Isla
Her head was yanked upward by an invisible force. Cronan was looking at her expectedly. So was Grim.
“Yes?” she asked, playing her part.
“I said . . . I think it’s time you show the other lords why you’ll be so valuable when you join us.”
One of the other lords—a particularly pompous man who always chewed with his mouth open—said, “A duel? Finally?”
Cronan smiled. “Patience, Alaric. She’ll get her duel . . . if she decides not to join me,” he said. Panic slid down her spine.
And his hold on her powers was released.
Isla lurched forward, as her blood rushed through her. The clouds in her mind cleared. It was easier to move. The poison was gone. She could finally take a full breath.
This was a test. The last time she had access to her powers in his presence, she had escaped. This time . . .
She sat still. Even as she felt Grim’s eyes boring into the side of her face.
She wouldn’t leave without her husband.
“Well, then,” Cronan drawled encouragingly. “Why don’t you show them?”
She didn’t budge.
His head tilted. “No? Maybe you just need some encouragement.” He looked around the table. “If anyone can take her down, I’ll gift you the planet of your choice in the new galaxy we conquer. Second pick, right after me.”
At once, every lord ignited with otherworldly power. They turned toward her, eyes hungry, like they had waited several days for the moment to finally hurt her. They lunged.
Isla curled her hands into fists.
And every single one of them was slammed against the wall. One was pinned by a wall of flames. Another by shadow. Another by streams of energy. Another by whorls of wind. Another by all the wine at the table. Another by a jagged piece of the table itself.
The only ones left in their chairs were Grim, Cronan, and Isla.
Her husband was gazing intently at her sides. That was when she realized her shadow had peeled off the floor and multiplied, each one holding shadowblades and standing in echoes behind her. Stolen powers. Sairsha’s. Multiplication from one of the other prophet-followers, likely.
Cronan clapped. His vise gripped her bones once more, and all of her powers fell away. She felt empty without them.
The men were released from Isla’s abilities, relatively unscathed—except for their pride. They looked at each other, eyes sharpened, but they brushed themselves off and followed their liege’s lead, giving Isla a round of applause. She just glared at them in return.
“Now you see,” Cronan said, “what a powerful addition she’ll make.”
When Grim escorted her to the cell, they hadn’t even reached the dungeons before he said, “Why didn’t you flee?”
She snorted. “He would have sent you after me again.”
“A storm was summoned by your power. You could have used it.”
He was right. She could have. She glanced at him. “I’m not leaving without you.”
He scowled. “Then I guess you’re not leaving.”
“Maybe not,” she said, her words just a whisper. The door to the dungeon screamed as it opened.
“Why don’t you just give up?” he asked, stopping in that darkened hall. There was barely any light, but she could sense the confusion and anger written into each of his features. “Why didn’t you leave?” he demanded again.
He said it with outrage, like she was an idiot, but she kept her chin high.
“Because you wouldn’t have left me,” she said.
A moment of silence stood between them. And for that second, they just stared each other down. Finally, he shook his head. “That person—that person you loved doesn’t exist.”
“You’re wrong,” she said.
He glared at her. “I would think I would know myself better than you do.”
She shook her head. “Not when so much is missing.” She stepped toward him.
“You made me forget my memories. Our entire story. A year’s worth of love .
. . gone. You thought it would save me.” He frowned, taking the information in.
She took another step. “I hated you. I was at war with you. Then I remembered. I know what it’s like to forget.
” Another step. “You can keep telling me that I don’t know you, or that you could never love someone like me, but the proof of your love is right against my pulse. ”
Gaze never leaving his, she slowly ran her hand up her stomach.
Up her chest. Grim traced her movements with unrelenting focus.
She wasn’t sure if he was breathing. Her fingers slowly made their way up her collarbones to her throat.
They settled around the diamond. She touched the smooth stone, and Grim shivered, like he could feel it. Maybe he could.
“This is proof that I’m yours.” He went very still at her words. She took a final step toward him. “And you’re mine.”
“I belong to no one,” he spat.
“Are you sure?” she asked. “Cronan seems to think you belong to him.”
Grim gave her a withering look, but she knew the comment had gotten under his skin when he reached over, fast as lightning, and pulled her toward him by the diamond. She gasped as she stumbled forward, stopping herself just short of his chest.
“Maybe I just want this stone for myself,” he hissed, right in her face. “Maybe I’ll kill you right now.”
Isla did not retreat. “You can try, but our lives are bound,” she said. She smirked at the look of disbelief that passed across his face. “I’m not lying. You gave your life for me. To save me. If I die, you die.”
He looked her up and down with disgust. “Of all the things you’ve tried to convince me of, I think this one is the most laughable.” He scoffed. “I would never tie my existence to someone else’s. Least of all someone as insignificant as you.”
