Chapter 36
CHAPTER THIRTY SIX
“This feels foolish to say the least,” Evard muttered as he moved to stand at the entrance of the room I’d selected for my own among his chambers.
I looked up at him over the knife I was sharpening, my eyebrow arching as I took him in.
His return to the palace had gone surprisingly smoothly.
Merika had rummaged through his thoughts of course to make certain he had no nefarious plans in mind to overthrow Dragor, but Evard wasn’t the kind for rash and foolish plots based on nothing more than prideful ambition.
I had no doubt that he still harboured the desire to become king one day, but he wasn’t going to end up dead trying to snatch a crown he couldn’t be certain to win.
“What does?” I asked.
Evard hesitated for the briefest of moments then stepped into the room, offering me the ledger he’d been filling with information on my hunt for the bastard I still thought of as Cayde Avior.
I dropped my knife onto the desk and reached for the journal, flipping it open hungrily, the vial of blood at my throat warming as if they too knew that this mattered.
I flicked aside the pages I’d already read and stilled as I found both a written report and a hand drawn map awaiting me.
“He is being kept safely in the heart of Stone Castle,” Evard said while my eyes drank in the detailed report one of his spies had managed to fill out for him on this matter. “They say he is cursed, foul to behold and covered in boils which were placed upon him by the Sky Witch.”
A cruel smile lifted the corners of my lips.
“He’s been trying to talk,” I said and Evard nodded.
“They have tried everything they can think of to break the curse and unseal his lips so that he might be able to speak of the secrets trapped within his mind but nothing has worked.”
“Only death can free him,” I taunted.
“That is the assumption they’ve come to,” he agreed. “And as such, there is quite the price placed upon your head.”
I barked a laugh. “Good. Let them come for me. I’d welcome a fight after all these weeks stowed away in this castle, hiding like rodents in a trap, waiting for the Void to come for us.”
“Don’t tempt fate by speaking of that,” Evard muttered. “Besides, we have it on good authority that the Void has returned to Cascada.”
“Has she indeed?” My thoughts fell to Everest and I couldn’t help but wonder if she was happy now that fate had gifted her all she’d ever desired. I couldn’t say I was particularly satisfied now that fate had served me up my wishes.
“She has. Which has gone some way into helping me make peace with the fact that you’ll be leaving to seek out your vengeance.”
“I will,” I agreed but as my thoughts turned to Avanis and the beginnings of a plot to break into the Stone Castle, a voice whispered my name. A voice I’d been trying to ignore for what felt like an eternity.
“Vesper…”
Cayde wasn’t the only thing awaiting me in the land of earth magic. The ether had been calling me there for weeks now. And I knew I would be seeking out yet another corrupted ley line while partaking in the hunt.
“The map details the safest route I can provide you with for your journey. Though of course the Stonebreakers are known to change their terrain at whim. But they aren’t expecting you and won’t be looking for two Fae on foot.”
“Two?” I asked with a frown and Evard gave me the knowing grin I’d come to understand meant that he was pleased with himself for some snippet of information he’d gleaned or cunning plan he was implementing.
“I’ve decided to send the Dragon with you.”
“How?” I demanded. “And why?”
“The why should be obvious, shouldn’t it?
Do you think I haven’t noticed the way you look at one another?
I promised you could take your pick of lovers and I meant it – but I think we both know that this moment of political turmoil isn’t the moment in which to have anyone questioning the strength of our union.
So I would prefer it not to become common knowledge that the two of you are…
entangled just yet. But Dragor is away for several days and left me in charge.
So I get to make the call on what the Dragon does. Think of it as a gift.”
“For what?” I blurted.
“For saving my life the night the king died. Don’t think I’m unaware that I only draw breath thanks to you. And I am a man who always pays his debts.”
I stared at this prince of Stormfell, a creature who should have been nothing but ruthless and cruel just as his siblings had become in their bid to seize the crown of this land.
And in his eyes I found a tendril of compassion and understanding which I’d experienced all too infrequently throughout my savage life.
