Olwen
He didn’t hesitate.
One moment we were on the dance floor, surrounded by watching eyes and whispered gossip, the music swelling around us.
The next, his hand was locked around my wrist, pulling me through the crowd past the long tables laden with untouched food, past the clusters of curious shifters who fell silent as we passed.
We exited through a door half-hidden behind a carved pillar, and the noise of the great hall faded behind us.
The corridor beyond was dark and disused, with no torches or candles to break the gloom. Shadows pooled in the corners and the distant flicker of light from somewhere deeper in the castle.
He turned left. Right. Left again. I lost track of where we were going, lost track of everything except the iron grip of his fingers around my wrist and the heat of his body moving ahead of me through the darkness.
An alcove opened in the wall.
He pulled me into it.
Stone walls pressed close on three sides, rough-hewn and cold against my fingertips. The air was stale, thick with dust and the metallic scent of old iron.
A single torch burned in a sconce above our heads, its flame small and guttering, casting dancing shadows across the sharp planes of his face.
The space was barely large enough for both of us, perhaps an arrow slit widened into a lovers’ nook or an abandoned guard post.
He pushed me against the wall, the stone cold against my back, even though the heavy fabric and the petal’s artificial warmth.
But his body against my front was heat. Pure, overwhelming heat.
His chest crushed mine, his thighs bracketing my hips, his hands braced on the wall on either side of my head.
He caged me, claiming me.
“You were cold ice this morning.” His voice was low. Rough.
He leaned close enough that I could feel the heat of his breath touching my skin, a damp, living warmth that made my own coldness feel absolute.
“Distant. Untouchable. You flinched when I so much as brushed against you. And now you burn.”
I couldn’t speak. The petal was erupting in my blood, screaming for more contact, more heat, more of him. My body was a starving thing, and he was a feast spread out before me.
“Were you just waiting for an audience to come alive?” His lips brushed my ear. “Or is this something else? Something you took? Something you shouldn’t have?”
I grabbed his coat.
Pulled him down.
Our mouths met, and the world dissolved.
The kiss was rough. Demanding. His lips moved against mine, hungry as my own, neither tender nor gentle but consuming.
His teeth grazed my lower lip, and I gasped, and he used that gasp to deepen the kiss, sweeping deep into my mouth.
I let him.
Not because I wanted to be known. But because his mouth was hot, his breath was hot, his tongue was hot and I was drinking it in. Draining his heat with greedy, desperate touches.
His exhale filled my lungs. His heat flooded my veins.
He was a furnace, and I was a frozen thing finally, finally thawing.
My fingers tangled in his hair, pulling him closer. I needed more. I needed to consume him the way the cold had consumed me.
His hands left the wall. Found my hips. Gripped hard enough that I should have bruised, would have bruised, if my dead flesh still marked, if my body still remembered how to respond to pressure and pain.
He lifted me, pinning me more firmly against the stone, my back scraping against the rough surface, my legs wrapping around his waist without conscious thought.
The position forced our bodies together from chest to hip, and the heat of him was everywhere, flooding through the velvet between us.
I kissed him harder.
Drank deeper.
His mouth moved from my lips to my jaw, then to the sensitive hollow where my pulse should have been beating. His teeth scraped against my skin, not quite biting, and a sound escaped me, a moan, a gasp, something animal and desperate.
He pulled back.
I made a sound of protest. Tried to chase his mouth, to pull him back down, to continue drowning in his heat.
But his hand caught my chin, held me still, and his gaze sharp enough to cut through the petal’s haze.
“You taste strange,” he said.
The moan died in my throat.
“What?”
“Chemical.” He ran his tongue over his lower lip, slow and deliberate, tasting the residue I’d left there. “Bitter. Metallic. Like alchemy and ash.”
His eyes narrowed. “Like something that shouldn’t be in a woman’s blood. Something counterfeit.”
The cold was creeping back.
Not physical cold. The petal still burned in my veins, still flooding me with stolen warmth. But the cold of fear. Of exposure. Of feeling the ground begin to crumble beneath my feet.
“It’s just the wine,” I managed. “The vintage was bitter. I should have chosen something sweeter.”
His grip on my chin tightened. “You didn’t drink any wine.
I was watching you all through dinner, before you disappeared, before you came back.
.. changed.” His thumb traced my jaw, slow and deliberate, like he was memorizing the shape of my lie.
