Chapter 39
Thirty-Nine
The sound that rips from Falcen’s throat isn’t from the man I first met. Falcen wrenches my hands up and flings them above my head, pinning me to the floor. The move is swift and brutal, and my skull clips stone, and stars ricochet.
I suck air through my teeth and kick uselessly. His grip is iron. Cold whips off him in waves, a winter that burns.
“Stop,” he rasps, voice split, both human and not. “You cannot feed me. Not here.”
Ember surges so hard inside my chest I think a rib might snap.
Hear me, Verily. You’ve bound pieces of your soul to him. He wears those threads. They glow under his skin when he sleeps. If you give again, the Master Keeper will know what you are.
“What am I?” My voice shakes, and I don’t know if I’m asking Falcen or Ember. “Tell me.”
A shiver of despair strikes through Ember’s voice. You are mine to guard. That was the oath.
Breath scours my throat as Falcen keeps me pinned, his body molded to mine so tightly, I can feel the outline of him hard against my hip.
That should scare me.
It only roots me deeper under him.
Falcen’s mouth pulls back to show too many teeth.
“I don’t know what you are, Verily. All I know is, you’re not like the rest of us.
We rot. We fracture. Our souls blacken the more we use our magick, while yours …
. yours bends toward life. Heals. And that makes you dangerous.
Not to me, but to yourself. If the academy sees it, they’ll make you theirs to weaponize. And I can’t let that happen.”
“Like what they’re turning you into?” I breathe through the shock on his twisted face. “I saw them, Falcen. In the academy’s underground. Chained to the walls.”
His eyes narrow on mine, eyes rimmed in gold and filled with ash.
“You shouldn’t have gone down there.”
“I know. I went anyway.”
His nostrils flare. Falcen inhales like he can scent the terror still clinging to my skin. “What exactly did you see?”
“Halflings.” Saying it out loud causes their name to curdle against my tongue. “They were Elites once, weren’t they?”
A pause, knife-thin. “Yes.”
That’s all he gives, and therefore, I decide not to tell him about Davrin. Not yet. Falcen braces his forearms on either side of my head and cages me there as if he can keep the world out solely with muscle and bone.
“You’re angry I saw what the academy’s doing to its best warriors,” I surmise.
“I’m angry you risked yourself for a truth that will not save you.” His voice splits again, the lower tone rubbing along his normal one like rusted blades. “Did anyone see you?”
“No.” My thumbs start tingling from blood loss where he still grips my wrists.
Falcen shuts his eyes and then opens them, and they’re colder than the ground against my back. “If you ever return to those halls, I will lock you away and throw the key into the Void.”
“Romantic,” I say wryly, and feel his groin answer with a twitch against me.
But the more I study him, any humor I’ve managed to hold on to vanishes. Scales ripple higher over his back and onto his shoulders, catching the faint moonlight from the window.
“You came back,” I say. “I was so worried about you. And then when I came into your room and saw you like this...”
Falcen’s gaze drops to my mouth. A guttural curse tears from him. His eyes squeeze shut like he’s in pain, and his head drops to my shoulder. Teeth graze my skin. He breathes my name into my throat.
“You’ll ruin yourself if you stay under me,” he finally confesses. “And I won’t stop you.”
Ruin me, I dare him, then I hear my own voice say it. “Then I’m yours to ruin, Falcen.”
Falcen stills like a wolf scenting a snare.
“Say it again,” he rasps against my neck.
“Ruin me, Falcen.”
His grip shifts. The cold that haunts his skin pours over me, lifting every fine hair.
He kisses my pulse point as if testing it, then opens his mouth and drags his tongue up my neck.
Heat meets ice. I shiver hard. He tastes me like a starving man bites into fruit, slow, as if making sure it’s real, then rough, taking it all.
Falcen growls a filthy curse, then he’s everywhere.
He releases my wrists only long enough to tear at the laces of my corset.
Leather gives, a sharp rip that pebbles my skin.
Cotton rips when he goes after my tunic.
Cool air shocks my breasts until his hands cover them, calluses rasping, thumbs finding peaks already tight.
I arch. He curses at the sight like I’ve stabbed him.
The tattoos along his forearms erupt, blue washed in black, and frost flowers in thin veins across the flooring.
He drags his mouth down, teeth grazing the curve of my breast before he closes his lips around me.
The pull is greedy, then punishing, and I moan, dignity dissolving right along with my self-preservation.
