30. Konstantin
30
KONSTANTIN
“ A pparently, a sailor spied a lone hooded figure walking through the woods along the Voshnan coastline,” Salom says, twirling his spoon into his cup of sugared coffee, which he had delivered to the War Room minutes ago, along with tea and a bowl overflowing with pastries.
Even though the skylight above the table doesn’t reflect the true sky, it does tell the time by mimicking sunrises and sunsets. The glass blushed with a fabricated dawn two hours prior.
“The wanderer was headed in the direction of the capital.” My general leans over and pinches a bulochka filled with rowan berry jam.
“When was this?” Aodhan asks.
“About a week ago.” Salom polishes off the sweet bun in two bites, then reaches for another.
“On foot?” I ask.
He places the golden bun on his plate, tearing off a chunk with his large fingers this time. “Sleighs can’t get through the copse of trees, Kostya. Besides, all the roads leading in and out of Voshna and the capital were being monitored by soldiers.”
Having hiked the distance myself a century ago, I muse, “So she would’ve arrived a day or two ago in the city.”
“Unless she collapsed along the way,” my general says, licking a glob of jam off his fingers.
“My niece is a full-blooded Faerie.” In other words, there’s no reason she would’ve collapsed.
“If she has made it into the capital, how in the world did she get past your soldiers, Salom? Aren’t they verifying identities?” Aodhan asks.
Salom sits up and squares his shoulders, pricked by Aodhan’s insinuation that the men under his control did a shoddy job. “Unlike Shabbins, we do not have wards around the city walls, so perhaps she managed to weasel her way through.”
“Weasel or?—”
Salom rises so abruptly that he sends his chair skidding backward and then he plants his meaty fists on the table. “I will not stand one more insult from you, Aodhan.”
I sigh and scrub a hand down my face. “Please don’t fight.”
Salom waits for an apology.
“Aodhan?” I tick my head toward Salom.
The shifter works his jaw. “Pardon me for asking questions.”
“Aodhan,” I snap.
My brother-in-law gets up, the whites of his eyes reddened by our sleepless night. “No offense, Salom, but I’m wary of everyone. Especially of those who were loath to promulgate Kostya’s shifter law.”
Salom grits his jaw. “I only vetoed it because I worried it would intensify the instability.”
“How clairvoyant you were…” Aodhan’s murmur distends the vein along Salom’s neck and deepens his complexion. “Anyway, I’m off to bed so I can have energy to canvas the forest with Imogen tomorrow—or rather, later on today. Perhaps I’ll ask Isla to help. One more set of eyes?—”
“Don’t involve her,” I say.
He hums. “She’s already involved.”
I sigh. “Fine. Ask her. I’m certain she’ll be more than happy to help.”
“How about we all retire?” Aodhan proposes, scraping the door open. “After all, lethargy leads to poor decision-making and even poorer love-making.”
I heft an eyebrow that causes the least subtle of my brothers—which is saying a lot considering Ilya is proficient at voicing all he thinks—to smirk. Although we had it out earlier, no animosity lingers between us.
“Thanks for the advice, now get yourself to bed,” I tell him.
He lingers by the door a beat. One that must feel too long for Salom’s liking, because the latter’s jaw tightens.
Once the door finally snicks shut, Salom says, “I know that the Serpent was in the room, the same way I know you’ve probably had my quarters adorned with sigils.”
I frown. “I’ve not had your quarters spelled.”
“Aodhan probably has. He’s always been chary of me, Konstantin. Though it does anger me, I know it comes from a place of love on his part, so I won’t put him on the spot.”
The platinum snowflakes pinned to Salom’s jacket from years of devoted service to the Crown twinkle so vividly they anger the throbbing in my skull.
“I would lay down my life for yours.” He presses fully upright. “That Aodhan questions my loyalties is one thing. That you do… Your lack of trust would break me, son.”
No one has called me son in twenty-five years. It wrings harsh swallows from my throat.
“If you don’t think you can trust me, then I’ll hand in my resignation.”
“No.”
He heaves out a deep sigh, then comes around the table and grips my shoulder. “Thank you.”
And then he lets go and strides out the door. I’m suddenly angry with Aodhan again, not because he took an executive decision behind my back, but because he’s driven my doubt even deeper.
I make another pass at my face before striding upstairs. Instead of heading toward the farthest door, I stop in front of Isla’s. I pause on the threshold, fist held aloft. However much I desire seeing her, I realize that going inside would be a terrible idea.