“You raised the cup to your lips three times. You never swallowed once.”
His thumb pressed against my jaw, angling my face up to meet his gaze. “I know the difference between drinking and performing, little bride. You were performing.”
I couldn’t breathe.
The petal’s manic energy still coursed through me, making my thoughts scatter, making it hard to think. His body was still flattened against mine, still flooding me with heat, and part of me wanted to kiss him again, to distract him, to make him forget his questions.
But his gaze was relentless. Seeing too much.
“Your heart is galloping,” he continued. His free hand circled my wrist, rested against the pulse point there. I could feel him counting.
Checking. Hunting for the life I didn’t have.
“A hundred and forty beats per minute. Maybe more. That’s not excitement. That’s not arousal.” His voice dropped. “That’s a body under the influence of something.”
“I—”
“What did you take?” His fingers tightened around my wrist. “Tell me now, or I call the healer and have your blood purged. Whatever poison you’ve fed yourself—”
“It’s not poison.”
“Then what is it?”
The question hung between us. His body was still close, but the dynamic had changed. No longer seductive, now threatening. A cage instead of an embrace.
I closed my eyes.
“Something to help me pass,” I whispered.
“Pass as what?”
The answer lodged in my throat. I couldn’t say it. Couldn’t admit the truth.
His hand released my chin. Grabbed my wrist instead, the other wrist, checking both pulse points now. Counting both rhythms, comparing them, searching for inconsistencies.
“Too fast,” he murmured. “Too strange. That’s not how hearts work. That’s not how blood flows.”
His eyes lifted to mine. “This isn’t a heartbeat, little bride. It’s a forgery.”
I said nothing.
There was nothing to say.
He stared at me for a long moment. The torch flickered above us, making him look less human than he already did.
Those eyes searched my face, my throat, the place where my heart was racing its false race.
Then he kissed me.
I didn’t expect it. One moment he was interrogating me, his voice hard and his grip harder. The next, his mouth was on mine, swallowing my silence, his hands releasing my wrists to fist in my hair instead.
This kiss was different.
Deeper. Hungrier. Angrier.
He kissed me like he was trying to consume me, as if seeking to devour my silence. And I kissed him back with the same desperation, because if this was my last hour of warmth, if he was about to expose me, if everything was about to end…
I wanted to spend my final moments burning.
His hands tore at my gown. Found the laces at the back and pulled, not bothering to untie them properly, just ripping until the fabric gaped and cold air hit my spine.
My own fingers were just as frantic, shoving his coat off his shoulders, pulling at his shirt, desperate to get to the heat beneath.
Skin met skin.
I gasped against his mouth. His chest was a brand against my palms, hot, alive, the muscles shifting beneath his skin as he moved. I ran my hands up his ribs, across his shoulders, down the planes of his back, mapping his body with desperate fingers.
He lifted me higher against the wall. Ground his hips against mine, and I felt him, hard, ready, wanting.
The friction sent sparks through my borrowed nerves, artificial pleasure mixing with artificial warmth until I couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began.
“Tell me to stop,” he said against my throat. “Tell me to stop, and I will.”
I pulled him closer.
“Don’t stop.”
His hands found the laces at my bodice. He didn’t bother untying them. Just pulled, hard, until the cords snapped and the velvet gaped open, baring me to the cold air and his burning gaze.
“You’re on fire.” His palm pressed flat against my sternum, fingers splayed wide, covering the space where my heart was hammering its false rhythm. “Burning up. What did you take?”
I should have answered. Should have lied, deflected, done something clever.
Instead, I arched into his touch.
“More.”
“Greedy thing.” His mouth found my collarbone.
My shoulder. The swell of my breast above the ruined bodice.
“You taste wrong, you know. Chemical. Like alchemy and desperation.” His tongue traced the curve of my breast. “I should stop. Should drag you to the healer. Find out what poison is making your heart race like a trapped bird.”
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t stop.” I grabbed his face, forced him to look at me. “I don’t care what you think I took. I don’t care what questions you have. Right now, I need you to touch me. I need you inside me. I need to feel something real.”
His eyes searched mine. Black and fathomless, seeing too much.
Then his mouth crashed into mine.
“Say my name,” he growled against my lips. “When I touch you, when I’m inside you, you say my name. I want to hear it.”
“Cador.”
“Again.”
“Cador.” It came out breathless. Broken.
“Good girl.”