He released the diamond, and her, and turned to keep walking through the dungeons.
Enough. She knew her husband could be a bastard, but he was really making it hard to love him.
When she didn’t immediately follow, he stopped. His shoulders were rigid. He whirled around.
“I can see myself to my cell,” she said.
His hands twitched before settling into fists. “Forgive me if I don’t actually trust you to do that.”
She just shrugged. “The knights will get me then.” She waved him off. “Go back to dinner. I’m sure your ancestor misses you.”
A vein in his neck became visible. She leaned against the wall and stared at him, like she had all the time in the world to watch his anger build.
“You are an idiotic, irritating pain in my ass,” he spat.
She wasn’t affected by his insults. “I’ve heard it all before. From you, in fact.”
His lip curled into a snarl. “Do you ever learn? Do you ever stop?”
“I guess not. Do you?”
His hands were shaking by his sides, in utter fury. It looked like he was trying very hard not to rip the hallway apart with his shadows. “I’m going to portal you. Is that what you prefer?”
She pushed off the wall and strode past him. “Using your powers to solve problems? How very you.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” he demanded.
She just kept walking ahead of him. “You always say people are defined by who they are without their powers. But you love to use them, don’t you?”
She could feel him glaring at her back. The next thing she knew, she was against the wall again. But this time, her head was noticeably cushioned by his shadows. They caressed her skin like they remembered her.
His hands were pressed into the stone on either side of her head, as if he was trying not to touch her.
He leaned over, so he could look her eye to eye.
His hair was curled and disheveled, like he had been running his hands through it.
He did that when he was frustrated. With his arms up like this, the bottom of his shirt rode up.
She saw a flash of familiar muscle, and heat flared in her core at the sight.
“Stop,” he commanded.
Her brows came together. “Stop what?” She wasn’t even moving. Or speaking.
“Your emotions,” he barked. Oh. He could sense her desire. Of course, he could.
She had actually been feeling a host of emotions, but now that she mentioned it . . . a memory flashed in her mind. Of them. Against a wall. Doing something other than arguing.
His breathing became heavier. “Stop,” he said, a ragged plea.
She wasn’t trying to. She knew he was being awful, and that they were in a dungeon.
But he was her husband. She loved him. She missed him.
It had been a long time since they had been together.
She couldn’t look at his face and not want him, not when he was gazing at her just as thoroughly as she was at him.
She guessed that if she could access his abilities, she would be sensing desire from him too.
And maybe that’s why he was so pissed off. It wasn’t her emotions. It was what they inspired in him.
“I’m not doing anything,” she said, pulse thundering.
“You’re doing . . . everything,” he said, his voice full of barely leashed restraint. His hands flexed against the wall. He grimaced like there was a war within him. He shut his eyes tightly.
After a moment, with what looked like pure and complete control, he straightened. Without a word, he strode off down the hall.
She remained where she was—pressed against the wall, heart racing.
She had just dropped her gaze to the floor in disappointment when she heard his steps slow. He turned.
“Fuck it,” he said, and then his mouth was on hers.
She gasped in surprise, and then her blood ignited as he parted her lips. Kissing Grim felt like the first time and every time since all rolled together.
His tongue brushed hers and flames blazed through her, and she groaned as his hands curled beneath her to lift her to his height, so he could kiss her properly.
Her legs locked behind him, and she didn’t miss the strangled sound he made in the back of his throat. He almost seemed like he might pull away, but instead he pushed closer, so she was pressed firmly against the wall as he devoured her.
He wouldn’t have remembered how he had kissed her thousands of times before.
In his mind, this was the first time he was doing this, and she noticed the similarities from that original time in his room.
How he was a little clumsy, a little forceful, how he didn’t even stop to breathe, like he couldn’t stop himself from tasting her.
Her hands curled around his neck, to pull him closer, and she could feel his pulse racing against her fingers.
When he finally pulled away, he was gasping.
His eyes latched onto hers, bright and shining, and then he dove back for more.
He growled as she bit his bottom lip, as she wove her fingers through his hair and pulled.
Then, his lips dragged down her throat, and she made a sound he seemed to like because he hummed against her throat, and then she felt his teeth, lightly skimming her sensitive skin, and it was the echo of when he had bitten her there during Creetan’s Crag.
She bucked her hips as he trailed lower, desperate for friction, desperate to feel the heat of him against her.
She only moved slightly, rolling against the hard length of him—and his mouth stopped its path along her collarbones. He pulled back.
This is it, she thought. The moment he finally ended this.
But instead, he said, with a voice dark and jagged as the stone behind them, “Do that again.”