He wanted me to seek out the vengeance I was owed and I may have been imagining it, but I had the feeling he wanted me to try and claim something more than that too, even if I wasn’t ready to admit to myself that I might ache for such a thing.
“Thank you,” I said and it may have been one of the only times I’d ever spoken those words and meant them with my whole heart.
“Make it hurt,” he replied with a dark smile before turning and leaving me to prepare for my departure.
The flight to the Avanis border had been exhilarating to say the least. Bastian had transformed into his Dragon form and I’d ridden him across the snow-capped mountains of Stormfell and beyond.
We’d taken a route south which avoided all major cities and towns, adding several days to the flight in our attempt to go unnoticed across the skies of my people.
But I hadn’t complained about the extra time spent in his company or the nights we’d stolen to curl up together in a single bed within our tent.
Though I had found the time spent curled in his arms as torturous as it was satisfying.
Bastian still refused to bed me, his silver shot eyes drinking me in as he stole kisses from my willing lips, his mouth and hands venturing down my body to offer me a heady release of tension too – but he wouldn’t allow me to reciprocate.
And despite me loudly voicing my frustration at his stoic refusal to let me deliver him pleasure in turn, he still wouldn’t change his stance.
“You know it makes no sense to deny yourself,” I growled at him as he licked the taste of me from his lips, my body a trembling mess of destruction beneath him.
“If you won’t fuck me then at least let me taste you in turn.
I want to feel you come apart for me, I want to swallow every inch of your solid–”
Bastian pressed a calloused hand down over my lips to silence them.
“I’m already yours in every way you want me, love,” he said, his voice rough with desire, his cock driving against my clit through the rough fabric of his trousers as he settled himself between my parted thighs.
I whimpered at the closeness of him, my body aching for the fullness of his cock, my want for him a need which had a plea forming on my tongue.
But he didn’t want me to beg for his body, he wanted me to wrap my lips around words far heavier than those.
And despite the feeling of them crawling up the back of my throat, I found myself unable to let them escape.
Bastian released a low curse, taking his hand from my mouth so that he could press a kiss to my lips in its place.
He rolled off of me and tugged my trousers back up with a sharp movement which had me growling at him in frustration.
“Do it yourself then,” I urged, taking his hand and guiding it towards his throbbing cock. “If you won’t let me do it then let me watch you. I promise I won’t touch unless you ask me to…”
Bastian huffed out a laugh then turned his hand in mine, knotting our fingers together and stopping their descent towards his dick.
“No, spectre,” he said, though I could tell he was tempted to give in at last. “Not yet.”
“But–”
He took hold of me and rolled me onto my side, tucking me in against him so that my back pressed to his bare chest, his arm becoming my pillow while his lips pressed down on my neck.
“Tell me about another one of your adventures,” he said, firmly ignoring the way I was pressing my ass against his solid cock.
It would have been so simple for him to just tug these damn clothes out of the way and sink inside me…but no. He was as adamant as ever to deny my body what it so desperately craved.
I wanted to convince myself that it was because he didn’t want me ruining him.
I’d looked into the facts of that rumour since returning to Stormfell and knew it was only meant to be true for Fae foolish enough to have feelings for the succubus they bedded.
Bastian claimed to have such feelings so it made sense for him to fear bringing about his own ruin at my hands.
But the more I tried to tell myself that was all it was, the less I managed to believe it.
Why keep asking me to tell him stories of my past then?
Why share so many stories of his own with me?
I’d told him many tales of the things I’d gotten up to with Dalia and Moraine by my side and I knew just as much about the friends and family he’d left behind two hundred years ago when the Reapers had taken him captive.
And every tale he told me only gave me more questions, every piece of grief or pain we shared only made me ache for the feeling of his body claiming mine all the more. But still, he wouldn’t relent, wouldn’t have me, wouldn’t so much as let me release the need in his flesh with my hands.
It was driving me to insanity. And I knew the answer to my frustration, I knew how to claim exactly what it was I so wanted. I just couldn’t make myself do it. I couldn’t confess to feeling anything for him beyond lust because anything more than that would be too fucking pathetic, too fucking real.
I’d made that mistake already. I refused to do so for a second time.