Chapter 24
Twenty-Four
Avalon
Hamor Hall - Before
Igasped in a deep breath. I swayed gently on the swing, Zier’s intense expression looking down at me. I grabbed my throat, sucking in breaths.
“Are you okay?” Zier asked softly.
“Fine, I’m sorry. What were you saying?” My lungs burned.
I’d reset time, but unlike the other resets, I remembered everything. Lierick’s face being eviscerated. The fervency in his eyes as he held the statue. Stanlus’s cruel smirk.
I remembered every little thing.
“What I’m trying to say is that I don’t think the relationship you’re building is one that I could be happy with. I’d want you all to myself, and that would create issues,” Zier continued.
I almost laughed, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t explain what had happened, because I knew without hesitation, that none of them could return with me to destroy the statue of Ebretha.
I forced a smile. “That’s okay. I’m not so conceited to think that I would be enough for everyone.”
A flash of Lierick’s face as he forced himself to drop the statue made me jerk.
Clearing my throat, I looked up into Zier’s dark eyes. “But do me a favor? Just once, can we pretend that we are just a man and a woman, who met by chance at a ball, and you take me to bed and make love to me, like tomorrow doesn’t matter?” I breathed.
As he swallowed hard, Zier’s gaze moved all over my face, searching for… something. A reason for my change of heart, probably. Whatever he saw made him nod, just once. He held out a hand, and I wrapped my fingers in his, anchoring myself to the feel of his warmth.
I was using him, but I didn’t even care. If the guys thought I was with Zier, they would leave me alone for the night, to let us have our moment. I was also selfish, because I knew in my soul that there wouldn’t be a tomorrow. I’d take tonight.
As he pulled me to my feet, I smoothed down my skirt and gave him a hot smile. I worked hard at locking down my feelings, because Hayle always knew. But he couldn’t come with me. Not this time.
As we walked back through the courtyard, most of the dinner patrons were laughing wildly, enjoying life. I saw Lierick, and my heart squeezed in my chest, but I kept it all locked down. I winked at Hayle, and he waggled his eyebrows back at me.
Love you, I mouthed at him and Vox, both of whom were watching me intently.
I thought about the way Zier’s shoulders moved beneath his shirt, the strong warmth of his hand in mine, and how they’d feel against my body. I didn’t think of anything but what was about to happen. I was going to be fully in the moment with Zier, and revel in this last hour of peace.
He was silent as he led me up to Hayle’s wing, and then to the door of his room. “Are you sure about this, Avalon? It feels… selfish of me.”
I laughed, because it was definitely selfish on one of our behalfs, but it wasn’t his. “I’m an adult who can make my own choices, and I choose you and this,” I said softly, then launched myself at him.
He kissed me back with a groan, his hands sliding down my sides, until they could scoop under my ass and pick me up. He spun, pressing me back against his door, and his mouth devoured my gasp.
His lips moved over mine like he owned them, and not like he was borrowing them for the night. “I’ve dreamed of these lips,” he groaned, shifting me higher so my core rubbed against his well-defined abs. He pushed open the door and carried me in easily, never putting me down or breaking our kiss.
I was tugging at his shirt, even as I kissed him back with an almost unhinged ferality.
I needed this last moment of normalcy, especially when it felt this good.
This right. I ignored the fact that he’d told me he didn’t really want me earlier tonight.
I could feel the straining hardness of his cock—that told me he wanted me more than enough right now.
Instead of taking me to the bed, Zier pressed me against the wall on the other side of the door. In a feat of pure strength, he managed to undress me completely without ever putting me on my feet or stopping his sipping kisses. I was seriously impressed.
“Goddess, you make me feel like a bumbling teen. I want to do so much, everything, all at once. Right now, against the wall.”
I pulled back, so I could meet those dark eyes. “Then do it.” I kissed down the hard line of his jaw, his short beard scraping against my lips. “Please, Zier,” I pleaded, and he groaned.
“Fuck,” he breathed, and then his fingers spread me wide as he found my already wet center. His thick fingertips slipped down, finding my clit with unerring accuracy.
I guess that was the fabled Eighth Line magic after all.
I bucked against him as he slid one finger inside me, then another, pressing me tightly to the wall, grinding against me so that his fingers stroked the exact right place inside me, and his palm pressed against my clit with utter perfection.
Fuck. I could hardly breathe, just arching and grinding until I came all over his fingers in what felt like a never-ending orgasm.
He wrapped one arm under my ass as he went back to kissing me, but I could feel his hands at the waistband of his pants, pushing them down. He slid me back down his body, and I felt the fat head of his cock press against my entrance.
“Are you sure about this, Avalon?”
I growled my answer, wriggling against him like I could get him inside me without his participation.
He curled down until he could bury his face in my throat, before thrusting up into me, stretching me to accommodate his cock.
Our combined groans were like a masterpiece of pleasure, along with the wet, slapping sound as he buried himself to the hilt inside me.
“Goddess, Avalon, you feel like a dream,” he grunted against my throat, pulling back out and sliding home again. “I don’t ever want to wake.”
Then he fucked me with the abandon of a man who knew this was just tonight. I didn’t even try to be quiet. I screamed until the barn owls would make noise complaints. I moaned as he screwed me into the wall, until I was coming around him in a shaking, shuddering mess of begging and pleasure.
He pressed me entirely into the wall, not an ounce of space between us, as he came deep inside me.
Marking his territory, or this moment, or something inherently macho.
