Chapter 27
Sky
I flopped back onto Moerrven’s thigh and smiled. “With Aeldryc and Pip riding back to the palace to report, it’s just like old times. You, me, a wagon, and a cat.”
Moerrven frowned down at me. “Wrong horse, though. I prefer Clover.”
“Yes, but Clover is headed home with your sisters, because she would not enjoy a sea passage. And this hired horse is kind of cool.” This was a lie. The hired horse was an asshole, and I missed Clover, too.
We had several days of this ahead of us, the slow road to the port at Reach.
Pip and Aeldryc would ride to the palace, report to the Queen, and still reach the coast before we did, because Aeldryc had no patience for troll pace and the two of them made this kind of journey in half the time.
I couldn’t bring myself to be sorry about it.
After weeks of rescues and royals and other people, I had Moerrven all to myself again, and I intended to be disgustingly cozy about every minute of it.
We rounded a bend, and a town came into view, and I sat up, grinning at Moerrven. “You know what tonight is.”
“Only if the inn in The Hollows has a lock on the door and a good bed.”
“Yeah, not like the bed you broke in Norloch.”
His cheeks went bright blue, and I giggled as I remembered him trying to explain THAT to the innkeeper as he forked over an apologetic pile of coins.
I moved to my knees on the bench beside him, and kissed his cheek, then nipped his ear. “Tonight is your punishment,” I whispered. “The one you asked for. To make you mine, once and for all.”
He was fully blushing as he pulled up in front of the inn, and didn’t stop as he stabled the hired horse, talked to the innkeeper, and secured our room.
I washed up first, quickly rinsing off the road dust and prepping myself, wanting to do everything right.
While he was in the bathroom taking his turn, I laid out my full array of torture implements, minus one cord that he’d ruined the night he’d ruined that bed, plus a length of good rope liberated from Moerrven’s abandoned climbing kit.
“You’ve been thinking about this,” he said, eyeing the bed as he walked out, nude, toweling his hair.
“Extensively,” I said. “You gonna put this in your new book? I know how dirty your mind is.” The blue came up his throat like a sunrise, which was answer enough.
I walked over, and kissed him. “You ready for your punishment?”
He swallowed, hard enough that I could see his throat move. “I did ask for it.”
“There are consequences, Moerrven. There’s a whole system which those who are fully owned must obey. Would you like to be owned, sweetheart?”
“Oh yes,” he breathed, going even bluer. “Really. A lot.”
“I have a gift for you,” I said, reaching for a parcel.
He glanced to the side, suddenly shy. “I have something for you, too. I’ve been carrying it for a few days.” He pulled a small item, wrapped in rough paper, from the pocket of his jacket where it hung by the door.
“I do love surprises,” I said, taking his hand and guiding him to sit on the bed.
We sat cross-legged on the bed, facing each other, and he turned his package nervously in his hand. “Can I go first? I’ve been really excited to give you this.”
“Sure, why not.”
He bit his lip and set the package in my hand, closely watching my reaction.
I unwrapped the package and tilted my head as I looked down at the charm in my hand.
It was small: a piece of dark, polished horn, banded in bright silver, new from the maker’s hand, warm, warmer than any pocket could account for.
I turned it over in my fingers, feeling a strange rush that I realized after a beat was magic.
“It’s beautiful, but what is it?”
He swallowed. “Trolls have a ritual called a horn-binding, something deeper than a wedding, more connected, where trolls choose to accept the trolgar bond. It’s rare these days because of the intensity of the bond it creates.”
“The thing Bryndala didn’t want.”
“Yes. But the ritual requires both individuals to have horns.”
“I see.” My heart did a strange little skip as I turned the pendant over in my fingers.
“The thing is, I’ve felt you for weeks, your fear, your joy, that bright ridiculous engine you run on, and during sex. I mean, it’s just incredible. But something has been missing.”
“Missing?”
“For you, I mean. Since you aren’t able to feel it the way I am.
So I asked Thessaly if there was something we could do.
This pendant is part of me, a slice of my horn, and she has found a way to use her magic to open the door both ways.
Only while it’s touching your skin. If you choose to wear it.
But I want you to be able to feel the true nature of my love for you, my devotion.
With this, I cannot tell any more lies, or obscure the truth. ”
I smiled a little, turning the horn over in my hand. “Did it hurt, to remove the horn tip?” I looked up at him, and saw it now, the cut mark on his horn.
