Chapter 31
Chapter
Thirty-One
Elara
Idon’t look back.
Not at the king slumped against glass and iron. Not at the shards glittering on the stone like teeth. Instead, I run.
I run until my lungs burn, past a startled guard, past the dark windows, and I don’t stop until I crash into my chamber. My hands shake violently as I throw the heavy bolt, locking the door.
Leaning against the wood, I slide down until my knees hit the floor. My breath comes in jagged, tearing gasps that sound too loud in the silence.
A silence interrupted by a voice coming from the dark, low and smooth, scraping down my spine like a cold knife. “There you are.”
I scream, scrambling up and spinning around. “Who—”
Vale is sitting in my wingback chair by the dying fire, one leg crossed over the other, his black riding boots gleaming in the low light. He holds a book in one hand, his finger marking the page as if I’ve interrupted a quiet evening of reading.
The firelight kisses his cheekbones and leaves his eyes half-shadowed—moss-green, unreadable, calm. “Did I startle you?”
“How—” My voice is a wreck. I can’t breathe. “When did you get back? What did you do?”
He closes the book with a soft thud and places it on the side table. His gaze drifts over me—the broth on my skirt, the trembling in my hands. “Why do you look panicked? What happened?”
“Answer me.”
“Very well.” He rises in one smooth motion that makes my pulse trip, arms clasped behind his back as he slowly walks toward me.
“I returned only now and came straight to see you. As for what I did…” He stops a few paces away.
“I’m afraid my brother has been fooling both of us all along, feigning that he’s coming to his senses, only to keep me distracted from his own scheme. ”
When he takes another step toward me, my finger digs into the bolt behind my back. “Scheme?”
“That foolishness he calls a plan to break the curse.” His lip curls slightly. “Kael has convinced himself that there’s a loophole—a secret back door to the curse that involves dragging a distant relative into this mess, a cousin a million times removed.”
My throat goes dry. “The infamous her.”
“Yes, her,” he says. “I found a farm girl with no idea of the anvil Kael wanted to drop on her head, no understanding of his delusions about how Death could be outwitted if one only”—his mouth twists—“…arranged the proper theatrics. So I dealt with it.”
My pulse thuds in my throat. “Did you kill her?”
“Why would I kill an innocent girl over my brother’s madness?” His eyes narrow. “I found her at the place where he hid her and simply relocated the girl to somewhere far from Kael’s nonsensical delusion. Perhaps now he will come to his senses.”
I look at Vale.
He stands there, solid and composed, his breathing even, his expression one of mild, weary annoyance at his brother’s antics.
He sounds so reasonable. So terribly, seductively logical compared to the raving, broken man who just passed out drunk at the greenhouse.
What if Kael is the one lying? What if the king, drunk on desperation and wine, invented a nightmare to hurt me?
To punish me for ruining his foolish plan?
My gaze drifts past Vale’s shoulder, seeking the windows, seeking the moonlight that Kael claims will bring out the truth. Where’s the outside?
My breath hitches in my throat. Heavy cotton curtains draw across the windows, the threadbare tassels motionless.
I didn’t close them. I left with them open earlier and hurried to Daron right as the sun set, its stark spills of purple and orange still vivid in my mind. But the curtains are shut now.
He closed them.
Vale’s gaze slides over his shoulder to a window, to a narrow strip of moonlight cutting the floor where the curtains don’t quite meet. Something tightens at the corner of his mouth. Then he looks at me again as though the sight merely bored him.
“Why are you like this tonight? Tense. Trembling.” He creeps toward me, slow enough it pretends to be harmless while the air seems to thin, growing sharp and cold.
“Don’t let this get under your skin, Elara.
Kael’s little…farce is over. Even he will realize it.
” He lifts his hand, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear, fingers hovering a breath from my cheek.
“One way or another, we can still somehow feed the crown.”
My shoulders stay pinned to the door, bolt biting into my spine. I can’t tell which madness to believe. My eyes flick to the curtains again. Only a lunatic would put such a ridiculous thing to the test—and that I want to might make my madness the worst of them all.
“We can use his desperation.” Vale strokes his fingers down my side until they reach my waist. He pulls me into him, burying his face in the crook of my neck, where his breath ghosts over my pulse.
“With the girl gone, he has no other moves to make. He’ll come around now.
