Chapter 53 Something Sacred
SOMETHING SACRED
I ducked inside his tent.
Warmth wrapped around me, pulsing from runes along the walls. Thick furs carpeted the ground beside a massive bed, and candles floated near the ceiling.
I forced my gaze to the opposite corner, where steam curled from a copper tub. It was obscene—a pocket of luxury while an army waited below to kill us.
Kairos stood in the middle of the room.
His leather tunic lay at his feet and the linen shirt hung loose, untucked, the laces at his throat undone. His shoulders rose and fell with ragged breaths, and his hands were pressed to his face.
His mist writhed in erratic spirals, like it was protecting him from a threat it couldn’t find.
“Kairos?”
He lowered his palms, and my chest caved in. He was wrecked, his eyes glazed with pain.
“I thought I was past it,” he rasped. “What I did for them.”
I rushed over and pulled him in my arms.
He let out a tense breath. “I hate that city.”
“I know.”
“None of the people I killed in Skalgard deserved their fate.”
I swallowed. “How did you survive it?”
He drew away from me and sighed, staring at me for a moment before he twirled his hand. Mist shimmered in his palm, transforming into a square object. A book—small, worn, the binding cracked. He held it out to me.
I took it carefully and opened it. The pages were yellowed, and each line listed a name in careful handwriting.
Hundreds of them, scrawled in over the decades.
Mira Voss, 32. Tomas Birch, 14. Elara Quinn, 7.
I flipped through pages, then stopped.
Senya Holt, 29.
The baker’s wife. She had a ridiculous laugh and used to slip me warm rolls when her husband wasn’t looking, but when a weevil blight ruined the wheat harvest, bread became too costly to make. So she offered herself for the Rite, giving her family enough grain to last ten winters.
Corvin Marsh, 43. The cobbler who fixed our shoes for half-price because we couldn’t afford more. Alia Venn, 16. A girl I’d played with as a child. Gods, I’d forgotten about her.
The tent blurred. I blinked, but the tears kept coming.
“I knew some of these people.”
I felt a spasm of pain with the names I recognized. Kairos watched me with a haunted desperation, like he expected me to run, but I swam in a tide of grief. For them and him.
The more pages I thumbed through, the more I admired him. I was curious about the fae who flinched when I asked about his wings. About the executioner who hated cruelty. About all the choices he made when no one was watching.
“I surrendered myself for peace, and they made me a butcher.”
My chest tightened until it hurt.
“The king wanted me to feel every death,” he whispered. “He wanted me ashamed and broken.”
“It didn’t work. This is proof of that.”
I closed the book carefully and pressed it to my heart. I pictured him alone in some dark corner, writing as an act of penance, and it hollowed my insides.
I gave it back to him.
He took it, staring at the cover. “Writing their names was the only way to honor them.”
“I’m so sorry you had to do that.”
Kairos flicked his wrist, the book vanishing in a swirl of white. “They begged me to save them, and I still had to look them in the eye and do it anyway.”
I touched his arm. “You showed me mercy.”
“That was instinct, not mercy,” he said quietly.
“Then your instincts are better than you think. You are so much more than an executioner. You carry people when they can’t get up. When the world goes to hell, you push us forward.”
A faint smile tugged at his mouth. “One day, I’d like to believe the things you see in me.”
My hands lifted to his face, and his breathing shallowed as if he had to swallow a sound.
“I see a male who’s been strong for everyone else his entire life. Who carried the weight of a kingdom, a century of chains, a thousand horrors, and never once asked anyone to help him.” My thumb traced his cheekbone. “And now you’re scared because you have someone who makes you feel weak.”
His gaze dropped to my mouth. He looked hungry and desperate, like he held himself back by a thread. My heart hammered, hyperaware of this strange current between us as a reckless warmth curled through me.
“After your sister is safe…what happens to us?”
“What do you want to happen?”
“For you to stay,” he said in a raw voice. “I want to wake with you in my bed and hear your steps in my halls. I want to know that you chose me.”
