Chapter 28
Chapter
Twenty-Eight
Elara
Night in the palace is quieter than the graveyard ever was.
At least in the graveyard, something always moved. Worms under the soil. Wind through leaves. The soft scuttle of rats between headstones. Here, the halls hold their breath while the flames in the wall torches make the shadows stretch across the floor, grasping like fingers at the hem of my gown.
I pull the silk tighter around myself. It’s a flimsy thing, pale blue and shivering-thin, chosen from a trunk in one of the many abandoned rooms. It offers no warmth, but it isn’t meant to.
It’s a costume for a play.
My shoes click gently against the stone as I hurry toward Kael’s chamber. There’s no more time to waste on mysteries. I have to make tonight count.
For Daron.
When I reach the oaken door, I knock. Once. Twice. A pause.
“Enter,” Kael’s voice comes muffled through the wood.
I push the door open just enough to slip inside, bringing the draft from the hallway with me.
His chamber isn’t the mausoleum he used to rot in, not anymore. The curtains on two windows are open, letting in pale moonlight that washes the floorboards in silver. The hearth burns low, banked down for the night. The air is cleaner. Fragrant, even.
“Elara?” He looks over from where he sits at his desk, quill in hand, candlelight pooling gold across parchment. Frown lines cut between his eyes, and tension cords his forearms as he sets the quill down, his shirt sleeves rolled to his elbows. “Are you alright?”
The sorrow choking my voice is the easiest part of the play. “No.”
He stands immediately. In three large strides, he’s in front of me, cupping my face between his warm palms before he tugs my gaze up to his. “Is it Daron?”
“He’s sleeping, but I just couldn’t stay there.” My arms lift, fingers anchoring around his wrists, the tremble in them not studied but real. “The sound of his breathing… It bubbles, Kael. He sounds like he’s drowning on dry land.”
“Oh, Elara…” He lets out a breath, shoulders dropping an inch as his blue eyes stare deeper into mine. “Come here.” He wraps his arms around me and pulls me into the solid warmth of his chest. “I’m so sorry. You have to believe how sorry I am.”
I lean into his embrace, my eyes swimming with tears as honest as the burn in my throat when I whimper, “He’s dying.”
“No,” he murmurs into my hair. “Daron still has time.”
“No, he doesn’t.” Not much anyway. “Kael, please do something.”
He tenses, only a little, but it’s there. Until his arm sweeps around my waist, crushing me deeper against the quickening beat of his heart. “I’m trying, Elara. I swear to you, I am trying.”
Coldness rakes my skin.
Trying isn’t enough.
“I’m losing him.” My own words split me.
The way my legs give out underneath me? How I grapple at his shirt?
That ugly sound hiccuping from my throat?
It’s all real, making my weight drag toward the cold floor in the same way death drags corpses into their graves. “Oh my god, I can’t lose him, too…”
His other arm sweeps around my waist, stopping how my body sinks along with my grief. “I’ve got you.”
He holds me there for a long time. Everything is silence, the crackle of the hearth, and stuttering sobs. Eventually, they ebb into shuddering breaths that I draw against his skin where a button has popped open on his shirt. The beat of his heart rises—thudding hard, thudding fast.
His hand, which had been rubbing soothing circles between my shoulder blades, stills. Then slides lower.
I lift my head.
Kael is looking down at me, his face inches from mine. His eyes are dark, the blue swirling with a concern that is slowly being crowded out by something else. The air between us thickens, heavy with the scent of wax and sudden, sharp awareness.
When his gaze drops to my mouth and lingers there, I tilt my chin up. It’s enough for him to close the tiny distance until our noses brush, until our breaths mingle in the small, charged space between our lips.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispers, the words vibrating against my mouth.
Good. I need him sorry.
I lean in, brushing my lips against his—softly at first, a ghost of a touch seeking comfort. He shudders against me, a low sound rumbling in his throat, and his hands tighten on my waist.
Our lips finally touch.
All softness shatters.
A groan tears out of his chest, vibrating against my ribs as his mouth opens against mine, hot and desperate.
His tongue sweeps past my lips, tasting of wine and berries.
His hands are everywhere. They tangle in my hair, slide down my back to grip my hips, haul me closer until there’s no air left in the room, until my toes barely brush the floor.
He lifts me.
I gasp against his mouth as he backs me up and sits me on the edge of a heavy table near the hearth and steps between my knees. My silk gown rides up, baring my legs to the firelight and his touch. His hands slide up my thighs, thumbs pressing into the soft skin, leaving brands of heat.
