body so well. I wish he couldn’t make me feel such pleasure. I wish I didn’t love him so much.
And I am out of wishes.
I give myself over to the frantic sway of our bodies as we strive for completion, to Luthian’s lips on my neck, his tongue in my mouth. I tremble and cry out with every climax, and he lasts as long as he can, wringing as many from me as my body will allow. Only when I’m so worn out that I can no longer meet his rhythm does he let himself go.
He isn’t controlled and silent, the way he has been in the past. He moans a little more with every slow, deliberate thrust, growing louder as he picks up speed until, with a roar, he rams deep, and I feel the hot surge of his cum filling me with every jerk of his cock. I hold his face to my breast, stroke his hair, soothing him as he convulses with the last of his pleasure, and my heart shatters.
This is the only time. I knew it when we started, but I haven’t truly believed it until now, when he’s breathing hard, sweat dripping onto my chest, slowly coming back to his senses. When the lust has passed and reason returns, he will be finished with me. Forever.
He slips from my body on a groan of finality that pierces my heart. Falling back on the pillows, he stares up at the canopy over the bed. A mirror shows us there, tangled in the black sheets, my pale body flushed where he’s been pressed against me, his blue-gray skin slick with sweat.
Our eyes meet in that reflection, and he looks away.
“This won’t happen again,” he says, his voice flat and removed from the act we just shared.
“I know.” But I don’t move. If I stay here, in this bed, the memory of his body still imprinted on mine, it isn’t over.
With no wishes left, there isn’t a reason for us to see each other again. Luthian loves me. I felt it in every touch. But something stands in the way of that love.
Parphia.
“You love her still,” I whisper.
“I do.” The admission is emotionless. “And until I no longer love her, I cannot love another.”
I reach for him, but he rolls away and rises from the bed. He conjures his dressing gown from the air and puts it on, meticulously arranging it with his back still turned to me. “I’ve handed you over to Cassan. I told him I don’t want you anymore, that he’s won the bet by default. You will be queen, after all.”
I sit up and pull my knees to my chest. “And you?”
“You won’t see me again.” Still, he does not look at me. “Thank you, Cenere, for your help.”
“I was helping myself.”
His shoulders move with a grim laugh. “I’ve taught you too well. Good-bye, my honey flower.”
He lifts his hand, and I call out, “No, wait!”
But I’m back in my mirrored room, and I am alone.