Tears burned my eyes. “I want to choose you without feeling like it’s dangerous. I’m…still figuring out how.”
“What are you afraid of?”
“Sometimes I’ll look at you and feel something so big it scares me. I don’t know what it means or why it’s happening.” A warm flush claimed my cheeks. “If this goes any further, I know I’ll be too attached.”
“There’s no such thing.”
A tremor rolled through me. “Are you sure?”
“I’ve been sure since you broke my chains, my princess.”
Heat pooled low in my stomach.
“I want you scared of how badly you want me.”
“I am.” My breath shivered out of me.
His thumb dragged along my jaw. “Then say you’ll stay with me.”
My throat tightened. “I will.”
His hand dropped to my waist, pulling me closer. “And you’ll sleep in my bed every night. You’ll be mine.”
“Okay,” I whispered.
His expression darkened. “Do you understand what that means?”
My heart stuttered. “Tell me.”
“You don’t share your body with another male.”
“Of course not.”
His fingers slid lower on my waist. “When you need warmth, you reach for me. When you’re hurt. When you’re angry. When you can’t sleep or can’t stand another second alone.” His forehead dropped to mine. “You come to me.”
“I-I will.”
“And if someone touches you with anything more than courtesy, I will put him in the ground.”
A shiver ran through me.
He cupped my face with both hands, his thumbs stroking my cheeks. “But it also means I’m yours. No one else.”
My lips parted.
“Now tell me,” he murmured. “Do you want that?”
A rush of heat punched through me. He held my gaze like the fate of the realm hung on my answer.
“Gods, yes. I want that.”
His mouth crashed into mine, and the world tipped sharply. It wasn’t a kiss—it was a plunge off a cliff. The first brush of his lips stole the air from the room. The second took my thoughts. By the third, I knew that nothing in my life would ever be the same.
His hand slid into my hair, angling my mouth to his, deepening the kiss. I clutched his shoulders, clinging to him because gravity didn’t feel reliable anymore.
His tongue brushed mine and my knees buckled.
This was the beginning of something I couldn’t undo. My chest felt too full, overflowing with heat. I grabbed his hair, clutching him closer, desperate to hold on to this fragile sweetness.
We stumbled toward the bed. One-handed, he ripped down my dress. It pooled around my ankles, and I tripped backward.
He caught me, lowering us onto the bed. A delicious shudder ran through my body as his hands glided up my thighs, tracing my smallclothes before he tore them off. Then he shoved two fingers inside me.
Every muscle locked as he fucked me slow, deep, his thumb pressing tight circles against my clit until my thighs trembled.
“Kairos, oh—”
His mouth ghosted along my jaw, down my throat. “I can’t think when you’re near me. I smell you, and I lose whatever’s left of my mind.”
I whimpered as he moved lower, kissing a path down my stomach. His mist stirred again, slithering up my inner thighs, flicking my slick pussy like a tongue.
I moaned, arching against the pressure. The mist pushed deeper, stroking as Kairos kissed his way up, his hands soft as they slid back to my breasts, squeezing. He sucked a kiss over my nipple.
I clawed at his shoulders, teetering on the edge.
The mist thrust harder, and heat slammed through me. No, not heat. Something that sang in my blood. His magic. His mist fucked me with a rougher pace, almost frenzied. It stretched me open, filling me, until I shattered for him with a sob.
My body seized, muscles locking as pleasure crashed through me. My vision went white and I couldn’t think. I was gone. Waves of toe-curling ecstasy tore me apart.
I sat up, shaking. Gods, I wanted to taste the hunger in his eyes. I reached for his trousers.
He growled a warning.
My fingers didn’t stop.
Kairos sat up so fast it made my breath catch. He grabbed my wrist. “If I fuck you how I want, I’ll bite you.”
“Then bite me.”
He tore the fastening at his waist loose and shoved his trousers down. He was massive. Heavy. Veined. Slick at the tip.
