Chapter 60
CHAPTER SIXTY
MORGANA
I had fully prepared to accept whatever change of clothes were provided to me before slipping into the soft sheets, to rest as I knew my body needed, but I was simply tired of being tired. I didn’t want my lethargy to dictate that I wasted the first sign of peace I’d seen since before we arrived at Avendatis. Now, we were one step closer to home.
I was quite certain that was the opposite of peace, but it meant warm food, a soft bed, and another chance at getting answers.
Aster had settled near the fire in hopes that the quiet would help me rest, but I sat upright in the soft bed and picked at the covers mindlessly. He leaned over a table, pen in hand with his eyebrows pinched together terribly. I chewed on the inside of my cheek. “What are you writing?” I said just loudly enough that I knew he’d hear me.
He flinched, as if he hadn’t expected my inquiry, and lifted his chin in my direction. “You need to sleep, Morgana.”
“I know what I need to do.” After crossing my arms, I smiled softly. “What are you writing?”
He sighed and set down the quill, dipping his head toward the page and shook his head. “Nothing,” he muttered and crumpled it up in his hands. “Nothing that will work, anyway.”
I blinked, watching as he rubbed his face raw. Standing, I walked over to him and grabbed the page he’d just balled up. He made a move to stop me but pressed into the back of his chair halfway through the motion. I sat across from him, some of the wet ink rubbing against my fingers as I unfolded the page.
Erynna… where have you gone?
Something gnawed in my chest.
Do you realize what you’ve done? he’d written. I could feel the concern etched across every letter, the betrayal seeping out of the ink. You vanished after Morgana attacked you. As if we hadn’t been fighting for years for answers—for the mirror you gave away? Pray tell, sister. Was it worth it?
Then, he’d scratched out so many words. Accusations. Mindless questions. Guesses as to where she was, as if it would serve as a threat.
I set down the paper and looked at him. “Do you think she’s really done something to wrong you?”
I could see him chewing on his tongue, agony coloring his eyes this deep, crimson red. Normally the dark whisps swirled across his eyes like this active dance, but tonight, they were all-consuming. “Do you?”
My jaw clenched. I’d seen epic betrayals—witnessed them firsthand too. I’d watched with my own eyes what she did. The way she gave up the object we’d spent three days traveling for. All the while, a future king would die?
It was all too much a coincidence to not be her.
“I don’t know,” I muttered, unable to stab him with such a truth. Erynna and Aster were close. But those closest to us also had the power to wield lethal blows. “But I do know letters won’t solve a thing.”
Aster made a face like he knew that, grabbing the paper and tossing it into the burning fireplace to his left. “If you’re going to stay up, then I’d rather not unleash my familial trauma onto you. Especially not after everything I’ve already burdened you with.” He leaned forward, as if he were unable to look at me. “Are you okay?”
His words were a crackling plea—as if he was begging me to say yes. “No. But, there isn’t much we can do about that.”
After wincing, he nodded and clasped his hands together. For the first time in a long while, he wasn’t relaxing with those leather gloves on. The swirls of raven ink danced across his skin, creeping under his sleeve. I recalled the way it felt when they reached out to me. The euphoria that overcame me long before the sensation of death—long before the rot ruined the tips of my fingers. I glanced down, my skin clean and unharmed, save for the bites on my wrists. After too many moments of unease, I reached for his hand and traced after the shifting shadows.
“Is it terrible of me to ask a selfish question, Aster?”
“Ask me all the selfish questions you can create.”
I laughed through my nose, but the smile I felt in my chest didn’t stretch across my lips. No, the anxious nerves won me over. If I stopped chasing the magic that scarred his skin, forever breathing across him, I knew my hands would be a trembling mess.
“Are you going to kill me?”
The second the question fell off my tongue, my ears started ringing. My heart ached beneath my chest, hammering against the breastbone in an attempt to break free. If I focused too hard, the heat across my cheeks would be unbearable too. For a while, I wasn’t sure if the silence served as his answer, or if I just couldn’t hear him through the fear that was taking hold of me.
Anxiety took so many forms, but I found it to be a snake that suffocated every one of my senses. If I didn’t take control soon, my vision would turn to these terrible white spots and my mouth would go so dry that I couldn’t talk if I desired it.
Aster turned his hand so his palm was beneath mine. Our fingers laced together, and I peered at him through my lashes.
“Did you not hear me earlier?” he asked. “I’ve been plagued once already. There has to be another way—and if there is not, I am content with you being my second curse.”
I shook my head wildly and pulled my hands from him. “But… but you’ve been searching for your cure. All these years.” I stood and took a deep breath, trying to calm the racing thoughts that demanded fruition. It was the pacing that really grounded me. “You cannot look at me and tell me you will throw your hands up and accept your fate. No, that would make you a fool! Now, mind you, I don’t want to die. I really, really don’t want?—”
“Morgana.”
