Chapter Thirty-Two The Villainess Steals Treasure #3
Nobody should ever have this much money. But, no doubt due to Rae’s wicked nature, she still found a room of treasure extremely compelling.
She turned to Key. “Hey. Want to make gold snow angels?”
“How do you mean, boss?”
He hadn’t called her that in a long time.
“You never lay down in the snow and—?”
“I’m going to stop you right now. Lie down in the snow of the Cauldron? There would be rusty blades under there. If you were lucky.”
Rae had no choice but to drop to the coins, and show him how it was done. Key stretched out on a pile of gold as though lying down upon a riverbank, propped himself up on his elbow, and watched her with interest.
Gold snow angels weren’t terribly efficient. Gold was heavier than snow, and the gold pieces kept tumbling back in place or rolling away to the corners of the room.
Rae ceased her attempts and stared up at the vaulted ceiling, glimmering deep blue and gold. Lapis lazuli tiles, wrought with golden stars, and if she looked into the deep blue long enough she felt suspended in an expansive evening sky.
The Emperor’s face hovered above her against their private lapis lazuli sky. Young and ancient, sacred and profane, a much-desired horror made for wrath and laughter. The face of a god, or a lover from a book. Either way, all you had to do was believe in him.
Being near him gave Rae the feeling of being on a roller coaster, wanting to go on it, excited to go on, yet at the same time experiencing a creeping, thrilling sense of dread.
Her nerves screamed with something like terror and something like exhilaration, telling her not to do it, that she mustn’t do it, no matter how badly she wanted to.
“You once told me it would be fun to be a witch and curse people,” said Key. “What curses would you lay on your enemies, if you could?”
Rae considered. “I’d curse them to suffer all the pain they caused.”
“Tenfold?”
“No. Just the pain they caused. So they know. Exactly how it felt, and exactly what they did.”
Leaving her alone. But she wasn’t alone now.
Against the gold, Key’s eyes shone ruby red. “You used to talk about taking whatever we wanted. Being as selfish and wicked as we wanted. You liked being evil, then.”
“I like being evil more when it’s a game.”
The Emperor shrugged. “Then call it a game. I’ll play. Tell me the story of what you want. I can make it true.”
“What I want…” Rae sighed on her bed of golden coins.
She’d been thinking of the rules of the story, and their stolen time in the alley, and come to a conclusion.
A hero always refused the booty call. A villain would make one.
This was her last chance. She should sleep with Key.
In this golden room, for no reason but sheer hedonistic pleasure.
The woman who did that proved she wasn’t a heroine or a true love.
She was the bad-girl stop on the journey to true love.
Rae was scared, wished she wasn’t, and decided she would pretend she was not until it came true.
Even wicked harlots had to start somewhere.
Keeping close to Key would fit the rules of the story. The desperate woman, trying to hold onto him when he was already lost.
So she rose and pushed Key down onto the gleaming coins and jewels, her long hair veiling them in shadows away from the world, and kissed him in the holy, profane dark.
The bitter, envy-stinging taste of truth lingered in her mouth, but he tasted like spiced wine, the most expensive wine in Eyam, the kind that went down sweetly.
She kissed him and when he kissed her back the kisses felt like stories told in eloquent silence.
He kissed her back and pulled her down against him, his mouth against hers like his body under hers, hot and eager, and perhaps neither of them should be alive, but both of them were.
She kissed him until she had to hide her flushed face against his throat, burning with shame for rolling around on gold with a man she had no right to.
A man who was going to someone else, who would choose and love someone else.
Except it was safe to want him now that he wanted someone else, now that he would be the hero with the heroine and not damned with her. She could be as wicked, greedy and selfish as she wished. She could play the villain, and not feel half as much shame as she should.
Key sat up with her in his lap, tucked his face in against hers, kisses landing like fireflies, like burning sparks, on her cheekbone, the side of her jaw.
He ducked his wild head down and pressed his lips against the side of her throat, then on the dip at its base, then a kiss just above where the dark jewel rested between her breasts.
That sent a tangled barbed-wire twist of pleasure through her, catching sharp at her nipples and between her legs.
This was ridiculous, but this world went by the rules of story.
Maybe she was in one of those books where a guy could practically give a woman an orgasm by tapping her on the shoulder.
All signs so far seemed to point that way.
Rae lifted one shoulder in a helpless, delirious shrug. Great news if true!
The Emperor misinterpreted the gesture and helped her off with her silk surcoat and skirts.
Rae lifted her arms, enveloped for a moment in the dress, then emerged in only the gauzy chemise and boned corset.
The kind of corset that turned a woman into a white tower, red vines climbing up the structure to the tower top.
The dark, heavy gem fell back into place, cold between the swell of her breasts when all the rest of her was eagerly hot, caging her throat when she wanted to breathe.
