Chapter 13 One Year and One Week Prior
One Year and One Week Prior
There are ‘new’ gods born often. Even I am considered one of them.
But few of us are whispered about with such feared reverence as this usurper who is stirring trouble across the border.
They even say he is responsible for the storms. Cion has urged me to travel to Arcadia and investigate.
While the stories are troublesome, I do not think the storms are a result of a god.
Even Kronos could not send such destruction across the border.
—Lady Anabeth, Consort to Her Majesty Cion Livii, Queen of Aren, D’anna
It was raining, the downpour torrential thundering against the stone alcove behind the waterfall they were huddled in. Four years ago, she had stupidly jumped off the rock outcropping just above them, and Morgen had pulled her out of the water. She was older now, much less naive about many things.
Things that included him.
The more he had told her over the years about his childhood, the more her rage had grown, and along with it, fear.
His father was a powerful god, one no one was willing to resist or rebel against. Morgen had grown up hidden and shamed.
Few had known of his existence until the day he fled.
But he had never told her what had become of his abusive father, the one whose rage was endless, who was heartless enough to bring his own son to the brink of death again and again, just to see if he would survive.
Even as a child, Morgen had never succumbed, and he’d never told Nya the reason for that either.
But she was not stupid, and they both knew it. Sitting a few paces away, she thought he might be taunting her with the silence. He did not speak aloud nor down the pathway, but she could hear the word pulsing between them, nevertheless.
Ask.
Except, she did not want to know the truth about who he truly was, the one she had suspected for a long while now. She always refuted it because it couldn’t be.
According to the short passage in a history book at home, Kronos had no children, or, at least, none who lived long enough to be born.
Their mortal mothers always died before they could carry to term, their bodies succumbing to the power of the embers their child carried.
And though the god-king had tried, none of the principals or their godling children had been willing to give him an heir.
Nya’s own mother had died and been reborn twice over rather than face that fate.
Morgen had told her once, in the hazy quiet of a very early morning, that his mother had died mere seconds after he was born, begging for her own death.
His father had loved to remind him how she hadn’t wanted Morgen, how every day she carried him in her womb, she wished to die ‘like all the others’.
His father had kept her locked up but tended to by midwives like some sick experiment to see how long she would last. Morgen had never specified who the others he spoke of were.
“I should head back soon,” she said, unable to stand the silence anymore.
“It’s still raining. You should at least wait out the storm.”
She shrugged, biting her lip. “You know how it rains here this time of year. It could be a while.”
Before she could stop herself, she stood and snatched her small, woven satchel off the stone floor. As she faced the entrance, readying to duck around the water, Morgen asked, “Will you be coming back?”
She halted but did not face him. “Why wouldn’t I?”
She heard him stand, and her pulse quickened as he closed the space between them. When he spoke, his breath caressed the loos hair at her temple, and her back arched on instinct when he murmured, “You tell me, Nya.”
She swallowed, giving a tiny shake of her head. “I don’t know what you mean.”
He laughed, the sound low and rough, vibrating across vocal chords that had never quite healed right after his father had slit his throat. His father who was—
No. It couldn’t be. He couldn’t be.
But then, Morgen turned her around, snatching her chin in his fingers and tilting her head back so she was forced to look at his eyes, glowing with silver ether and sparkling with embers of deep amber-gold.
“And now?” he challenged. “Now, will you finally admit to yourself what you’ve known for a while?”
Her jaw trembled. “I didn’t—”
He brushed the pad of his thumb over her lips, shushing her.
“Nya,” he said, shaking his head. “You’re not particularly good at concealing your emotions.
Do you think I didn’t see it, the second you started to suspect who my father really was?
It’s not as if I was doing much to hide it.
I knew you would figure it out soon enough, given who your parents are. ”
“I never told you who they are,” she whispered.
He looked away. “I always suspected. Like you, I ignored my suspicions, because I thought…” He exhaled an empty-sounding laugh. “I thought that Fate couldn’t possibly be so cruel. To me, yes, but to you…” He trailed off again, meeting her eyes.
Her brow creased. “What do you mean by that?”
“You’re right.” He lowered his hand and stepped back. “You should probably go.”
His eyes were still sparking with gold embers, a stark reminder of the truth of just which god’s blood ran through his veins. Surely, cruelty as potent Kronos’ would pass on through a bloodline, except…
Morgen was nothing like that.
He had more a right than Kronos ever had to be heartless, but even with his terror-filled, loveless childhood, he had never been anything but kind to Nya.
A little broody sometimes, and hard to crack, but he never took advantage of her or hurt her on purpose.
In fact, more than once, she suspected he had healed her.
Bruises from clumsily tripping over a fallen branch or scrapes from the stones at the bottom of the creek sometimes mysteriously disappeared after he brushed his hand against hers.
If she left now, she was afraid she would never come back. Perhaps it was that very desperation that drove her next actions, or perhaps it was the simmering ache she had been dutifully ignoring for years, finally coming to a point she could no longer disregard.
She supposed it didn’t matter. By the time she was kissing him, nothing else felt like it mattered more.
He didn’t push her away or even freeze, instead meeting her with the same fervent force.
His hand slid up her back, supporting her as she stood on tiptoes, her fingers fisting the rough material of his shirt.