He lifts his head, eyes on mine, mouth wet.
A sound leaves him. He bites very softly, a quiet promise, and then his mouth is on mine again, magick snapping between us like soul-energy singing in the wind.
I taste the edges of him, burnt mint, iron, and the black fungus of the Void that should send me scrambling.
I open for it instead. He groans into me, tongue stroking mine.
“Why do you kiss me like I’m still human?” he rasps.
“Because you kiss me back like you still want to be.”
I hook my legs around his waist and feel the cut of muscle and the shiver he tries to hide. Falcen’s breeches grind against mine, the hard line of his cock pressing through fabric until pressure becomes ache.
Scales scrape my ribs and belly. I run my palms up his back, mapping skin to scale to skin, daring to touch the places where he is not boy or man but a thing between that glitters like oil and night.
His breath stutters when my fingers press higher, when I palm over his throat to his sternum.
Those black threads under his skin twitch, then stall as my touch finds that center point.
Gold rises in me like a song I know by heart.
Ember snaps her teeth, warning a line of heat along my ribs, but I point my light where I choose.
It spills into him in a thin seam, and the rot hesitates.
Falcen’s eyes fly open, a terrible, beautiful sight. He rips my hand off his chest and pins it beside my head.
“Stop, Verily.”
“But I steady you.”
“You shackle me.”
I force myself to push past the hurt his confession brings. “I’m not resurrecting you, though. I’m just buying you time.”
“No Soulren has ever brought a life back. Not truly.” Falcen swallows like he’s trying to get past glass. “I have accepted my fate. But I cannot accept you destroying your life trying to stop what has already rotted from the inside out. I am beyond saving, Verily. I have been for a very long time.”
I open my mouth to argue, but he presses his mouth against mine and tongues the argument out of me.
Falcen’s hips thrust, a harsh rubbing against my core that stops my breath.
With his lips on mine, his hands drag my breeches down my thighs, knuckles scraping my soft skin.
I wriggle to help, and he curses in a way that makes the air snap.
My boots thump somewhere, forgotten. He hauls me closer by the backs of my knees.
“Off,” I pant, shoving at my undergarments.
He snarls in that split voice and tears them away. The seams of my underwear give like spun sugar.
When the cold air hits my damp center, and I gasp, he looks down at me with that ruined reverence again, pupils blown, ash ringed in gold.
My thighs spread wider than I knew they could. He swears, low and terrible, and touches me. One stroke, two, fingers slicking through heat that is not shy.
A single ruthless circle and my back bows off the floor, hands catching uselessly at scaled shoulders. One of them cuts me on the palm, deep and sharp, but I barely feel it.
Falcen smells the fresh blood.
He presses the heel of his hand against me and grinds, watching my mouth, chest heaving. No tenderness. No gentleness. A thief who already knows where the treasure is and how to get to it.
“My name,” he says as he lets three fingers sink inside me. “Say it when you break.”
I would roll my eyes if I could control my motor skills right now.
Instead, I choke on a laugh that melts into an unpolite sound.
He curls his finger, and heat spikes. Tattoos brighten along his arm.
The cold stone licks at my spine while his hand burns between my legs.
Body confused. Delighted. My thighs clamp around his wrist. He groans like a man dropping to his knees at a shrine.
“Look at me,” I tell him, proud that I can still form sentences.
He does. He always does when I ask. Eyes gone wild, mouth bared, fangs catching the low light.
He slides a fourth finger in, deeper, a stretch that edges on pain before it blooms into something that makes my toes curl.
He works me open, deft and harsh, focused like the rest of the world has slipped off a cliff.
“Falcen,” I gasp.
His name shatters out of my mouth, and Falcen lowers with a smile, lips spanning my nipple, tongue hot and greedy, then cruel. I bury my hand in his hair and pull. He bites just shy of real hurt, and my hips climb his hand in helpless, needy motions that will embarrass me later, but not now.
Falcen withdraws before I fall. I curse him like I mean it. He grins because he knows I’m lying.
I want to hate that grin. Instead, I end up chasing it with my mouth.
Falcen meets me halfway, swallowing my protest and turning it into a sound I don’t recognize as mine.
He frees himself with an impatient shove of his briefs. My breath hitches. He is thick and hard and so encompassing, even Lux would blush.
Falcen drags the length of himself over my slit, slow as a threat. The skin there is hotter than the rest of him. Tattoos ghost along his hip bones, rising, falling as he breathes.