Pulling back, he looked down at me like he was cataloguing my features.
I tilted my face up to his, straining for a kiss, which he gave me freely.
“Tonight, you’re mine, Avalon Halhed. I’m going to fuck my seed back into you over and over again.”
I shuddered at his words, pleasure racing along my skin. If all we had was tonight, we would make it something to remember.
Zier was beautiful, but in his own way. He had the body of someone who’d used it as a tool every day of his life. Strong and broad, with a smattering of hair across his chest as the perfect contrast. He snored softly, and I leaned over, kissing his shoulder.
Climbing quietly from the bed, I crept toward his discarded clothes.
Pulling on his pants, I rolled them over at the waist several times, though they were still too long.
I slipped on his shirt, the long sleeves going past my hands.
Finally, I pulled on his jacket. My own soft slippers would have to do.
Picking up his dagger last, I sent Zier a silent apology.
Creeping from his room, I prayed to the Goddess that the door didn’t make a noise.
She granted this last wish, and I padded down the hallways of the quiet keep.
I had to avoid the soldiers, and my guys, and anyone else who might expose my midnight machinations.
Hopefully, all the animal companions would be sleeping beside their masters.
I crept out the back, toward the courtyard, then moved through the shadows over to the back wall, climbing the tall tree that I’d seen earlier.
I hadn’t packed anything; I didn’t have time.
It didn’t matter. It wasn’t a long journey, and either I’d be successful and back here before lunch tomorrow, or I’d be dead and gone.
A small noise sounded behind me, and I was almost unsurprised to see Epsy.
“You need to stay here,” I murmured to him.
He cocked his head, then climbed up the leg of Zier’s pants.
I didn’t have time to take them off and shake him out, and I huffed out an aggravated breath.
“Fine, but I swear, if it gets dangerous, you need to leave.”
I’d hate to see what the little stolt would consider dangerous, considering he was best friends with the hounds, who’d usually eat his kind. He wasn’t the brightest little creature. But I was suddenly happy not to be doing this alone. It felt right that Epsy was with me.
“I’m glad you’re here,” I whispered, as I slipped onto my stomach and tried to climb down the other side of the wall, badly. Landing with a heavy thud on my ass, I bit back a groan. That was the hard part done.
I walked quietly through the empty streets of Hamor, to a road I’d walked in a different life.
I didn’t know why I could suddenly remember my last life, but I had a guess or two.
The power of the tal may have infused with my magic, making it more potent.
I wasn’t sure I liked this new level-up, though.
I didn’t want to remember the way Lierick’s brain had splattered across my cheeks.
I choked back vomit, swallowing it down. I didn’t have time to stop and throw up. Taking a deep breath, I focused my thoughts on what I needed to do. I was going to try and sneak in through the sewers again. It might be guarded, but so would the gates of the city and the doors of the Hall of Ebrus.
I was almost used to the night noises by the time I’d made it to the drains where Fortaare’s waste emptied out into the ocean. However, a sound in the shadows had me pulling my dagger. I could see a dark shape moving silently through the open space around the pit. A guard?
But as they lowered themself into the sewerage reservoir, I realized it was someone else trying to sneak into Fortaare. When they lifted their head toward the moon, I recognized the profile of his face.
Malak Trenton. The guy we’d rescued from Yaron Vylan’s party boat.
“Malak?” I called softly, and watched him freeze. “Malak, it’s Avalon,” I hissed, and his face whipped toward where I was hiding.
I hesitated, but he’d pledged himself to Vox. I didn’t think he’d murder me and put me in a ditch. It was odd that he was here, though, at this very place, at this very moment.
“Avalon?” he called back quietly, and I moved toward him. “What are you doing out here? Is Vox here too? Hayle and the other ones?”
I shook my head as I walked toward the edge of the pit, keeping my hand on my dagger, because I wasn’t an idiot. “What are you doing out here?”
He shrugged. “I assume the same thing you’re doing. Sneaking into Fortaare, so I can slit Feodore Vylan’s throat while he sleeps.”
I laughed softly. “Not exactly what I’m doing.” I hesitated. “That sounds dangerous.”
“I don’t want to live in a world that Feodore Vylan inhabits. So I’m going to go out in a way that will better Ebrus for those who remain.”
I wanted to talk him out of it, but was that not what I was doing too?
Sitting on the edge of the reservoir, I looked down at him. “I think you’ll find there’s a guard at the end of this shit tube. We kind of burned this way in the other day, when we rescued your father from the cells.”
He reared back. “My father was in the dungeon?”
I nodded. “He didn’t take your disappearance lying down.
I think he’d like to see his son one last time before you sacrifice yourself to rid the world of an evil like Feodore Vylan.
” I chewed my lip as my plan changed. “But maybe you can help us both. I have a plan, and I can’t tell you what it is.
But I need you to make a real problem at the gates.
I need you to drag the guards up from the lower levels of the Hall of Ebrus. ”
Malak frowned, looking around in the darkness, like Vox or Hayle or Lierick was going to suddenly appear. “Where are your men?”
Shaking my head, I pretended my heart wasn’t breaking. “They can’t come for this mission. Will you do it?”
He nodded. “I owe you my life.”
“The only thing I want from your life is for it to be long and happy, but let’s cause a little chaos first, okay?”
I explained what I needed from him, and by the time I slipped between the bars of the sewerage tunnels, I had to wonder if the Goddess hadn’t put him here, at this place, at this time, for a reason. Maybe I wasn’t the only one who had a bigger plan.