“—to die, but I struggle to believe that, Aster, you wouldn’t be happy about that choice for long?—”
Aster had stood somewhere in the middle of the blubbering mess of excuses I was throwing at him, grabbing me by the shoulders and twisting me toward him. “Morgana, will you listen to me?”
My mouth snapped shut, and I nodded. He lifted his hands to cup my face and pressed this dangerously delicate kiss to my forehead.
“You are painfully correct,” he muttered and tilted his chin down to capture my eyes again. “One on account, at least. I have been searching for my cure. We’ve always had our eyes on the wretched artifacts. The mirror, the ring, anything that the texts reference more than once, really. So many dead ends. So many clues lost to the shores of Vespera. But you are a newfound hope. The prophecy references a sacrifice. It does, Morgana, you are correct.” His lip curled into a terrible frown, as if the fact pained him. Slowly, he tucked a strand of my hair behind my ear. I reached to take hold of his forearm—it was as if his pain were my own. “It is why my family does those terrible things upon a coronation, right? Why the trials exist and kill so many princes and princesses unworthy of the magic. Generations… lost. People who would have been my cousins were killed before they reached their fullest potential.”
Aster hissed out a curse and backed away from me, his scowl so deep, it sliced into me. Right through my soul. I wanted to reach back out to him, but instead I curled my hands into my chest and held it there. If for no other reason than to hear my resounding heartbeat.
“And then the stars give me you. This beautiful, fiery gift that holds the power of curing every cursed bone in my body.”
It was as if he were talking himself back into it. I let my hands fall to my side, almost expecting him to show me all the fire and fury within his soul and make good on whatever it was the prophecy foretold. To lock me away until they found the mirror, that ring?—
“You are stubborn,” he whispered as he took a few steps closer again. “You are this violent delight packaged in a form that was sent to test me. To defy every sense of discipline, control, that I’d been taught to uphold my entire life. But that is not what angers me, little dove. It is the beauty in which you exist so effortlessly that infuriates me.” He grappled his fingers through my hair in this desperate attempt at holding my wide-eyed stare. “As if the gods and devils and all the evil that exist between them want to see me suffer.”
“I make you suffer?” I rasped.
“No,” he whispered and pressed his forehead to mine again, his eyes squeezing shut. “I can withstand the agony of your hatred, but I cannot withstand the agony of your distant existence. That is where my suffering begins, Morgana Kyllingham. It is not in your rage, your blows, slaps. None of that matters to me. It is the thought of existing without you.”
A gasp got caught in my throat, and I clutched onto his shirt at the admission. “Aster, do not say such a thing.”
“I have said such a thing,” he said and chased after my lips, but never made contact as they hovered over one another.
“You should hate me,” I said quietly. “As I should hate you. It is destined.”
“Do you hate me, little dove?” he whispered, his tone yearning for my admittance to such a terrible feeling.
“I should ,” I repeated. “I should loathe every pillar you stand for. For everything you’ve done to me.”
“You do,” he whispered and moved a hand behind my neck. It was like he was trying to both pull me close and keep me back. “Tell me you do so I can set you free—so I can set my flightless dove free before time catches up to us.”
“I must,” I agreed, though the lie was bitter on my tongue. “But I cannot.”
“You cannot?” he rasped.
“I cannot ?—”
He kissed me, pulling me so close to him that I thought our bodies would converge. I yearned for this, for parting my lips to allow him access to the deepest parts of me. I was helpless to the way he made me feel. To the way he held me so dearly, so closely, as if I were his salvation and damnation wrapped into one. His touch was that of desperation. Of everlasting desire. The weight of my confession hung heavy between us, our darkest truths mingling with our forbidden desires.
His fingers seared my skin as he traced it down my side, lifting me so my legs were wrapped around his waist. Aster’s presence enveloped me in divine truth. In the sort of confessions—both spoken and unspoken—that even the strongest lovers would blush at.
He’d shuffled over to the bed, the tin boxes scattered across the floor clanging as he kicked his foot into them. When he sat, he placed me on his lap, tugged at the neckline of my blouse, and kissed the skin between my breasts. I gasped, gooseflesh igniting across my skin. His bare hands dipped under my blouse, dragging his short nails across my back ruined by years of abuse. I lifted my arms when he moved to lift it over my head, my chest bare to him.
He was worshiping my body. He took one nipple into his mouth, swirling his tongue around it. My hands went to his hair, tugging on it as his name slipped past my lips in a breathy moan.
I rolled my hips over his cock, hardened beneath his pants.
He kissed between my breasts and up my chest, gently biting my collarbone. I tilted my head back, allowing him better access to my skin. His teeth grazed the column of my throat, sending a shiver down my spine. Aster’s hands gripped my hips, guiding me in a slow rhythm over his cock.