I wrap my legs around his waist, pulling him flush against me. Not with hunger, but with intention.
I need this.
He needs it, too. I can tell from how his hard cock strains desperately behind leather, rocking against the junction of my legs with an urgency that feels frantic rather than right.
It’s a heavy, insistent pressure that creates friction but no spark—a clumsy heat that sits on top of my skin instead of singing through my blood.
I ignore the subtle way my body stiffens and force my hips to meet his. It doesn’t have to feel right…it just has to work.
“Kael,” I breathe his name against the damp salt of his skin. “Kael, please.”
The plea snaps the last fraying thread of his control. His hand slides higher, rough and urgent, rucking the silk of my gown up to my waist. He hooks a finger beneath the lace of my smallclothes, dragging the fabric aside to stroke through my folds.
“So fucking long…” he growls as his hands drop to his waist, tearing at the fastenings of his breeches until he frees himself.
His cock springs loose—heavy, thick, and demanding. He steps back between my knees, gripping my hips to anchor me, and presses the broad head of his length straight against my entrance.
The pressure is immense, a blunt weight dragging against my sensitive skin, threatening to stretch me open. I force my thighs to relax, opening wider for the invasion.
One step closer.
I need this to happen.
But he doesn’t push inside.
He freezes, his hips trembling with the effort of holding back. He looks down at where our bodies meet, where his cock is poised to breach me. Then he looks up at me, his chest heaving, his expression fracturing into something angry.
“Fuck!” The curse tears out of him, harsh and loud. He rips himself away from me, stumbling back a step. His hands fly to his waist, shoving his heavy cock back into his breeches with shaking fingers. “I cannot do this.”
My stomach drops. Rises…
…then drops all over again
“What?” My voice comes out sharp. “Kael—”
“I cannot do this,” he repeats, his tone gaining a hard, brittle edge. He turns away from me, gripping the mantel of the fireplace. “If I take you, then I start down my father’s road. This cannot happen. Not ever.”
My stomach tilts.
Not ever?
The confusion bubbling in my gut instantly turns to acid. “What do you mean by not ever?” I slide off the table, my legs shaking as they hit the floor. I fix my gown, worry warring with humiliation. “Because…because I’m a servant?”
“Don’t be foolish,” he snaps, glancing back at me. “You know that is not the reason.”
“Then what is it?” I step toward him. “You want me…I felt it. You want me, Kael.”
He spins around, and the anguish on his face stops me cold. “What I want does not matter!”
His shout silences even the fire until the flames crackle again, a mocking cheerfulness in the tension.
My mind races in too many directions at once, making me dizzy, making me sick. He won’t sleep with me. And if he won’t sleep with me, then he won’t marry me. And if he won’t marry me, then I cannot be queen. And I cannot be queen, then I cannot die.
A-and if I don’t die…
Daron does.
The thought is a guillotine blade dropping in my mind. It severs the remaining threads of my pride, my hesitation, and my shame. There’s no room for dignity in a graveyard. If he won’t walk willingly into the trap, then I have to drag him. I have to make the hunger outweigh his conscience.
I step forward, ignoring the warning in his eyes. “Don’t say that,” I whisper, my voice rough with a panic I don’t bother to hide. “Don’t tell me it doesn’t matter when your body is screaming that it does.”
“Elara, stop.”
I close the distance between us in a heartbeat. “I want you.”
I don’t give him time to retreat, don’t give him time to think. I grab his hand, pressing it to my waist, and with my other hand, I claw at the fragile silk of my gown. I yank the fabric down, baring my breast to the firelight and to him.
Kael’s breath hitches, a harsh, ragged sound that scrapes against the silence. His gaze drops, snagging on my exposed skin, his pupils blowing wide until the blue is swallowed by black. He wavers, the rigid line of his shoulders crumbling.
“Look at me,” I beg, pressing my body flush against his. “We want each other.”
I reach down, finding the bulge in his breeches, hot and hard as stone. I cup him through the leather, my fingers digging in, kneading his thick length.
Kael throws his head back, a guttural groan tearing from his throat. His hips jerk forward, instinctively seeking my touch, betraying his will. His hands come up, tangling in my hair, gripping tight, not pushing me away, but holding me there.
“Elara… Fuck…”
“Take me, please,” I hiss, emboldened by the tremor in his body.
