Chapter 21
Iback away from Amriel, the pads of my feet sinking into the moss as I try to put space between us. “I haven’t been waiting for you,” I say. “At all.”
A lie. Not only does it taste like one, but the words get twisted on their way out, defying my attempts to shape them into something believable.
Which Amriel must realize, because he laughs again, low and liquid and knowing. His eyes absorb the last flare of twilight from the window, and the glint there looks hungry, almost wild.
A flush climbs my neck as my eyes travel over him, the glass in his hand. “Are you drunk?”
He flings the goblet aside, not bothering to watch where it falls. “Yes. Very. But not on wine, this time.”
Air dives deep in my lungs, my head swimming as I take in his meaning. He starts toward me, his intent clear with every prowling step.
I can’t help it—I retreat further, trying to flee the way my skin comes alive beneath his gaze, the way my whole body quakes with need.
My back hits the stone wall. I pull the collar of my dressing gown up around my throat, but can’t strangle the whimper that emerges.
Amriel keeps coming, aimed like an arrow, like he’s the weapon and I’m the target.
Like he’s marked me for destruction. When he gets close, he braces a forearm against the wall overhead, blocking off any hope of escape.
And goddess, he’s huge. The room shrinks, or maybe he fills it somehow, all by himself, a defiance of physics I can’t make sense of.
He stares down his cheeks at me. “I hated today,” he says. “I hated every second of it, until dinner. Don’t ever do that to me again.”
“What…” I pull my gown tighter. “What’re you talking about?”
The spark in his eyes burns hotter—not just hunger, I realize, but anger.
“I didn’t know if you were alive or dead. If you were ignoring me or if you’d fallen into a hole somewhere. If you needed me, or if you wanted me to stay away.”
“Oh,” I say, almost managing to sound casual. Almost. “Well, I was ignoring you, and I did want you to stay away.”
His teeth flash. “Careful, Princess. Be very careful about provoking me right now.”
My chin rises of its own accord, a challenge. A dare. Because who does he think he is? “Or what?”
“I think you know what.”
“I don’t.”
“You do. But I’ll say it anyway.” A predatory smile breaks across his face, filled with dimples and the promise of punishment. “Be careful what you say, or I’ll fuck that attitude right out of you. I’m going to fuck you, anyway. Either I can do it angry, or I can do it gentle. Up to you.”
My thoughts implode into a haze of red, my knees weakening as heat pools between my thighs. “I… What?”
“You heard me.”
“Okay, fine, but what if I don’t want that?”
His gaze drops to my mouth. “Then you probably shouldn’t have spent the past hour eye-fucking me at the dinner table.”
A sharp inhale lodges in my throat. “I didn’t…” Then I trail off, because that’s exactly what I was doing.
His free hand flexes at his side. He leans down, his breath skimming along my neck as he sucks in a lungful of my scent. “You did. And Princess? I know what you were doing in the bath just now. Why your cheeks are such a perfect shade of pink.”
I try to deny it. I try and try and try, but the words won’t come.
“You were waiting for me, weren’t you?” The way his lashes drop makes the question sound faintly dangerous. He traps a lock of my wet hair between two fingers, then sets it aside without brushing my skin. “So tell me. What were you thinking about, in the bath? What were you imagining?”
I force a swallow that feels like gulping down a boulder. “Nothing. I wasn’t imagining anything.”
Another smoky chuckle. “You know you can’t lie to me. The moment I touch you, I’ll see inside that pretty head of yours. See exactly what you were fantasizing about.”
My breath flies faster, my body bracing. But he doesn’t follow through on his threat. He just hovers, staring at my mouth until my lips threaten to catch fire, until the throb inside me becomes unbearable.
“I shouldn’t want you,” I whisper. The words just come out, faint but unmistakable.
His smile tips into something darker. “But you do.”
I pull my dressing gown tighter, the satin adhering to my drenched skin. “I shouldn’t. You break every one of my rules.”
“Then make new ones.”
The air in my lungs vanishes. It’s not that simple. It’s not—
“They aren’t even your rules, anyway,” he continues.
“Just rules someone else convinced you to follow. Convinced you mattered. But this is Velindra, Princess. There are no goddesses here. No Book to tell you what to do, no expectations. There’s nothing in this room right now except you and me and the fact that you tortured me today, and now I need to do something about it.
” His voice roughens on those last few words. “So. Angry? Or gentle?”
