Chapter 27 #2
Instinctively éadha reached for her power, ready to give Ionáin more strength if he needed it, along the silver thread that still bound them despite everything.
At the same time she felt her body respond to his nearness without any volition on her part.
The way he was pressing her close against the length of him as he flew them higher still, up past the long windows of the Banqueting Hall, their curtains closed against the night, up to the next level, just under the highest turret of Second House’s East Tower.
Built into the stone was a wide alcove, bigger than the nooks in the hall and furnished with a rosewood table and velvet sofa while the side that looked out over the sea was made entirely of dragonglass.
It lay in darkness as Ionáin flew up level with it, swung the glass open, and landed them both inside, closing the glass behind him.
From beyond, éadha could still hear the distant crashing of the waves far below; inside that enclosed space there was only the sound of their breathing as they stared at each other, éadha still bewildered and Ionáin’s face grim as he dropped his hands and stepped away from her.
“What’s going on?” éadha demanded again while Ionáin opened his palm and called up a were-light so it cast a golden light in the alcove, reflecting on the polished wood and the soft velvet of the wall hangings and the seating.
“I’m sorry,” said Ionáin, stepping away from her and running a hand through his hair, where a light dusting of snowflakes had landed in their flight upward. “I just had to get you out of there, and this was the only place I could think of.”
“Why?” said éadha.
He stared at her, a frown appearing on his face. “Why? Because of that dress. How you looked, standing there.”
“What?” said éadha, now thoroughly bewildered.
“I thought you understood. We’ve been doing so well. But when I saw you there, looking like that, all I could think was now the others will see you, and that’ll only make it so much harder for you again.”
éadha stepped back, and now it was her turn for her hands to go to her head, clutching at her temple in frustration as she turned away from him.
“I can’t do this, Ionáin. I can’t live like this anymore, where looking marginally less bedraggled than usual is enough for me to be—what?
Punished by those psychopaths? And how can you say we’ve been doing well?
Have you seen what this place has done to us? To you?”
Ionáin said nothing, his eyes pained as he watched her.
“All I have left of you anymore is memories, Ionáin,” she said, her voice softening.
“Some days it feels like they’re just a dream I had once.
That this is the only reality, and I’m a fool for thinking it could ever be anything different.
” She thought of Ionáin dancing with Ailbhe, his arms around her waist. Of her dance with Gry.
“It’s too hard,” she said simply. “There’s too much in this place pulling us apart.
Telling us we can’t be. The power, the rules, the Families—all of it.
Maybe…maybe we need to finally accept it. The impossibility of this. Of us.”
A yawning black chasm seemed to open up inside her as she said those words.
Words she hadn’t meant to say, but it was as if they were being dragged out of her.
The bitter fruit of all those lessons, over all those months, in humiliation.
In control and in power. Her voice trailed away as she stared at him standing in the center of the alcove in the were-light, and he looked so beautiful, with his tawny hair, his golden-brown skin, his eyes such an unbearable blue in the dimness that she loved him all over again.
There was a stunned expression on his face as he said, “How can you stand there, looking like that and think for one second I could ever, ever give you up?”
He made to move toward her, and she stepped back a little.
She knew if he touched her with those hands she wouldn’t be able to think, and she needed to think, to do the right thing.
And if she loved him, she thought, if she truly loved him, wasn’t the right thing to let him go?
Hadn’t it been the only real choice since the day they first set foot on Lambay?
The choice she should’ve known all along she’d eventually have to make.
Not just to sacrifice her power for him but to sacrifice herself so he could have the life he was always meant to have.
“Ionáin, please, just think,” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper.
The back of her legs brushed something soft; she’d retreated as far as the red velvet couch against the alcove wall.
There was nowhere else for her to go. Behind Ionáin’s shoulder, she could see them both reflected in the dragonglass, see the thick flakes of snow hitting the glass and sliding down as outside the winter storm grew stronger, like a beast prowling beyond the glass, trying to break in.
Ionáin’s expression had a fierceness she’d never seen before as he took in how she retreated from him, her hands half lifted in entreaty as she went on, forcing the words out, “I can’t give you the life you should have.
I never could. You deserve better than this, hiding and sneaking and lying all the time. ”
For a long, stretched moment he stood there like someone frozen in midstep, as if her words were an invisible leash, binding him in place.
Then something inside him seemed to snap, and he was moving toward her so fast and so hard there was nothing she could do as his left hand reached out and caught the nape of her neck while in the same moment his right hand came around her waist, flattening against her back, pulling her into him.
He tunneled his fingers into her hair, pulling her head back so her face was tilted upward as his mouth came down to meet hers.
There was no finesse in his kiss, only bruised, hurt love, but as his lips covered hers, éadha felt her heart combust at the love and the pain in his touch, meeting hers, healing hers as she kissed him back, her own hands going up to his face to pull him closer.
Her lips parting on a breath as his tongue pushed in, sliding against her own, claiming her mouth, deeper, and deeper still as she rose up on the balls of her feet, tilting her head back further so he could kiss her more deeply as all the pent-up longing of those long days on Lambay, of walking past each other like strangers, of their hunger so long denied, pushed down as it built and built in the two of them, exploding from them now as they lost themselves in each other.
His hand still holding the back of her neck, he guided her down onto the couch, resting her head on a cushion as his body followed hers, as if now they’d come together, they couldn’t stop.
They needed to feel the heat of each other’s bodies, while all the while the thick snowflakes tumbled past the window a few feet away, hiding them from the world.
Inside just a single were-light floated above their heads.
éadha stared up at Ionáin’s face, the long, dark lashes, the way the light caught on the planes of his cheekbones, the fullness of his lips, the fierce possessiveness in those midnight-blue eyes.
All traces of the dissolute, heavy-drinking apprentice of the last few months had vanished, the only reminder the golden stubble shadowing his jaw.
Instead, he studied her face with a clarity and an intensity that seemed to see all the way into the very heart of her.
She drew in a breath at the lean beauty of his face, desire roaring up inside her once more; she needed his mouth on hers, the weight of him, the lean, muscled strength of his body pressing her into the yielding softness of the velvet cushions underneath her.
Ionáin lifted his head, his eyes roving over every inch of her face before dropping to the patchwork bodice, her breasts rising softly from the lightly boned corset.
With the softest of movements, he traced the backs of his knuckles across the sensitive skin, letting out a quiet groan as her skin flushed in response.
éadha gasped a little, biting her lower lip to stop herself from moaning at his touch, but she couldn’t stop herself from arching upward toward him, yearning to feel his hand on her once more.
Her white skirt was pooled around her legs, her bare feet visible; as his eyes swept down the length of her, Ionáin caught sight of them, and he whispered, suddenly contrite, “Oh, éadha, I’m so sorry. I never saw you were barefoot, pulling you out into the snow like that; your feet must be frozen.”
And he reached down with one hand, gently bending up her leg until his warm hand could reach her toes, enclosing them.
A shiver went through her at the heat of his touch against that sensitive skin, and she buried her head in his neck as his fingers gently kneaded one foot then the other until the numbness left them.
With irresistible deliberation he began to trace his hand up her leg, sliding past her foot, up the long length of her shin until he reached the glimmering white silk of her skirt.
She let out another gasp as he pushed his hand into its white softness, pushing it up over her thigh.
And now éadha was completely lost in the slide of silk over her heated skin followed by the warm roughness of his hands, pushing, pushing, up toward the very center of her, her skirt falling away as he spread his fingers wide on her inner thigh, just above her knee, and began dragging his hand so softly, so surely upward.