So I back up and head to my chambers where I scrub the night off my skin before plunging into a fretful sleep and waking drenched in cold sweat. I take another shower, wishing the running water could cleanse the torments that haunt my waking mind.
Needing an outlet for my stress, I don my black training leathers. A glance at the door that leads directly into Isla’s quarters makes me hesitate which exercise to pick. As I strap on my vambraces, I meander to the back of my closet, to the locked door. The one I told her I’d had cemented shut.
Will she be angry or glad to find out that I lied about the cement-part? Granted, the vestibule between the two doors is warded, but it’s only impenetrable to others. Not to the man with the talisman.
I wrap my fingers around the platinum handle, but my conscience keeps me from twisting it, pouring a multitude of should I s and shouldn’t I s inside my bloodstream.
There’s a second door on the other side of the vestibule. I’ll knock on that one. I won’t just barge inside like some morally questionable goon. And then I’ll confess that I made up the part of the cement, not to dupe her, but because it’s the same lie I’ve been feeding everyone.
I tell myself that she’ll be so thrilled to see me that she’ll forgive my fibbing.
Except…what if she’s not thrilled?
She might not even be in her room. All my worrying could be for nothing. Just like my worrying about Salom’s loyalties…
Before my night terrors can return to haunt me, I jerk my wrist and unlatch the door, drawing the door wide, then cross the small vestibule, knuckles already poised to knock. The giggle that slips through the wood buoys my heart. Isla’s laughter is exactly what my morose ass needs.
“That’s right, darling. Yours ,” a masculine voice drifts through the thin barrier of wood, making me halt. “Now be a good girl and hook the fabric between those plump lips of yours and pull it aside for me.”
When Isla giggles again, her laughter doesn’t buoy my heart; it enflames it with such jealousy that I throw open the door with magic and barge inside like a madman.
I’m expecting the sight of Isla and Lachlano on the bed. What I’m not expecting is the configuration in which I find them—parallel to each other but not touching. And fully garbed.
“What is going on in here?” I thunder, which makes the novel Lachlano’s holding slip from his fingers and clap his startled face.
Isla frowns at the doorway as she sits up. “Never knew cement could be quite so porous,” she muses while I keep staring daggers at the Crow male. With a sigh, she says, “Best leave while you still have air in your lungs, Lach.”
The male’s pale-brown complexion turns ashen, and then the whole of him blackens into smoke and streaks toward the skylight.
When I stare back at Isla, she has her arms crossed in front of her chest. She’s waiting for an explanation. Well, so am I. We stay locked in a wordless standoff for several minutes. When I can’t take it any longer, I carry the book to my hands on a Faerie-made gust and crack it open.
“ The Empress of Ice by Countess Zubrowa.” I skim the penned inscription at the bottom of the page, the one right above the author’s signature: “ Happy birthday, dearest Olena .”
The name of my siblings’ nursemaid tightens my rib cage, but not only with grief…with aggravation.
Toward Olena for having aided and abetted Alyona.
Toward Svyato for having taken my sister in all those years ago.
Toward whoever is harboring Mestyla today.
I pull my thoughts away from the deceased half-bloods and missing niece, giving the novel my full attention. I leaf through the pages. Even though I don’t find the exact passage, I do find an equally racy one, which confirms Lachlano was reading from it and not trying to seduce my fiancée.
I toss the novel back onto the bed. “Is Lachlano a new participant in your book club?”
“No.”
“A fan of smut, then?”
“No.”
“Then why—” I roll my fingers to keep myself from destroying something in her room. “Why was he?—”
“Reading to me?” She rolls her lips before parting them around a hushed, “Because Naeva left.”
I frown. Here I thought I was rested, but evidently not, for I’m not connecting cause and effect.
Her eyes cut to the desk tucked along the wall. “I’m not good at reading. Or writing. Or spellcasting, for that matter.” After another long beat of silence, she adds, “Only my family and closest friends are aware. And a select few Siorkahd members.”
She rolls her lips.
“Could you please keep the news that the Lucin Princess is a half-wit to yourself?”
My head rears back, but then I’m crossing into her space, crouching, and pinching her chin between my fingers to carry her shimmering stare to mine. “First off, never fucking call yourself a half-wit. You are one of the most brilliant women I’ve ever had the pleasure of interacting with. As for telling people… I would never share any of your secrets with anyone, Isla. Never . They belong to you, and you, alone.”
The uncertainty clears from her gaze. “You’re so blinded by lust, Vizosh.”