She thought of the Cobra’s letter. Is everything going wrong for you? Maybe it’s that cursed necklace.
The Abandon All Hope Diamond. The God’s Eye, which protected Rae and increased the power of enchantments. But did she really want the God’s Eye watching her? It was a sign of the Emperor’s favour, but the Emperor’s favour was no longer hers.
“My lady?”
“Will you take this off?” Rae whispered.
She felt the light bite of the Emperor’s metal claws at the nape of her neck, deft at the heavy gold-serpentine clasp of her necklace.
Then she felt the dead queen’s cursed necklace tumble free, jewels slithering down her embroidered corset and onto the gold pieces.
Just another piece in the imperial treasure house.
Red silk slid from between his armoured fingers to the coins, and she leaned in to whisper. “What I want? Call me Rae.”
Between his gleaming claws, the Emperor neatly caught a lock of her dark hair and toyed with it thoughtfully before sweeping it aside to reveal her face. “Hello, Rae.”
At the sound of her real name in his mouth, Rae smiled. Key smiled back, his eyes shining like rubies fallen into in a river, about to be lost.
What a gift to be like this, even for a moment. To be with your favourite character, the one who means so much he seems written solely for you, the one nobody loves like he deserves.
They fell in against each other, kisses growing from hungry to devouring. Key’s hands travelled up her spine, steel against silk.
“Take them off,” Rae murmured.
Key moved to obey, then caught himself and arrested the motion. A complicated series of expressions pulled at his mouth rather than him pulling at his gauntlets.
He’d taken off the gloves he wore once, shown her the old scars on his hands. But he wore a new scar along his throat now.
“I’m a…” he began, then his too-sharp teeth pressed down on the slight tremble of his lower lip, and he stopped.
I’m a creature of iron and blood, which was something he said in the later books. Or, I’m angry, which he had every right to be with her. He might have said anything. The one thing that was impossible was I’m afraid. He was never that. The Emperor had nothing to fear in this world.
“I don’t want to,” Key said, at last. He gave her a look, either challenging or defiant. Red gleamed in the grey like fire buried in the heart of burning pages.
Rae caught his nape in the circle of her bare palm, and pressed her forehead against his. “Then don’t. Do whatever you want.”
The world held no mercy for villains. Perhaps they could have a little mercy on each other. He would only be a villain for one more night. So they should make the most of it.
“Whatever I want?” Key asked, mouth twisting in what seemed to be genuine amusement. His gauntlets went to the laces of her corset, iron claws catching on the twisted ribbons, already straining. They could be sliced in an instant.
A new bolt of fear went through Rae. She remembered how, once, she couldn’t look at her withered body in a mirror. Now everyone else looked at this villainess’s body as though its curves wrote a promise that she was made for sin.
Perhaps violent transformation was the only way to survive a death sentence, so you never really survived. Not the way you were before. She had become a stranger to herself over and over. It felt like exposing scars to try and show herself to someone else, ask them to learn who she hardly knew.
Key let his forehead dip and rest against the line of her collarbone. “This can be enough.”
“Oh no, it cannot.” Rae slipped her gauzy arms, encircled with their golden serpents, around his neck. “Haven’t you heard? I’m a wicked woman. Endlessly greedy. Demanding.”
He smiled. “Make your demands.”
“Let’s be like this.”
Not wholly bare. Armoured by corsetry and gauntlets. Because she couldn’t believe in perfect love that accepted all things, but she still wanted to make greedy demands.
He kissed her and they tumbled down again onto the treasure. He laid her out against gleaming gold and ducked down. The hands spreading her thighs were steel-cold, but his mouth were hot, greedy and wicked as she.
With heroines in love scenes, it was true love and it all felt so right. This felt all wrong, she knew it was wrong, and she loved it.
Why did it feel so forbidden to want? Why did she fear and hate her own hunger? Perhaps because no matter how bad she felt about it, she stayed so hungry. Perhaps you never stopped being hungry, for life, for love, for stories, for survival after death. For this.
She writhed on the coins and screamed at the starry vault of the Room of Golden Wonder.
When Key came slithering back up her body, she pulled his clothes apart with shaking hands, demanding more.
He hesitated. She saw his gaze drop to the hollow of her throat, and realised what he was looking for. No light of truth burned there. She would have seen her truth reflected in his grey eyes.
He murmured, low and sweet, “Would you like to hold the knife to my throat?”
Rae shook her head, hair falling in wild tangles over her bare shoulders. “Tomorrow I’ll hold the knife to your throat. Tonight I’ll hold you.”
He kissed the sweat-slick hollow of her throat. When he slid inside, it hurt, her body out of practice at a lesson Rae had never learned, but even the ache demanded more, and more.
She couldn’t keep him. But she could keep this, like a rose kept between pages, like a favourite story kept between the covers of a book.
She could carry away a golden moment from the treasury.