His entire body shudders against mine. “No…”
“I want you inside me.” I stroke him harder, rubbing the sensitive ridge, feeling him twitch and throb against my palm. “Take me. Please, Kael. Just take—”
“I said no!”
He tears my hands away from him, his grip so tight it burns, and shoves me back. It isn’t a strike, but a desperate, frantic need to put space between us. The force of it sends me reeling. My heel catches in the trailing hem of my silk gown, and with nothing to grab, gravity takes me.
I crash hard onto the stone floor.
The impact jars my teeth and knocks the wind from my lungs, leaving me gasping at his feet.
Pain radiates up my spine from where my hip struck the stone, but it’s instantly eclipsed by a humiliation so profound it feels like he poured boiling oil over me.
I offered him everything—my body, my pride, my life—and he cast me aside as if I were the sin itself.
Kael stands over me, chest heaving, his hands trembling violently as he hastily fixes his breeches. He looks horror-struck—not just at me, but at himself.
My shock cracks open, and what spills out isn’t tears; it’s blistering fury. I scramble to my feet, ignoring the throb in my hip, my shame incinerated by the sudden, violent need to hurt him as badly as he’s hurting me.
“My brother is dying!” I scream. “He’s rotting from the inside out because of you!”
“I did not cast this pestilence!” The anger in his voice matches mine, defensive and raw. “I’m a victim of it as much as your brother!”
I step toward him. “You’re standing there, talking about adoration while Daron coughs up his own lungs a hundred feet away!”
“I’m doing what I can!” Kael yells, yet he backs up until his hips hit the edge of the heavy desk. “I have given him the best quarters in the palace. I’m ensuring him every comfort that—”
“Comfort is no substitute for a cure!” The words tear up my throat. “I don’t want soft pillows for his coffin, Kael! I want him to live!”
“There is no cure that does not require a price I am unwilling to pay.”
“Then you’re useless!” I charge forward, slamming my fists into his hard chest. A sob follows, sorrow grinding my voice down to a whisper. “If you adore me so much, then save him for me. Please…”
Kael stares at me, his chest heaving, his blue eyes swirling with a torture that mirrors my own. “You seem to know a great deal more about this crown of mine than you ought to…”
His words hit me cold and hard, but only for a second. Let him be suspicious. Let him worry that I’m part of his brother’s scheme. What does it even matter? Might as well be blunt.
“People are dying, Kael.” I swallow past a knot in my throat. “Please, just…feed the curse. Save this realm.”
I see the temptation flare there—the desperate urge to say yes, to take the offering, to trade my life for the salvation of his conscience.
Until he closes his eyes, a muscle feathering in his jaw with a terrible resolve.
“No,” he whispers, the word heavy as a tombstone.
He grips my shoulders, not to pull me close, but to hold me steady.
“I will not feed it, Elara. I will not watch another innocent woman bleed out. This curse ends with me. I will make it end.”
The nobility of it makes me want to scream. “How?” I demand, breaking his grip. “How will you end it? With what plan? With what power?”
Kael opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens it again.
He stands there, helpless and empty-handed, and I realize with a jolt of horror that he has absolutely no idea, no plan. It’s just a fairytale to him, isn’t it? A wish cast into a well with no bottom so he can sleep at night while my brother suffocates.
“You have nothing,” I whisper, the realization heavier than the rejection, dragging my gaze down along with my shoulders. “You have nothing but hope, and hope is going to—”
My eyes snap to the desk. To the parchment, the ink still glistening in the candlelight, the script jagged and rushed—hide her, and hide her well. Prepare the rite. He cannot find her, or—
Kael snatches the letter from the desk, crumpling the parchment in his fist. He advances on me, his exhaustion replaced by a fury so pure, so hostile, that I instinctively scramble away from him.
“You will forget what you saw,” he snarls, looming over me, his shadow swallowing the light. “Do you hear me?!”
“Hide whom?” I look up at him, breathless, clinging to this sudden, violent raft in the storm. “Who is she? Prepare what? What—”
“If you so much as whisper a word of this…” he hisses, leaning down until his face is inches from mine, his eyes burning with a terrifying promise. “If you tell anyone a single syllable of what was on that desk, I’ll hang you and your entire family from the portcullis. Do you understand me, Elara?”
I stare at him, trembling, seeing a violence in him that shakes me to the marrow in my bones. “Y-yes…”
“Get out of here,” he barks. “Run!”