I smirk. “Though lust does ride me, it does not blind me.”
I drop my forehead to hers and indulge in her untamed fragrance—sharp yet nectar-sweet, like a midnight wind stirring fallen blooms. It weaves into my breaths and slips deep, until it becomes a part of me that no time and distance can ever fade.
“It did make me want to hurt your friend, though, and I’m sorry for that. Like I’m sorry for charging into your room and lying about the wall of cement. I didn’t mean to give you a false sense of security, I just…I never expected either of us would want to use the passage. Meriam sealed it with wards. I believe it’ll let you pass with a blood-sigil, but I’m not certain it’ll let you through without one. Although, perhaps, I broke the magic seal?” When she’s still quiet, I ask, “Are you angry with me?”
She shakes her head, then links her arms around my neck and presses her lips to mine. True appeasement drapes over me then. I rake her body close and stand, devouring her mouth.
Gods, what I wouldn’t give to spend the next few months not being king.
“I like this new look,” she murmurs, her hands roaming over my shoulders as I back her into the painted floral backdrop.
“I was on my way to the training quarters to work out my stress”—I drag my mouth across her cheek before charting a new course down her neck—“when I thought of a much better channel than play-fighting.”
“My hand?”
“No.” I flick my fingers to propel the horizontal fabric screen into place over the skylight. While the likelihood of anyone peeping is low, I’d prefer no one—neither Crow nor other —behold Isla’s naked body and what I plan to do to it. “Your cunt.”
She expels a thready gasp.
“If you’ll allow me to worship it.”
She crooks an eyebrow. “Is that a line from the Empress of Ice , or did you just come up with it?”
“You’ll find out once I get to chapter fifty-seven, though it may take some time to reach the end of the book, considering I’ll most probably want to stop and check the feasibility of the spicier passages.”
Her cheeks pinken then. “You’re the king. You have a gazillion better things to do than read me some romance?—”
“Isla Ríhbiadh”—I bracket her face between my palms—“I will never have anything better to do than spend time with you.”
Her throat dips. So does mine. Those words rushed out so fast and with so little thought that I’m caught just as unawares as she is. She bites her lip. Is she dwelling on the fact that I’m not her mate?
Not wanting that contemplation encroaching on the moment, I spout out, “Now be a good girl and remove your trousers so I may become better acquainted with your plump lips.”
She grins. “How on earth did you deliver that line with a straight face?”
“Because it isn’t a line.” I bump her nose with mine. “It’s a pressing need.”
That flattens her smile and ratchets up her breathing. Since she’s yet to roll off her leather trousers, I seize them at the waist and help her out of them. And then I fall to my knees in front of her, debating whether to remove the scrap of black silk or leave it in place.
Even though it’s fucking stunning, as far as undergarments go, I want to see her bare, so I hook my thumbs into the fabric and tow it off. And then I just stare, first at the birthmark that is well and truly shaped like my continent, and then at her eyes that glow as she tracks my every movement.
When I lick my lips, she shudders.
When I spiral my hands around her legs that are as smooth as her beautiful sex, she bites her lip.
When I lift one of her thighs and hook it over my shoulder, she sinks her fingers into my hair.
When I press a kiss to her center, she moans.
I chuckle.
My breath must hit her glistening slit, because she’s suddenly pulling on my roots and rasping, “Holy shit. Breathe on me again…”
I indulge her, keeping my mouth just off her pulsing core. A tremor shakes her body.
“I think”—her throat clenches—“I think I could come from your breathing alone.”
Her words mixed with her scent and the softness of her skin have made me so hard that I, too, think I just may come without any manual stimulation.
“I haven’t even tasted you yet, Yegmenka .” Even though my tongue longs to gather her honeyed heat, I lift one hand and send a steady stream of air-magic against her hooded bead.
Her fingers jerk. All of her jerks. And then she’s moaning, gasping, and then moaning once more, her clit throbbing, her lips dampening from the wave of her climax.
She leans her head against a painted bloom and lets her lids drift shut. “That was…” Her throaty timbre wraps itself around my cock.
“Too brief.”
“But so good.” She slaps an arm over her face and releases a contented sigh. “I love air-magic.”
“Good, because it’s yours to use and abuse.” As she drops her hand back to my hair, I ask, “How’s your forearm?”
“It’s been healed.”
I deduce from the passive tense, that she didn’t heal the lacerated skin herself, the same way I deduce curative sigils must be amidst the more challenging ones. Like the privacy sigil she tried to draw in the library. I’d sensed her frustration but hadn’t grasped its root.