When he kissed me again, I tasted the hint of tea on the tip of his tongue—the mysterious touch of smoke that seemed to follow him around despite the fact that I hadn’t seen him smoke once. I clutched onto the fabric of his shirt and tugged it free from his pants, lifting it over his shoulders.
The oil lantern cast an ethereal glow over his chest. I ran my hands over the dark marks that danced across his chest. He was a king who carried the burden of a century-old curse.
I watched the way his muscles flexed beneath my fingertips. How his eyes closed as I kissed up the center of his throat. I could see the way his lips parted with a sharp intake of breath, his hands tightening their grip on my hips.
Without another word, he twisted us so I was on my back, his hands tugging my pants to my ankles. He hovered over me and kissed my lips first—then down my neck and chest, across my abdomen as his hand lazily cupped my breast before finding his home between my thighs.
I whimpered as he found my clit, circling it with his thumb. My hips bucked against his hand, my body craving the release of his touch.
Aster removed his hand, replacing it with his tongue. A gasp broke through me, my hands gripping his hair. He used his hands to spread my thighs farther apart. His tongue swirled across the apex of my thighs, his shadows dancing into the air above his arm before swirling around my body—from my ankles to my thighs, up to my throat.
They were cold, but not uncomfortable. I writhed beneath him as he pushed two fingers inside me. My back arched, the sound that slipped past my lips something between a desperate gasp and broken whimper.
He chuckled against my clit. The knot in my stomach tightened, his shadows all but whispering into my ear. As if they were an extension of his darkest thoughts. They asked me terrible things. Mind-numbing, tantalizing things.
It was when they joined his tongue, slipping into me and adding a degree of friction I hadn’t expected his magic to materialize. My hands latched onto the sheets and I reached for the pillow behind me, covering my face as I screamed.
Come for me, little dove, his shadows said. Come undone so I can relish in the ruin that remains.
I shuddered, my body giving way to the ecstasy he brought me. Every nerve was on fire, every part of me pulsing with this terrible, wonderful need for more. My legs shook. My voice broke. Within seconds, I was his—my body submitted to his one and every touch.
Aster’s tongue slowed, his shadows drawing back into him as he lifted himself to hover over me. I groaned at the sight of the sweat that lined his brow, at the wetness across his lips, and dragged him down to me. I could taste myself on his tongue. I reached to fumble with his pants, his hands already undoing the buttons that held it together.
Once they were off, he settled between my thighs. He lifted my leg up, wrapping it around his hip. I reached between us and wrapped my hand around his cock, stroking it before positioning it at my entrance. He moaned into my mouth as I guided him in. I wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled him flush against my chest. We were as close as two people could be, but it wasn’t enough. I feared it never would be.
The moment he began to move, I lost the ability to think. The only thing that mattered was the way his body fit into mine. The way our moans mingled together, echoing off the walls of these chambers. He was mine.
Aster lifted himself to his knees and hooked my other leg around his waist, my back arching as he reached for my hips.
“Beautiful,” he whimpered, hastening his pace and using his shadows to touch every part of me that he could not reach. My breasts, my throat, they were at the mercy of his magic.
When I looked up at him, the glimmer in his eyes was one of complete adoration. My heart swelled. In fear, in retribution, in… in love. I was falling in love with the man who cursed me. The man who was supposed to be my captor.
I covered my face with my arm, unable to handle the vulnerability.
“No, no, no,” he rasped and wrapped his fingers around my wrist, tugging it from my face. “You will not hide from me, little dove. Not now, not ever.”
I felt the tears well in my eyes as my orgasm hit me like a wave crashing into the shore. I cried out his name, my entire body trembling as the euphoria overwhelmed me. He held onto me tighter, his lips parting with a moan.
I watched him. Watched the way his brows furrowed, his lashes fluttering against his cheeks. How he bit his lip and fought back a cry as he came. He fell forward, his hand bracing the space next to my head so he didn’t crush me.
We were quiet for minutes, perhaps seconds, but he opened his eyes when I touched his jaw. A delicate, ghost of a touch, but he leaned into it.
He leaned down to kiss me, and against my lips, he whispered the most delicate, terrifying words.
“I don’t know if I’m worthy of such a thing as sweet as love, little dove, but I am willing to face one thousand deaths if it is like this.”
My mouth cracked into a smile.
“And that is why you are a fool,” I whispered in jest, the vulnerability swirling inside my stomach like I was readying myself to take flight.
“ ōrnas nelle ?mor .”
My brows lifted. It was such a delicate thing to hear him speak the forgotten language of his family. “What does that mean?” I whispered.
“‘A fool in love,’ little dove. A fool madly in love.”
And just as I was prepared to say the very same, just as the words had all but fallen off my lips, darkness crashed upon the fortress. Screams pierced the air, and that semblance of peace was cut short.