Chapter Eighteen
THE NIGHT KING
Gods, she’s so fucking beautiful upon the azdaha—a queen in her own right—that I can hardly think as all the blood in my body rushes south in a frenzy of need.
I want her. I need her. My curse rattles its cage, and the reminder of the fact that I can so easily condemn her to a monstrous fate is sobering.
For all my posturing about wanting to end her to break our soul-fated link, I can no sooner harm a single hair on her head than I can wound myself.
Keeping her at arm’s length, and safe, is the only way I can survive her presence.
Not coveting her like this. Not wanting to spend hours in the blissful wake of her joy. Not craving her like my next breath.
And while the smartest path of least resistance is to return her to Oryndhr—and her king there, as he has demanded or he will bring war to my doorstep—I cannot bring myself to do so, not with what Razulek has now shared with Indira.
They treated her like a thing to be controlled, chaining her will and binding her magic to those godscursed cuffs.
I have tried everything to remove them, but not even the sovran strength of my magic can break the hold, not when it’s her own divine blood being harnessed against her. She is both lock and key.
I watch her fly for hours, long after Indira leaves to tend to her nest, feeling the chaos bleed into my veins as the curse takes root.
I’m a king chained to a soul-fated bond and damned by a devious god . . . a man doomed to tear apart the one he loves if he embraces the union. It’s only by rigid self-control I’ve resisted chaos, eschewed passion, forgone feeling.
Until now. Until my entombed heart felt her starlight.
But I must be heartless if she is to live. I reach for the discipline that has sustained me since her soul summoned mine, but all I feel is infatuation and glorious arousal, followed by bitterness and rage for what I cannot have.
For what has been stolen from me.
Anger roils as I try to breathe and count in order to stave off the shift, but it’s much too late. Beneath my skin, my bones begin to thicken. I distill to shadow to seek out the cover of the forest and re-form into a grotesque, excruciating half shift as the god curse erupts.
Mindless, I open my mouth and roar.