Chapter Thirty-Five
Veyn
Iknew she would come.
I knew if I waited, her purpose would return without coddling and pacifying. Lenora isn’t weak. She’s not a delicate flower that requires a pedestal and gloved hands.
She is reckoning.
She is vengeance and mayhem.
She is a goddess worthy of worship.
The human man treats her with such disrespect. Such useless drivel. In his mind, she needs him to protect her. To comfort and slay her dragons. He has no idea that my woman can slay her own damn monsters and is strong enough to stand over their corpses.
Even full and round, the fire in her eyes is a brilliant inferno I feel from across my chambers.
The candlestick in her hand could have been a sword the way she grips it with tenacity.
This is a woman who will stand toe to toe with me with a dagger over my heart and I would fall to my fucking knees for her.
But I wall it all up.
At the end of it all, she will hate me and she already wields enough power to destroy me without me handing her the ammunition.
“I want my soul,” she repeats with a vehemence that almost makes me smile. “My baby will not grow up without her fathers and her mother. So, either you give me my soul back or we make a different bargain.”
That raises an eyebrow.
“I’m listening,” I tell her, curiosity drawing me down to her.
She hasn’t moved from the opening. I doubt it’s fear that’s holding her there. But I don’t push her. She will come to me when she’s ready.
“You let me die like I was supposed to of old age. I get to see my baby grow up and when I die, you take my soul.”
I bite the inside of my cheek.
“That seems like an awfully long time to wait.”
Lenora’s lips purse. “You’re a demon. What is time to you?”
Nothing.
Her clever response only fuels that heat inside me that rages when she’s so close. When she’s so vivid and violent, and prepared to bathe in the blood of her enemies.
“That isn’t the point,” I say instead. “I have already held up my end of our arrangement, and you are negating yours.”
“I’m not,” she bites back. “You will have my soul once I’ve seen my baby grow up.”
It’s cruel to play with her this way, but I am a demon, resigned to live forever in this bleak existence of absolute isolation. I must take what amusement I can get.
“Does this mean you wish to stop what we started? There are four Duvals left. Are we letting them live?”
“No,” she retorts with equal sharpness. “They must all die. My baby can’t be born in a world where they exist.”
There is that bloodthirsty woman I…
I immediately redirect those insane thoughts.
“But I cannot take your soul for years to come,” I press, raising an eyebrow.
“Please.” I was not expecting the jagged, but firm plea. “Please,” she repeats, voice broken, but her expression, painfully fierce. “Don’t let my baby grow up alone.”
Something in my chest aches.
A vicious pang that has me gritting my jaw as if it were a physical blow. I have to resist the urge to touch the spot, certain she’d shot me with an arrow when I wasn’t looking.
But she isn’t holding a weapon.
What I see instead is worse.
It’s heartbreak.
It’s pain, in a way that cuts me to my core. A desperation that I refuse to ever allow on her face never mind feeling for even a moment.
My feet abandon the platform, and I find myself moving towards her. The distance is a mere ten feet, but she may as well have been standing on the other side of the world.
Small.
Alone.
So fucking alone I reach her in three strides.
My tendrils scoop her up before my arms can.
I gather her into my chest. My free hand twists the candlestick from her fingers and I toss it somewhere.
The metallic clang reverberates through the chamber, but all I care about is the woman clinging to me like I’m the only rescue boat to save her.
And I suddenly understand.
I understand the human’s need to solve her problems. To hold her close and shield her from the world.
While I still believe she is beyond capable, I don’t want her to be.
“You keep saying your baby.” My lips brush her temple. “It is not only yours to raise, little one. You are my woman. You will never be allowed to be alone.”
Her arms tighten around my neck, and I feel her quiet exhale against my jaw.
“Then I can live?”
I turn my face into her damp cheek. Find her soft lips.
“I insist on it.”
She lifts her head and peers into my eyes. Searching. Perhaps she thinks I’m lying. I should be offended. I have never lied to her. But I’m too enthralled by the thick, damp spikes of her lashes. The puffy state of her lips. The way her nose looks so endearing in that shade of pink.
“I think there’s something wrong with the baby.”
The second the words tumble off her tongue, she bites her lip as if she can stop it. Like she can suck them back in.
“Why?” I ask her instead, genuinely curious.
Her teeth nibble on the fold of skin before she answers, “It’s growing too fast.” She falls quiet as I move her to the altar and gingerly place her down on it. “I’ve never been pregnant and I don’t know everything, but…” She touches the beautiful curve. “This is too soon.”
Careful not to hurt her, I lift her gown up her thighs and over the bump.
It’s been eons since I’ve seen a woman with child, and never like this. Never so close. They would come to me, bellies already swollen, to ask for a healthy birth.
But they hadn’t fascinated me the way Lenora’s body does.
The sight of it so taut and full, her soft skin lined with fine, pink marks, does something primal and feral to my senses.
It’s not a sharp spear like before, but an odd balloon of warmth.
A possessive need that clamps around something like a bear trap.
“How are you so perfect?” I breathe without thinking.
Lenora shifts, cheeks an endearing pink. “I’m as big as a house.”
With a gentleness I can’t recall ever showing anything, I brush her belly. Feel the life flexing within her, and my throat tightens without cause.
“There is nothing wrong with it.”
I feel rather than see her relax. Some of the fear in her eyes fades to a softness made even more devastating by the candles reflecting off their dark surface.
“Thank you.”
Gratitude is such a foreign concept.
I’ve been given offerings as gratitude, as an exchange for something they wanted. No one has simply thanked me for doing nothing. Or for something as simple as stating the truth. I don’t know what to say.
So, I kiss her.
I capture her puffy lips and taste her gratefulness for myself. I savor her sweet breaths and the gentle scent of her. I shut my eyes and sink into the feel of her arms closing around my shoulders and the fingers she slips through my hair.
Holding me back.
Kissing me back.
I snarl deep in my throat and slip even deeper into this hold she has on me.
I gather her close, pull her off the table and into my arms. Never once releasing her mouth.
I take her to the stairs and perch at the top with her cradled in my lap.
One hand stays splayed across her back. The other rests tenderly along the side of her belly. Over the child that belongs to us both.
The child and mother I would kill for.