Chapter 42
The faeling not only saved me—she brought us somewhere to sleep: a starless, black, secluded cave.
The smooth stone is cold beneath my bare feet.
My scabbard is heavy in my hand. Raker is a towering shadow behind me, following me for once.
Maybe he’s too tired to protest. He hasn’t said a word in an hour.
We walk down a tunnel until we reach a circular clearing with a waterfall trickling onto a slab of obsidian rock tilted slightly to the side, letting it drain somewhere below.
A few feet in front of it sits a bed.
Well, a makeshift one, anyway. The forest nymphs Este summoned managed to find dozens of thick, clean sheets, stacked together to make the most comfortable spot I’ve seen in a long while.
All I want is to bury myself in it, and sleep forever, and ask Raker how comfortable the cold stone floor is in the morning.
But first, I need to wash the remaining soot and ash away.
He says nothing as I head toward the waterfall in the dress they gave me. The nymphs’ fabrics are barely there at all, translucent when wet—I’ve seen them—but I’m so grateful for the rush of clean, cold water that I don’t care. It’s not like Raker will be looking, anyway.
I take my time. I carefully undo my braid.
I scrub the cinder from my hair and then my skin, until it’s smooth again.
I clean the blood off my sword. Then, after the evidence of the duel is gone, I sink to my knees.
Sit on my heels. Tilt my head up to the water and let it soak my every inch, drops like cold fingers threading through the roots of my hair, smoothing my rough edges, letting me forget, for just a moment, how much of my own blood was shed today.
How much more will be shed tomorrow. Tomorrow.
The day I finally face the gods. I sigh and release a fraction of the tension in my stress-coiled bones.
When I’m done, I turn to see Raker standing very still. Watching. In the same place he was ten minutes ago.
His expression is the same as it’s always been—closed off.
Heartless. Cold. But we’ve survived weeks across Starside together.
We’ve slayed creatures with claws like swords; we’ve made it out of castle rooms painted red with blood; we’ve survived demons that crawled into our minds.
As much as I hate it, and him, I know him.
I can see the slight tension in his shoulders.
The way the vein down his sword-wielding arm is taut. How his frown doesn’t reach his eyes.
Before, I would have thought he looked disgusted. Now I can see he almost looks pained.
Slowly, I rise. Water drips down the sheer fabric that might as well not even be there at all. He can see everything. Including the thin silver lines like roots down my neck, chest, and arms. Glowing faintly in the light.
And he’s not looking away this time.
“I’m likely going to die tomorrow,” I say, my voice coming out in a rough whisper.
He doesn’t correct me.
“There’s—there’s one thing I haven’t tried.” I can’t believe the words have left my mouth. The Aris from weeks before is screaming from the past, What are you doing? Don’t humiliate yourself.
But even though I knew from the start that this would kill me, being so close to all too imminent death makes me fearless. It makes me ask for exactly what I want, for the very first time in my life.
I don’t shrink under Raker’s gaze, not the way I have before. I don’t bend under his unrelenting scrutiny.
Because he seems to get my meaning immediately. His frown deepens. He’s trying hard to look irritated—of course he is. His pride and position and a million other reasons make admitting to wanting to spend a moment with me that isn’t for the good of the quest impossible.
“Are you truly so desperate?” he finally says, his voice harsh. But he’s said worse. So have I.
“Yes,” I reply.
His mouth was open, likely halfway to another barb, but my response shocks him into silence. It’s always been a duel with us, hurling words like throwing stars back and forth, clashing swords, leveling glares across rooms that end in spilled blood.
Tonight, I’ve laid down my sword. It’s still sitting beneath the falling water, its metal glimmering.
Still, he looks wary, like he’s expecting this is a ruse, a way to kill him while I can. A way to finally lay claim to his own glorious blade.
I slowly uncurl my fingers, until he’s staring at my palms. “Unarmed.” I turn all the way around, for good measure. There’s no concealing anything beneath these sheer, wet fabrics.
When I face him again, his hands are in fists, knuckles white, veins taut. He’s standing so still, I’m not sure he’s breathing.
Harlan Raker is a famed, merciless warrior—and right now, he looks every inch as deadly as his reputation. For even though I’m unarmed, he’s armed to the teeth.
I should be afraid. I should be ashamed of myself. I take a slow step toward him.
He doesn’t move a single inch.