“Last chance to pretend we’re civilized,” I whisper, because humor saves me from drowning.
“Civilization failed us,” he says, and lines himself up.
Ember stirs, a flare of heat that wants to drag me backward, but I shove her down—hard—into the marrow of my chest. She snarls then falls silent, locked beneath the weight of my will.
For once, she doesn’t fight me. She lurks there, caged and seething, letting me claim these moments for myself, even if they tear me open.
Falcen pushes. My body resists. He rocks in a fraction at a time, jaw clenched, eyes on my face like he can read every flinch. Stretch, burn, a breathless sting that steals my mind.
I grip his shoulders and feel scales like small needles dragging against my palms. Fresh pain sparks, brief and bright. He sees me wince and stills.
“It’s okay,” I reassure. “More.”
He sinks deeper. A growl crawls out of his chest and vibrates against my sternum. I slide my hands to his back to hold myself together and find purchase on the places where he is armor.
He fits, too much and exactly right, a pressure that goes molten when he bottoms out, and I swear, all the air is gone from my body.
His soul-glyph tattoos hiss against the heat of my skin. Frost sings a tight, crystalline note across the floor.
Falcen thrusts. Long and unhurried at first, as if relearning a language lost to exile. My nails bite scales, and he rocks harder, rhythm finding us, filthy and true.
I wrap my legs around him, ankles locking, and he drags me even closer, as if he can climb in alongside my bones.
He changes the angle, and my vision flashes white. A noise tears out of me that would intrigue Nox. Falcen answers with a satisfied sound, then does it again.
In. Out. In. Faster. Harder. My body chants yes in every language I know and a few I don’t.
Gold wakes under my ribs like a guilty thought. Ember bites down, a warning. I ignore her and press my palm to his sternum again, choosing my ruin with clarity.
“No,” Falcen grits out. “Don’t.”
“Then keep me in the dark,” I say, mouth opening on a gasp when he slams me deep and drags me back with one hand under my thigh.
I push up and meet him, thighs burning. He changes rhythm and drives me higher, relentless, and that’s when brave stupidity takes me.
I flood a second thin line of magick into him, careful, a seam along his collarbone. Rot slows another breath, a held note. I feel an answering tug, a thread pulling from my chest to his, thin as spider silk. Soul-bond. Or a cousin. It hums, sweet and terrifying.
Ember screams her denial so hard my eyes water. She tries to cut the thread, to snip it with little bright teeth. But it holds.
Falcen must not notice it because he flips us in a roll that steals all grace, bodies slamming into the fragile edge of his carpet.
I end up on top, thighs caging his hips, palms planted on his cold chest. Scales glitter at his shoulders, a toxic sheen of oil.
The sight of him spread under me, half beautiful, half beast, makes my belly drop and then tighten, a descent I welcome.
I ride him, braced and unkind to my knees. Falcen plants his feet and thrusts up in a violent counter.
I slam down and grind, taking him how I want him, using his chest as leverage.
His hands lock around my hips, thumbs bruising, as if he means to hold me in place so he can ravage me from the inside.
A snarl drags against my throat. Cold pours off his skin in streams that shimmer like moonlight on ice.
My body clenches around him, and Falcen sits up so fast, my balance teeters.
His teeth are a threat that never quite land, tongue hot enough to brand as he seals us with a kiss.
I fist his hair and ride, frantic and ungraceful, chasing that bright edge.
His thumb slides between us, circles where I am slick and swollen, wholly precise, and he tastes my moans until a jolt detonates at my core, loud and sweet.
Falcen sits taller, hand at my nape now, holding me to his mouth while he thrusts, stealing the air I try to breathe. Teeth scrape my lower lip as I shatter.
It’s not a pretty flutter. No slow melt. Ecstasy hits me like a crack of lightning, shooting through my limbs, spine on fire, calves cramping, vision turned to sparks.
Falcen surges, then drags me down onto my back.
I gasp and clamp around him so hard his eyes roll.
He thrusts twice, savage, and empties, pulse after pulse, heat searing where I am most wrecked.
His tattoos go nuclear blue for a heartbeat, then gutter, leaving frost skittering out in a ring that crackles as it forms.
He collapses on top of me while I hold on to him. The frost creeps closer like a beautiful, lethal lace. I trace the line of his spine, feeling the last shudders of his release. He stays inside me, a warm, heavy anchor in the cold.
And beneath my palm, pressed against his back, I feel the unmistakable texture of new scales breaking through skin.