When she lowered her hands and slid them beneath the hem, feeling the hard muscles of his torso flexing beneath her fingers, he groaned against her mouth, parting her lips with his tongue.
She gasped, liquid fire pooling low in her belly at the taste of him.
She nipped at his bottom lip, and he muttered, “Fuck,” before hooking his hands beneath her thighs, lifting her to a natural ledge in the stone.
He paused, standing between her parted legs, his fingertips brushing bare skin where the material of her dress had ridden up. Their shared breaths were heavy, the roar of the waterfall fading to the background. The air was buzzing, and so was her blood, crackling with tangible energy.
“Do you want me to stop?” His voice was just loud enough for her to hear, and he looked her directly in the eye.
Her lips parted, and she forced herself to look away. She should say yes. Run. Scream in terror and tell the world what he was, because she couldn’t deny the presence of Kronos’ embers in his eyes any longer.
“Nya,” he pushed, fingers tightening against the soft flesh of her inner thigh. “Look me in the eye and tell me you want me to touch you.”
He thought she was going to say no. She was sure of it. The words were supposed to be a warning, and they should have listened. Instead, she shook her head. “Don’t stop.”
His pupils flared, dark desire drowning out the gold of the embers. You’re not thinking straight.
I don’t care—
You’re going to regret this.
She was. Of course, she was. But she didn’t say that. Instead, she reached for him, threading her hand in his hair and pressing her brow to his. This way, she didn’t have to see his eyes. She could pretend being with him wasn’t a betrayal and ask for the one thing she wanted.
I want you. Please.
His breath caught, and he shuddered against her. “Nya—”
“Please.”
She didn’t want to say the word aloud, but some part of her knew it was important to him that she did.
He had grown up where consent didn’t matter, where women had been dragged past his door screaming and had never come back, so she understood why he needed to hear her ask clearly and without coercion.
He was nothing like that, but still, she hated herself more than she ever had for wanting him in the first place. There were too many red flags, too many people she was betraying by doing this.
She shoved the shame away to deal with later.
Slowly, he slid his fingers higher, the touch featherlight, making her shiver with every drag of his callouses against her skin.
When he brushed against her undergarments, they both inhaled sharply.
He paused for a second, giving her one more chance to reconsider.
She only tugged him closer, kissing him hard, relishing the low sound that rumbled from his chest. He shoved aside the undergarment, swearing low and then biting her lip when he dragged his fingers through the mess already there.
He figured out quickly where exactly to touch her, paying attention to every time her breath hitched or her back arched against the stone behind her.
Too soon, she felt the pleasure and ache grow to a near-blinding point, pushing her close to an edge she knew she would never recover from.
This couldn’t mean nothing, not with him, even if she wanted it to.
Slowly, almost carefully, he slid one finger inside her, and all the breath emptied from her lungs, her eyes widening.
“Nya,” he breathed, pupils spread wide and cheeks flushed.
Then, he curled his finger, and it was over for her.
Light flashed in her vision, and she saw colors she hadn’t known existed as pleasure raced up her spine, so potent, she wasn’t sure her body could take it.
Her hands clawed blindly at Morgen’s skin, seeking some semblance of an anchor as she lost all sense of what it meant to have two feet on the ground.
When she finally began to float back to reality, he was panting against her shoulder, one hand pressed to the wall next to her, the other gripping her thigh.
She felt hazy, still shuddering with tiny aftershocks, but what scared her the most was that she still wanted more.
She wanted all of him, and she knew if they did that, there would truly be no going back.
He lifted his head, something dulled now in his expression as he said, without question, “You want to leave.”
She didn’t say anything, wanting to agree but unable to make herself believe it enough to say it aloud. But he must have misread her expression, because he nodded and gently lifted her off the ledge before stepping back.
Her breath shook, and before she could stop herself, she asked, “Was that… Did you do that because you really wanted to, or because you thought it would scare me enough to leave?”
His brows lifted. “Are you serious?”
“It’s just… Every time before, you never let things between us—”
“Yeah.” He laughed hollowly, shaking his head. “I never let myself go there with you, Nya. That doesn’t mean I didn’t want to. I thought that much was made clear today.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
She bit her cheek. He was still flushed, his pupils dark as they stared at each other, as if he felt the all-consuming need for more too.
“Why did you stop yourself before?” she forced herself to ask.
He paused, his eyes fluttering shut, and when he replied, it was not aloud. Lots of reasons, the most selfish being I knew there would be no hiding the truth once I opened myself up to you, and as soon as you finally had to accept what you’ve been denying, you would never come back.
The warmth of silent tears tracked down her face, but she ignored them.
“Am I wrong?” he asked.
She took a shuddering breath, whispered, “No,” and reached for him one last time.
She poured everything into the kiss, not hiding the equal amounts of shame, desire, and love. She just hoped that, even as he held her as close as possible, he couldn’t read her so well that he could catch each tangled emotion.
When she pulled away, she only gave herself a few short seconds to whisper, “Goodbye, Morgen,” before forcing herself to flee.
She didn’t return, and two weeks later, she left for D’anna to apprentice with the Holy Sisters of the Arcane.
Life felt cold again. She hadn’t even realized the warmth of the last four years until he was gone.