I wrapped my hand around his cock and stroked him. Slowly. My palm slid over the flushed head, down the thick shaft, then up. His cock twitched.
He tipped his head back, his jaw clenched as he panted, and I leaned forward, dragging my mouth over his collarbone, tasting his sweat.
“Say it again,” he gritted. “Say you want me.”
“I want you.”
He fisted my hair and yanked me into his lap. My knees slammed into the mattress on either side of his thighs, his cock hot against my stomach. His fist was still buried in my hair, guiding my face toward his.
His other hand gripped my ass, angling my pussy over his cock. Then he jerked down, stabbing into me. I cried out, digging into his shoulders as my body stretched to take him.
The stretch was brutal. Perfect. I was split wide, unraveling as I tried to fit him. My walls fluttered around him, clenching hard.
Mist spilled across the bed, licking up my spine, sliding along my hips, coiling my wrists like silver vines. It pulsed in rhythm with his heartbeat.
Lines of molten gold traced my skin, racing over my ribs. I could feel his magic flooding into me, into my blood, as he began to move.
Each thrust dragged a moan from me. I felt every inch of him. The thick slide, the pressure building, his hair-roughened chest, the slabs of muscle—he was perfect. The mist rose around us in glowing tendrils, weaving between our bodies.
Kairos tossed me on the bed, my back hitting the mattress. He plunged into me, grabbing my neck, and the world splintered. He filled me so deep, I couldn’t fucking breathe.
He pounded into me again, and again—gods, it was too much. The mist curled around us, playing with me. His magic swam in my veins like fire and honey, claiming me from the inside out.
His pace turned punishing. I whimpered, my body tightening as he nipped at my throat.
I clutched his shoulders. “Do it.”
He stilled, then sank his teeth in.
His magic slammed into me like a flood bursting free. I cried out as my orgasm surged—twisting, spiraling, burning me alive.
But it wasn’t just from his thrusting.
The mist thickened into a red hue. It slithered over my thighs, over my breasts, brushing my nipples like a tongue. I gasped as it stroked my clit, teasing the bundle of nerves Kairos had wrecked, and I screamed as the pleasure tipped over into unbearable.
I looked down at my arms.
My skin glowed. Red-gold threads throbbed under the surface, coiling from my shoulder to my fingertips, wrapping me, blooming across my stomach like fire-kissed vines. Each pulse synced to his thrusts.
I felt it touching places I didn’t know could feel. My nipples stiffened into points, as though invisible mouths were suckling them. I was being fucked in every way.
And I wanted more.
“Don’t stop,” I sobbed. “Please, don’t stop.”
The mist cinched tighter around us as the orgasm hit again. I shattered against him, crying out. My back arched and my fingernails dragged down his muscles, the rune on his chest flaring bright crimson, pulsing with his hips.
His rhythm broke as he went rigid, tendons straining in his neck. His eyes squeezed shut as he buried himself to the hilt and heat spilled into me in hot, staggering pulses.
His hands slammed down beside my head, fists knotting in the furs as a groan ripped out of him, then another, each more broken than the last.
Kairos folded over me, pressing his forehead to the curve of my neck. His frantic heartbeat pounded against my ribs and his breaths came in uneven bursts. I seized his hair, dragging him closer because I couldn’t hold myself together. I was shaking.
I’d been right. I’d known what would happen if I let him have me, and I’d done it anyway, and now I was exactly where I’d feared I’d be. Defenseless. So full of him there was no room left for walls.
Slowly, he lifted his head. Our eyes met, and something inside me cracked.
I love him.
That cracked through me like lightning. I loved him. I’d been so careful. I’d told myself I could have this without losing myself. That I could keep some part of me safe. I was a fool. He was the mist curling around me, the solid strength holding me, the pulse in my soul.
“Aelie,” he breathed.
A tear slid down my cheek.
He softened, pulling me against his chest. I clung to him, fingers digging into his skin. I pressed my face into his neck and breathed him in, trying to steady myself.
Don’t take this from me. Please.