It’s not a defeat, my love. It’s barely even a delay. ”
My love. The words land warm at first, soft as a blanket pulled up over shaking shoulders, so familiar in his mouth that my body tries to melt into it before my mind can protest.
And then the echo twists. It crawls backward through my skull and catches on Kael’s voice, raw and furious in the greenhouse. That bastard doesn’t have a heart!
Does he not?
My hand lifts of its own accord and lands on his chest—flat palm to warm skin through linen, right over the steady thud beneath.
A heartbeat. Relentless. Real.
But what if it’s not?
My gaze slides past his shoulder again. I have to know. Have to open those curtains somehow and let the moon show me just where the madness lands.
“I missed you.” Vale’s mouth finds mine.
He kisses me slowly, with patient pressure that turns into certainty the moment my lips part.
His hand cups the back of my head, fingers threading into my hair, and the warmth of him presses against me.
His other arm bands around my waist, drawing me off the bolt and into his chest until I’m no longer braced for flight.
“There,” he murmurs against my mouth. “That’s better.”
I should shove him away.
Instead, my hands lift and settle against his shoulders like they belong there. Like they remember him. Like they don’t care what he is, only that his closeness makes my panic soften at the edges.
He tilts my chin and kisses along the hinge of my jaw, down to my throat, mouth warm at my pulse. “Take me to your bed.”
I swallow hard, gaze flicking to the window. There’s one beside the bed, but there has to be a better way.
It’s not difficult to make my voice sound strained when I whisper, “It’s…hot in here.”
Vale hums against my throat. “Mm-hmm.”
“I need air.” I make it light, casual. Nothing but discomfort. “Let me open the window.”
I start to turn my head toward it, shifting my shoulders as if I’m about to step away. My fingers slide from his chest, reaching—
Vale catches my wrist.
Not painful, but firm enough that my bones feel held. He draws my hand back to his body and pins it there as if it never belonged anywhere else. “The wind is biting.”
My breath stutters. “Is it?”
He answers by kissing me harder. His hand leaves my wrist and slides under my dress, palm pressing to the bare skin at my waist. The contact is a tingling shock. He drags his hand up, slow and sure, as if he’s taking his time to teach my body where to respond.
I hate that it responds. Hate that my breath catches and my hips press forward without permission.
Vale feels it and makes a soft, pleased sound against my mouth. His other hand finds the tie of my dress and tugs it loose with maddening patience. The flimsy thing parts and falls to my hips, baring skin to his gaze.
“Vale…” My voice is thin, half protest, half surrender. “It’s stifling in here.”
His hands slide down my sides, pushing the dress to the floor, letting it expose my body to the firelight. He leans down, warm lips closing over a nipple with a slow pull that snaps a sound out of me before I can stop it.
My head tips back. My fingers clutch at his hair, and I force myself to keep my eyes open, to keep looking past him.
Window. Bed.
It’s the only option.
I pull back just enough to lift my hands to the collar of his shirt. My fingers tremble as I work the first button, then the others, before I shove it down his arms. I undo the buckle on his breeches with frantic haste, working the leather down until he slips out of his boots and kicks it all away.
I close my hand around his cock, the flesh hard, warm, and weeping in my grip. “I want you inside me.”
Vale’s breath grows heavier as he lifts me, hands sure under my thighs, and carries me toward the bed. He lowers me onto the mattress, climbs over me, and the weight of him pins my breath in my chest in a way that feels like safety and a threat tangled together.
He settles between my thighs, the heavy wool of his trousers rough against my sensitive skin, but the heat of him is searing. There’s no muscle-trembling patience this time. He simply lines himself up, thick and heavy against my entrance, and pushes forward.
I gasp, my back arching off the mattress as he fills me.
He’s massive, stretching me to the limit, a blunt, overwhelming invasion that feels agonizingly good.
He sinks in to the hilt in one slow, relentless slide, reclaiming every inch of space inside me until there’s no room left for air, for thought, for fear.
Vale groans, a ragged, broken sound dropped against my neck. “Saints…Elara. I needed this. Needed to feel you around me again. It’s been on my mind for days.”
He withdraws and snaps his hips forward, burying himself deep again, and a shudder rakes through his heavy frame that vibrates straight into my bones.
He moves with a predator’s grace—efficient, powerful, deeper than any man has a right to reach.
Each thrust is a calculated collision, hitting a spot deep inside me that makes my toes curl and my vision blur.