Chapter 12
Twelve
Adelasia
The night suddenly feels heavier than it did before I spoke with Rowan. It’s the kind of weight that painfully presses into my skin, making it hard to breathe.
I quietly approach the bedchamber I share with Kaius, and moonlight spills through the tall terrace doorway of the balcony that is enchanted to shut the doors when the sun rises. The moon casts silver ribbons across the floor, breaking up the shadows.
Kaius lies on his stomach, head facing away from me when I enter. His shoulders are drawn tight, and his body is still like marble.
My mind races and my body is still restless from my conversation with Rowan in the courtyard. He did not use his lust magic on me, but his entire existence was made to lure others in, and my skin still blossoms with goosebumps if I think about him a fraction too long.
Now that I’ve heard the truth from his side, I want to learn the other half from Kaius. I want to understand what he’s tried so hard to keep from me. Is he worried that I will judge him? Is he worried I won’t understand? Will asking simply open an old wound that will make him shut me out even more?
I approach the bed and trace the hard planes of his back with my blackened fingertips, forcing him to accept my tender touch when his body is tight with tension. Where my fingers touch him, I feel the rot inside me stir, thrumming against his skin like it’s searching for weakness.
I place my hands back in my lap. I want to touch him. I want to smooth my hand over him like I did when I was human until we’re whole again, and until this distance is simply an illusion instead of a crack in the bond between us.
But I can’t, because I’m afraid I’ll hurt him.
Finally, I whisper. “Kaius–”
His shoulders tense. “Not tonight,” he murmurs.
“Please?” I ask, my voice barely a whisper. I try to keep it steady, careful not to let the rot take over and make my request a demand. “You and Rowan are an ancient tome in a language I don’t know how to read. Help me understand.”
For a moment, he’s still, and I think he’ll stay silent. But then, slowly, he exhales and flips over onto his back. He doesn’t look at me, keeping his eyes firmly locked on the ceiling above.
“He told me about your bond,” I admit.
“I know. I heard you talking.”
I hesitate, but let my hand rest on his where it lays on his stomach. “There are two sides to every story. Let me hear yours.”
His eyes find mine in the dim light, and for once, he looks unguarded–bare. An immortal man who has spent too many years trying to bury his ghosts.
“He was my best friend. The only thing that made this curse tolerable. He stayed where others didn’t.
He tried to understand me while others ran.
When he asked me to change him…I thought he was doing it for me, to help me live this undead life.
He was my shadow. My friend. Eventually, my lover, in a physical sense.
When fate tethered us with a bond, I was confused.
I didn’t reject it, but I didn’t necessarily accept it either because a part of me…
” he takes a deep breath, “a part of me still longed for what I had with Yekaterina, even after what she did to me. I longed to love that deeply again, but I had already vowed not to. Rowan embraced our bond, but I never reciprocated in an equal way.”
I swallow, feeling a strange tightening in my chest, but I say nothing and let him speak.
“I think that’s why he went to the Priestesses, at least part of the reason. He thought he wasn’t enough, and so he thought he could change himself into something more loveable, knowing how much I despised being a vampire.”
His hand curls violently into the sheets under him, fingers trembling. And for the first time, I truly see the wound Rowan left on Kaius’ heart when he went to the Priestesses.
“The Priestesses gave him something that he very well knew they would never give me. Still a demon, but one that others could see past, one that could love and be loved, and it only deepened the valley of loneliness I was in.”
“You saw it as a betrayal,” I say.
His gaze cuts to me, wounded. “It was betrayal, Adelasia. He chose to become something else when things became difficult, knowing I couldn’t follow him.
I hated him for it. The moment I felt it through our bond that he had changed, I had a vision of him at the Well, and I rejected him from that moment on.
” He takes a deep breath. “I didn’t know until he told you that they took payment from him in the way that they did.
I thought he stayed away from me because he was hurt that I rejected our bond.
I didn’t know he was a prisoner, a slave. ”
The way his voice breaks on that last word tells me there’s still love tangled in the hate. Something he’s buried so deep he’s convinced himself it’s gone, but it’s there. Quiet. Aching. Unresolved.
I press my palm gently to his chest, feeling his pain beneath my fingertips. “And yet,” I say softly, “he has always watched over you with Cassius.”
Kaius opens his eyes, crimson gaze locking with mine, something wild and unspoken flashing there. His next words are quiet, but they cut deep.
“Yes, he was. But that doesn’t make the pain any less heavy to bear.” He lowers his head and wraps his fingers around mine. “I’m sorry Adelasia, for everything you’ve been through since I came into your life.”
“I’m not,” I whisper back. “I’m here Kaius, because I love you enough to pull myself out of the grave for you. I will always love you that much, but at some point, we have to move forward. All of us. And you don’t have to bury Rowan for me to love you.”
Something inside him fractures in that moment.
I can feel it like it happened inside my own soul, or like I felt the splinters beneath my own palm.
He hesitantly rises a hand to cup my jaw with a tenderness that makes my throat burn and my eyes misty.
His thumb grazes my bottom lip as if trying to confirm it’s the same one he’s kissed so many times before.
He gently pulls me closer, forehead to forehead, and for a moment, we breathe the same air.
“You are everything to me,” he whispers hoarsely, finally letting those vulnerabilities spill out of him. “I can’t lose you.”
I kiss the corner of his mouth. “You won’t.”
For the first time in weeks, he truly melts into me instead of holding up his walls like a fortress.
For a little while, the silence doesn’t seem so heavy anymore.
He starts by running his fingertips along every inch of skin he can reach, avoiding the places he knows I like the most. His mouth is hot against my collarbone as he nips just enough to make me slowly bleed.
He licks a drop of blood, sighing at the taste. I climb into his lap and grind against the hardness there, giving us just enough to feel but not so desperate to chase the end.
He savors my body like he savors my blood, siphoning my life through teeth marks that are permanent against my throat. I crave it just as much as he does. He squeezes the tender curve of my breasts as his mouth moves slowly down between the valley towards my belly button.
I lean down, slowly getting comfortable on my back as he works his way down. When his tongue slips through my center, I bite my lip knowing we’re not alone in this palace.
“No,” Kaius whispers against my heat. “Let him hear you. Let him know what’s mine.”
Later, when we lie tangled in the sheets, his breathing finally slow and even, I stare up at the carved ceiling above us and trace the faint humming in my veins into patterns on his chest, like a new language that is yet to be discovered.
And somewhere, far beneath the surface of my thoughts, I swear I can hear laughter.
It sounds like Eternity.
No.
It sounds like…
Me.