31. Ezra
Ezra
Kissing Eshe, after not touching a woman for six years, unleashed a man within me that I could not recognize.
I reeled him into the back of my mind and kept him in chains. No more. That taste was the most addictive, heart-gutting, soul-destructive taste I’d ever known. I feared I might never come back alive. I couldn’t remember my own name when I breathed her in, when I pressed her body against mine.
A hard, throbbing ache writhed in my chest as I carried Eshe back through the waters.
Her weight was nothing compared to the weight of my sins.
The betrayal of my men as a leader. I was distracted, exactly why the law was there, to set us apart and prevent us from falling into the temptations of man.
Eshe was quiet and tense in my arms. She pulled back as soon as I did.
As soon as I felt the sand beneath my feet, Eshe let go.
A disturbing chill replaced the warmth in her body.
Something felt wrong about the way she was no longer in my arms. My brows lowered as I watched her in her thin, soaking linen dress, marking every curve of her body as she walked up the shore.
Within a few minutes, it would dry. Within a few minutes, I would try to forget this had ever happened.
She didn’t look back as she walked away with tense shoulders. Even though I was walking up slowly, I could tell her face had turned from rose-flushed to a ghostly pale with foreign eyes that had gone distant. Empty. Cold. Back to where I recognized her the first day I saw her again.
She looked like the old Eshe. The one who hated me with every fiber of her being.
Not this new Eshe, whom I couldn’t seem to keep my fucking hands off of. She was soft and pliable under my hands and moved the way I wanted her to. She made me feel something I’d never felt before with any other woman.
That was fucking scary.
I knew this must be because I hadn’t touched a woman like that in six years. I wouldn’t feel this way if I hadn’t repressed myself for so long.
“Eshe,” Norrah drawled, standing up from the boulder she had been mingling with Casimir and Yven and approached us.
Eshe stopped in her tracks and scowled. “What?”
I could practically hear her heart race from where I walked behind her.
Norrah reached forward with her fingers but let them drop. “Your neck.”
She had a horrified expression on her face. Her eyes flickered to me, knowing who had done the damage.
“Oh.” Eshe flushed and placed a hand over the mark I gave her the night before. For some reason, that pissed me the fuck off. “It’s—it’s nothing.”
The fuck it was nothing.
I reached the small party just before Casimir gave me a glare. “What the fuck, Ezra?”
Stepping toward Eshe, my brother put a hand on my chest, stopping me. I was about to ram a fist so hard into his nose—
“Before you do anything you’ll regret, why don’t you take a step back?”
I took a deep breath and released it. Then I walked the other way, needing to get my head straight, anyway. I couldn’t trust myself.
“What do you want?” I snapped at Casimir once we were far enough from lingering Yven.
Eshe and Norrah had walked back inside. I was already feeling a pull.
What the fuck was wrong with me?
“What’s going on? You brought Eshe here, and I know you wanted to keep her far from Kavid.
Since when have you taken foreign matters upon yourself?
She isn’t your problem? And you forced her to be betrothed to me again?
You can’t stand her and vice versa. And since when are you marking her as yours?
” Casimir demanded answers and placed his hands on his hips as if he were my father.
“She has always been my problem. That goddamn woman!” I growled. “I didn’t want you to be betrothed to her. I never said who she was betrothed to. Kavid insinuated you—it doesn’t matter. I just wanted her out of his reach.”
“Look, I remember what it was like when she disappeared. You were a wreck. You couldn’t control yourself—”
“And I thought you liked me better back then—”
“I did.”
“What’s your point?”
“I wouldn’t be marking a woman like that if I wasn’t planning on making her my wife, Ezra. That sends a message.”
“To whom?” I waved my hand around since we were in the middle of fucking nowhere.
“It sends a message to Eshe!” Casimir raised his voice.
I dropped my body to the sands, sitting with my head between my knees.
He shook his head and looked at me as if I were a child who was caught playing with dangerous swords.
“What?”
Casimir rolled his eyes in disbelief. “Of course you don’t give a shit.”
I grunted.
“How could you be so blind? How are you so observant and in control of everything else in your life except for matters pertaining to yourself?”
Shrugging, I scooped up a handful of dry sand and let it seep through my fingers. Because being around her made me unable to see things clearly or think clearly.
Perhaps in doing so, I had hurt Eshe. I squeezed the next handful of sand.