I kick myself for putting her on the spot.
“I swear, my arm is fine. Look.” She pulls off her thin shirt.
My mind blanks, because her breasts are unbound and her pink nipples puckered. It takes great effort to pull my lascivious stare to her limb.
The instant I ascertain her skin is unscarred, my attention rears back to her bared breasts. As my fingers scale her abdomen to mold one globe, her stomach contracts, and my balls lift.
I wait for her eyes to fasten to mine before I finally… finally lean over and slick my tongue over her.
She shakes, rattling like Serpents apparently do. When I strike her clit, she gasps and her pupils flood her violet irises. Though I do want to make her come again, I want to draw this one out, so I lick down her sex until I’ve reached that opening my cock is just weeping to penetrate. I jam my tongue inside. Her scent grows sweeter, her breathing harsher, her eyes shinier, her pulse hastier.
She tunnels her fingers through my hair, croaking, “What are you doing to me, Vizosh?”
Hopefully, I’m ruining you for your mate, I think as I lick my way back to her clit, which I circle a grand total of three times before sucking it into my mouth and eliciting a climax that has her gasping my name. Only fair when you’ve ruined me for all other women, Isla Ríhbiadh.
A long, long while later when she can barely stand, I pull my head out from between her legs and carry her to the bed.
“Your trousers,” she purrs sleepily.
I smirk. “As much as I am dying to get inside you, I think I’ve wrung you dry of both energy and juice.”
“Did you truly use the word juice ?” she asks around a giggle.
The sound swaths both my dick and heart.
“I did,” I confirm, as I tuck her under the sheets and climb over her, before settling on my side.
She rolls onto hers. “That was the single best oral stimulation I have ever had. I’m going to be dreaming about it for as long as I live.”
Her compliment shouldn’t irk me, but it chafes some rudimentary part of my ego that wishes no other man had kneeled where I just kneeled and lapped where I just lapped.
“No need to dream when you’ll have my tongue at your disposal.” She smiles, but then her smile quivers when I punctuate my promise with an: “ Always .”
She strokes my cheek and then she’s breaching the stunted distance between our bodies to kiss me. The meeting of our mouths is slow and sweet—a dance of tongues, a caress of lips, a graze of teeth.
Before I abandon all my restraint and clothing, I scoop up the book and pick up where Lachlano left off. Isla laughs as I read. We are three chapters in when her laughter drifts. She’s fallen asleep. I gently close the book and set it on the nightstand, and then I brush the tumble of black locks away from her serene face, careful not to wake her.
Gods, she’s beautiful. A Cauldron-sent angel come to deliver my soul and heart from damnation.
As I climb off the bed, I find myself rubbing at my chest, at the scudding muscle that beats hard enough to bruise. My obsession is fucking frightening. Where has my common sense gone? My willpower? My staunch independence?
I roll my lips that still taste of her. My cock swells instantly. I back up, then pivot sharply and all but lunge into my quarters through our shared doorway. A pit stop by my bathing chamber later doesn’t make me feel any calmer.
When I meet up with the various members of my government, my mind feels effervescent. Half in my War Room, half back in Isla’s bedchamber. If any of them notice, they don’t say anything.
For tedious hours, I discuss resource allocations, trade profit, and valuate crop yield. And then I call in my engineers to deliberate the ruined train track segments and their opinions on the construction material Eponine sent from Nebba. It’s the wee hours of the morning by the time I call it a night, or rather, a day, and head back upstairs.
I find Isla bent over her desk, quill scratching at a little booklet. Since she hasn’t yet sensed me, I lean against the doorframe separating our chambers and observe her. She’s so deeply concentrated that she’s nibbling on her lip while carving her hand through the long black locks that curtain her face.
Her neck snaps straight. And then her face spins toward me. She plops her pen back into the inkwell and stands. “You’re back.”
Although she doesn’t punctuate her comment with an exclamation point, her expression smacks of contentment.
My heart twinges with relief that the way I’m feeling isn’t one-sided. “I am.”
“Have you gone to bed yet?”
“No.” I push away from the doorframe and walk over to her.
“You need to rest.” She meets me halfway.
“I need you.”
My hands go to her waist; hers, to my neck, which is already bending. Our mouths collide with such hunger that it wipes my mind clean of all worries.
Until my worries trounce on her door at the cusp of evening in the shape of my pallid, crimson-eyed brother.