“No, it’s like cutting hair, or a fingernail,” he said, chuckling. “There are no nerves. Some trolls file their horns into points. And Thessaly needed an organic object, so…”
“You gave me a piece of you.” I met his eyes, and he smiled and nodded. I felt pressure behind my eyes, and blinked back tears, throwing myself into his arms. “It’s beautiful, baby. I love you so much. How does the ritual work?”
“It’s simple,” he said. “Skin to skin, bone to bone, pledging ourselves to each other forevermore.”
I settled back to face him, and he reached out and touched my hand, and all at once I felt him, his nerves, his warmth and love.
“Oh,” I whispered. “That’s… Is it just when you touch me?”
“As the bond forms and seals, it becomes more. Your mind will reach for me when I’m not around, and if you’re wearing the pendant, it’ll find me. That’s how I knew you were alive with the dragon. Even without it, I could still find you. With this, you’ll be able to find me too.”
I crawled into his lap and wrapped myself around him, clutching the pendant in my hand, kissing him slow and tender, letting myself feel everything he felt when we kissed.
I reached up and brushed a thumb over his trolgar point, and sensation exploded in my mind, as if he was alive inside me, and me inside him.
“Holy shit.”
He smiled as I pulled back. “So you like it? Do you want to put it on?”
“I fucking love it. Love you. Thank you. It’s the most precious thing anyone has ever given me.
But open yours first. We can put them on together.
” I reached for the package. “Mine, I suppose, is a bit of a ritual thing, too. In BDSM, in the kink community, when a submissive truly becomes the property of a dom, we use this to mark them.”
I laid it in his hand, no longer nervous about offering him a collar, because I could feel his rush of excitement as he turned the package over, enjoying its weight. He opened it carefully, gasping softly as he saw what I’d picked, a sturdy chain with a lock that clasped it closed.
“I didn’t want it to be anything that put your kinks too much on display, because I know that’s not you. This is meant to be worn under your shirt collar, where you can feel it, feel my ownership at all times.”
He turned the chain over in his fingers, his cheeks going blue once again. “So if I wear this, I am agreeing to be yours? What’s the second chain?”
I picked up the slimmer chain, and showed it to him. “I wear the key.” I slipped the horn pendant onto the chain with the key, and held it up. “Perfect together, yeah?”
“Yeah,” he said, blushing as I clasped it around my neck.
I reached for his collar. “May I?” He nodded, and I looped it around his neck, reaching out and touching the lock, giving it a little tug.
“I promise to take care of you. To always be open to new ideas, and to meet every single one of your kinky needs,” I whispered.
“I’m so fucking hard right now,” he whispered, and I laughed, hugging him tight.
“You should know that a horn-binding doesn’t only join the trolgar.
It joins the life-well, gives you the strength of my magic.
The lifespan of a troll.” His gray eyes were wet and fierce and terrified.
“I have a few centuries left in me, give or take. Trolls run long. And if we initiate this bond, we’ll go the whole distance together, and out the far end of it together, hopefully, and I would not have to—” He stopped and pressed his mouth shut, and for once, I felt the swirling, complex emotions inside him, the thing I suspected was there, grief and hope and love all wrapped up in a mess.
“Moerrven,” I whispered, wiping away a tear as it tracked down his cheek.
“After I buried Bryndala, I told myself I’d never fall in love again. And I was so damn wrong. I’d rather risk everything for a chance at three hundred years with you and the grief at the end of it than a safe and tidy forever without. The joy is worth the risk. You are worth the risk.”
The whole room had gone underwater. “We’re doing this,” I said. It came out cracked down the middle. “Obviously.”
He kissed me. Or I kissed him. I tasted both of our tears as we pressed close, bodies molding together, my legs wrapping around his waist, and as more of our skin touched, the way I could feel him intensified, and I reached up and held his horns at the trolgar point.
Sensation came in like a tide coming over your feet, warm, shocking, and total.
It was Moerrven: the inside of him, handed to me raw for the first time.
The great roaring tenderness he kept behind the grumbling, the size of it, the way it had my name written through it.
The fear was there, yes, and the old grief.
But under all of it, holding all of it up, was an ocean of love so deep and so settled, so utterly without bottom, that I sobbed into his mouth.
“I’m going to feel this when you’re inside me, and when I’m inside you.”
“Yes. The way I feel when you grab my horns and fuck my mouth.”
“Oh, we are absolutely still doing the punishment.”