I keep moving. When I reach him, I lift my chin, leaving any trace of emotion or anticipation out of my voice. “I hate you. This wouldn’t change anything.”
“Of course it wouldn’t,” he spits back at me.
Good.
He could leave, he could go to bed himself, he could do a thousand things, but here he is, looking at me, as if he’s waiting. As if he doesn’t think I’ll have the nerve to do something next.
I stare him down the same way I have every other time he’s challenged me. Instead of making for my sword, though, I move to unclasp my top, and his hand shoots out, grabbing my wrist. Stopping me.
At first, I think he’s going to snarl and reject my advances. Or order me to remain mostly clothed while he has me against a wall.
But then his hand drags down the wet fabric, and it’s the first time I’ve seen him truly lose control. Because he looks like he hates himself for touching me, but it also looks like he can’t stop.
His rough fingers slide down my breast, and I’m not breathing. His callused thumb rubs across my hardened nipple, and I pinch my lips together to keep from making any sound at all.
He doesn’t need to know how much I like this. He doesn’t need to feel how long I’ve wanted this.
Our encounter underground could be blamed on the fire demon. We were in the dark, with our eyes closed. This … this is different.
He removes his hand, and my body shivers at the loss of heat.
“We shouldn’t do this,” he says, and I think he’s going to leave me here, aching. Wanting. But then, in a flash, he reaches around and tears the buttons at my neck clean off. They bounce somewhere far away, clinking against stone. My dress slides down my body, onto the floor.
His eyes seem to go wholly black.
I shiver under his unrelenting gaze. It’s cold in here, and I’m wet, small droplets of water running down my heated skin, across the markings he can now see clear as day.
Since I got them, it’s been instinct to hide, to shrink away from notice, but I don’t move to cover myself.
I don’t do anything that would make him think of me as weak.
Because even if we’re really doing this, he’s still my enemy.
The way he’s looking at me, taking in every inch as if I exist for him alone to study, shouldn’t send a jolt of need right to the core of me, but I am beyond shame. I am beyond reason.
His knuckles get even whiter as he stares and stares, gaze locked onto my chest, heavy with need and peaked from the cold. My thighs clench together, and that’s where his eyes drop next.
This is purely physical. Raker hasn’t ever let anyone kiss him, so I’m not expecting anything tender.
I’m not surprised when he says in a dark voice that seems ripped from the seams of his self-control, “Get on your hands and knees.”
Fuck. We’re really doing this.
I swallow. He traces the movement with his eyes. He’s focusing far too closely on my neck. Carefully, very carefully, gaze never leaving his, I lower myself onto the sheets. I turn my back to him.
For a moment, I wait for the sound of his sword scraping out of his scabbard. I wait for him to betray me and slay me while I’m at my most vulnerable.
There is a sound of metal—
His armor. He’s taking it off, piece by piece.
“I said your hands and knees,” he says, his voice a dark and brutal command.
I bend over. Do as he says. I really am desperate, aren’t I?
Yes. Right now, yes. I’m desperate and aching.
These weeks have been about survival, but right now, before my almost-guaranteed death, I want this.
My back arches and a shiver licks down my spine.
I’m more exposed than I’ve ever been in my life.
I swear I hear a barely restrained growl behind me, but his voice is cold and cruel as ever as he says, “Look at you. Already gleaming and ready for me.”
I clench my jaw, staring straight ahead. The sheets rustle with movement. My skin prickles at his approaching heat. “No one has touched me in weeks. Don’t flatter yourself.”
“Weeks?” he says, suddenly stilling behind me. If I didn’t know better, I would say he sounds jealous.
“Weeks,” I reply.
His fingers dig roughly into the sides of my hips as he drags me back toward him. His hands are burning hot.
Then, without any words or warning, the full heat of him is against me.
And I’m glad he can’t see my face, because my eyes nearly roll into the back of my head at the contact. I can’t see him, but I can feel him, and his sheer size against me—
I should have known. Should have suspected. I felt it, that night at the ball. Though now, with him right against my entrance, the clear difference in size has me sweating.
I brace myself, waiting for a flash of pain. Wondering if there is any way to do this that doesn’t ruin me.
But it’s almost gentle, the way he pushes in. And in.
My every nerve seems to flicker on, and this time I do gasp at the fullness, at the stretch, as it becomes immediately too tight. I don’t expect him to stop, but he does. He does, until I can breathe through it.