I can’t answer. I can’t even speak. All I can do is quiver, my whole body straining toward him, toward the surrender I crave with every molecule. His scent swirls around me—grapes and frost and winter berries, plus something underneath, a tantalizing himness that threatens to undo me.
I clutch at my pendant, hoping that will save me, that Ishanna will choose now to grace me with her attention. That she’ll yank me back from the perilous brink opening beneath my feet.
But the metal remains silent, and in the absence of a counterbalance, I feel myself bending, lured by Amriel’s size and his scent and the sheer gravity he exudes. The mate bond tightens between us, whispering promises, tempting me with all the ecstasy Ravenna and Calen shared at the dinner table.
Amriel’s eyes sweep my face. “You’re thinking too hard,” he says. “As usual.”
“One of us has to,” I breathe.
His look narrows. “No. It’s so simple, Princess. Don’t think. Just feel. Decide what you want, then let me give it to you.”
I suck in a breath that feels like betrayal, that feels like falling.
What do I want? It fills me to the brim, but it makes no sense. We make no sense—the human princess and the fae king, the Aethrolian and the Velindran, the goddess-fearing and the godless. The eternal and the mortal. The predator and the prey, the hunter and the hunted.
He’s everything I’ve been taught to fear. Breaks every law I’ve ever followed.
And yet…he’s also so much more than that. Because he came for me when Ishanna didn’t. He endangered himself for my sake, nearly gave his life. For me. Now I’m only standing here because of him. Still alive, still woven into the fabric of this world, still capable of questioning, of feeling.
Because of him.
None of my rules say anything about that.
Amriel stares into me as if reading the thoughts that form and re-form inside my head. “Well?”
“I want… I want…” I choke on my confession midstream. “Something I’m not supposed to.”
“Supposed to?” He swipes his tongue across his teeth and laughs, his lashes sweeping low. “We’ve gone way beyond supposed to. We left supposed to up on my desk in the solarium.”
Heat laces my veins at the reminder. I tell myself to pull away, then…don’t.
“I’m not even supposed to be here,” he continues.
“I wasn’t supposed to get this angry with you.
You weren’t supposed to shut me out while you were in the labyrinth.
You were meant to use your bracelet to talk to me, to let me help you.
And I wasn’t supposed to care. At all. But it turns out neither of us is any good at following directions, and in the end, supposed to doesn’t actually matter.
So here we are. You decide what happens next. ”
A sharp breath skates through my teeth, because supposed to is all I have, the only language I’ve ever spoken. Supposed to means Ishanna, and Aethrolia, and the priestesshood. Yet even as I reach for my old standbys, they turn flimsy in my hands, dissipating between my fingers like so much smoke.
Because where were those things downstairs just now, when I felt the pulse of life in my veins, the joy? When Calen touched his mate and I didn’t see sin, but beauty? Or in the solarium, when Amriel kissed me and I opened for him like a flower in the light?
And why, when I let myself think about it, does it feel like I barely existed before coming to this place?
My memories of home are somehow rendered in grayscale, while here, color riots all around me, blooming brighter each time this man comes near.
Which doesn’t mean he isn’t dangerous. He is.
So is this whole place. But while I’ve nearly died here, I’ve also lived.
The bond pulls hard, rising inside me, gathering strength. And I…reach out. Just barely, my fingers tugging apart Amriel’s shirt at the waist, slipping into the gap until the tips meet warm skin.
He exhales sharply, muscle contracting beneath my touch, the flex of his abdomen sending a hot rush up my spine.
The pain inside him retreats, making room for a chaotic mix that spills into me through the bond.
For the directive that beats in his blood, the series of harried commands—claim her and take her and protect her and punish her.
And, deeper still, don’t ever, ever let her leave again.
I gasp but don’t pull away. I see everything, even the parts he wants to hide—the curl of fear that lived in his chest all day, the way he felt like he was underwater, colors muted, everything blurry, even the sounds around him garbled as he sank deeper and deeper into dread.
Then the sweet stab of relief when I walked into the dining room, like a silver-tipped arrow rammed through his chest. How that current still flows, a hot, electric ache at the base of his stomach.
The immensity of it nearly brings me to my knees. Because he cares nothing for any rules.
Just instinct. Feeling. Need. Needing me.
Amriel must be looking at me, too, because something surfaces in his expression, a wide-eyed awe that steals my attempts at rational thought. “Shadows take me, Princess. You’re so hungry, inside. Look at you. You’re starving.”