“Listen, Ezra. Whatever this is that is holding you back is keeping you captive. I know you keep your life private from everyone, even me, but I can see you’re being controlled by something that doesn’t seem to benefit you anymore.
It helped you at one point—to get you out of a dark, mental place after what happened in Zyriah.
” When I found the Atrove. “I’m proud of you, brother, but this—this is making you weak, and you don’t even realize it.
Eshe… I see the life back in your eyes when you’re with her. ”
I laughed, but mostly to myself.
“And that makes you stronger,” he continued.
“Are you done?”
“Leave her alone if you don’t plan on changing.” His words were clipped.
Before I could stop myself, I jumped up and landed a fist on his jaw. Casimir scrambled from the sands and rammed his shoulder into my core. We both toppled over in the sand, landing fists and elbows into our bodies.
I held myself back because, unfortunately, I had a heart, and I loved my brother. If it were anyone else talking to me that way, they’d be six feet in the sands.
“Let go and you’ll have more control,” Casimir grunted after I landed another blow to his cheek.
Let go of the Atrovian law, finally possess Eshe as mine, and I’d be more in control?
“That literally makes no sense!” His elbow connected to my bad rib. Fuck.
I spat blood out of my mouth and got up. Casimir backed up and shook his head. Guess I wasn’t the only one being disappointed in me today.
Casimir didn’t look so pretty anymore—his lip was busted, and a cut ran across his cheek.
“Lunch is ready, your highnesses,” a servant from behind us said with a tremble in his voice.
Casimir came to my side, and we both hung on to each other, following the servant back to the steps.
I was angry that my brother made a valid point.
The Atrove was weakening me instead of strengthening me.
Something in my life that used to be my rock, a way of living, was becoming like sand. I was now unstable, unpredictable.
The cool air from within whisked through the threshold door as our bare feet hit the marbled floor. We crossed the main hall and opened one of the glass doors. Lunch was being held outside near a small fountain, under the shade of several palms.
Norrah and Eshe were already eating when we approached.
The three conversed through the meal while I remained quiet, lost in my thoughts.
All I wanted to do was to touch her, hold her, and ask for her forgiveness. But that wouldn’t change anything. She most likely wanted nothing to do with me, and it was better that way. If she really wanted me… I wasn’t so sure I could keep resisting her.
One thing was for sure, and that was I needed to tell her everything.
She was going to hate me more after it.
But I cared more about her than I did about myself and my selfish desires.
A gasp from Norrah caught my attention as she showed Casimir something she found in the sands. A small metal bowl and what looked like a hardened mini scroll.
“So, you see, you hit the bowl with this, and it makes a”—the bowl rang with a beautiful note—“isn’t that just incredible?”
“That’s remarkable. I can really feel the vibrations inside my body. Wild,” Casimir said. “Here, let me.”
He grabbed the little metal bowl and hit the side.
I jumped, my ears ringing, and I realized I wasn’t the only one when Eshe went over to the fountain a few feet away from us.
While Norrah and Casimir were playing with her bowl, I decided this was as good a time as any to talk to Eshe. I approached her as if she were a wild horse on the loose, and had to be careful not to spook her.
I sat near her, leaving some distance between us, and I could feel her body tense up.
A sensation of disappointment coursed through my body, knowing I was the reason she wasn’t comfortable.
“Listen,” I leaned over to my right toward her, the fountain splashing softly behind us.
Her eyes darted over to mine, and she raised a brow.
“I was pissed off earlier, and I apologize if I made you feel uncomfortable.”
Her cheeks flushed pink at my words, but she didn’t look away. “Thank you.”
I swallowed dryly. Maybe I should apologize more often if she continued looking at me like this.
“Why were you?” she drawled.
She was asking why I stopped the way I did. I stared at the marble floor. “You know why.”
I then watched her appear distant and asked, “Do you think your brother killed your family?”
Eshe’s spine straightened, and her face paled. “I… I don’t know. The thought has crossed my mind over the last couple of days. But…”
“Why would he?”
“Right… I can’t understand why he’d want to kill me, either. None of it makes sense. And he was so happy to see me, so that must mean something.”
I nodded and took a deep breath, flipping my wooden pendant over my hand. “I heard your mother might have had some affair. It was a rumor. That your brother might not be your full-blooded brother.”
“What?” she asked slowly, blanching further. “That’s impossible. My mother was loyal.”