Chapter 30
S in abandoned my sister down here, left her to succumb to a fading heartbeat while he quickened mine in my chambers.
“Why would you bring me here?”
“Its magic keeps the seer from listening to us.”
I spin to face him, magic swelling the veins in my forearms and wrists. “That’s not the only reason,” I say, much angrier now.
Sin takes a measured step forward, cocking his head to study me when he spits, “I brought you here to remind you just what I’m capable of, little witch. To remind you that I am not some villain with a tortured, bleeding heart.”
“Stop this!” My hiss fans the flames dancing on my fingers.
“Stop you from seeing the truth?” He runs his tongue across his top set of teeth, giving a quick, feral flick of his head. “The day I learned you were a bloodwitch, I came down here and found your sister hunched in that corner.” He points to the back left corner of the room where there is nothing but decaying stone and swatches of moss growing in the cracks.
“That was the same day I told her you’ve been with me the entire time, and that I knew what fangs her darling sister was hiding. I remember vividly how the color drained from her face, and I knew without a shadow of a doubt then that Cathal was telling the truth, that you really were a filthy bloodwitch .
“‘ Let her go. Please , Your Grace, ’ she begged me. She offered her life in exchange for yours, and when that didn’t persuade me, she offered eternal servitude in exchange for your freedom. And do you know what I said to her, little witch?”
My magic thrashes in my forearms, desperate to lodge the words deep in his throat. I pull on the phantom rope tethering my bloodwitch to me, reining her in tight to my core. “How dare you bring me down h?—”
“What did I say to her, Wren?” he repeats, his words the sharpest of steels, but he doesn’t give me time to respond. “I told her”—his tongue darts out to lick his bottom lip—“to save her precious breaths, because by the time I was done with you, there would be no fight left inside you to save, and whatever hope did manage to slip through, I’d fuck it right out of you.”
For a moment—a brief, pathetic moment—I allow his words to spear me between my bone cage. Just one moment—and then fury overcomes me.
I slap him across the face.
His head turns sideways, and a humorless laugh falls from his lips before he licks them and grabs my waist, spinning me around his body to force me to the wall. Sin leans into me, his hips arched against mine, and his head angled so his lips hover beneath my ear. He wanted this, I realize. He wanted my anger.
I close my eyes, each faltered breath that slips through my lips thickening the tension between us. “I thought about it, too,” he whispers, his mouth inching closer so his nose skims the curvature of my jaw. “I hated how much I thought about you. How I couldn’t stop watching you, perplexed by what you did when you thought no one was watching.
“I saw it all, love. And the night I took you to the bathhouse after training in the yard, I heard those little whimpers,” he murmurs, his breath a firestorm against my neck. “It took everything I had to not walk back in there, lay you over the edge, and ruin you. And the worst part, little witch,” he rasps, “is you would have let me. You would have spread your legs for me and begged me to fuck you.”
His hand slides up my chest, all the way to my neck, which he now collars. I swallow under his grip, and his lips part at the feel of my throat bobbing beneath him. “Because that’s what you are, isn’t it? My filthy little blood whore. Tell me, love, which makes your cunt wetter—my blood on your tongue, or my cock in your throat?”
I bare my teeth at him, prepared to demand he get the fuck off me, but the second my eyes lock with his, I know Sin has won this battle.
Because it all clicks. He wanted me to look this part of him in the eyes, the part of him that is dark and cruel and capable of hurting the ones he loves. Sin may not be the same person he was, but that past will always be a part of him. A phantom of war and malignance haunting our every forward step, desperate to keep us strangled in its hold and the hurts of our tangled history.
But the dead don’t command us.
And I’m not afraid of fucking ghosts.
I don’t know which one of us leaps for the other first, but our mouths collide in a battle of tongues and teeth. I open for him, moaning as he invades my mouth, his tongue entangling with mine as his hands slide down to my hips. His claws hook into my flesh there, not enough to hurt, but enough to keep me pinned, and a strangled whimper falls from my mouth into his.
Sin groans at the sound of it, but he pulls away, breaking our kiss. I chase his mouth with mine, but his low hiss gives me pause. “Listen to me,” he breathes, voice husky. “This is your last chance to walk away from me. To tell me that this… this furious fucking love I feel for you is wrong. That you don’t want me as badly as I need you. That my every thought being tainted with the need to Mark this fragile, little neck sickens you. That you loathe how I yearn to fuck my black-hearted babies into you. Tell me that, love, and I will let you go.
“Maybe I’ll even find salvation at the end, for letting you leave and be free from this obsession. But deny me that, that blissful ache in my chest of knowing I did the one thing I could to show you just how much I love you—to let you finally be free from me—and it will be you I ruin forever.” His lips are at my ear again, and his jaws grind when he orders in a voice as deep and raw as the traitorous slick between my thighs, “ Choose , witch.”
“Fuck you,” I bite out, my words smothered in venom. “Fuck you for bringing me down here, to prove that you are a godsdamned vile monster. Fuck you for what you did to my sister, to my family. Fuck you for every horrible, vicious thing you’ve ever done to me. And fuck you”—I suck in a gasp of air, just to let it stutter out of my chest a second later—“ fuck you , Singard, for making me fall so deeply in love with you. Our love is not kind or tender or sweet. Loving you is punishing ,” I choke out, “and being your wife will be arduous.” I steer my chin up so my lips graze his jaw, my eyes firmly locked on his. “But it will also be my greatest honor.”
Sin’s chest rises suddenly, as if his own heartbeat had stilled while he waited for my decision. Waited for me to look his cruelty in the eye and choose him anyway. He raises his hand to palm my cheek, and he glides one extended claw across my delicate, pink flesh. “Then I will first take you as my wife, swear my vows to you with honor and love. But when nightfall comes, I will hunt you, little witch.
“You will run. You will try to fight me off, because that is what tradition demands of you. And when I conquer you, when I pin you down and claim you, truly claim you, you will be mine, more than you ever have been. And you will learn just how punishing my love can be.”
Breath stutters in my lungs, my pulse a wild, little thing in my neck. “What does that mean? To truly claim me?”
Sin’s eyes darken as if the shadows at his core seep into them. “It means I will take you in the most primal way that I can. After our vows, I will be given a tonic crafted by one of Slaine’s Hands. When I drink it, love…”—he pauses, his eyes darting between both of mine to assess my reaction—“the beast will overcome me. Surely your sisters have told you about it.”
It takes me a moment to realize he is waiting for a response, my mind still trying to understand what he means by taking me in the most primal way that he can. “Zorina told me about the Hunt. That the female tries to get away, and if she manages to out hide, out run, or out fight the male, the Bond doesn’t snap into place.”
Sin nods. “The alpha mate cannot be bested by their partner. It doesn’t have to be a male and female pairing, it’s just the most common, but whatever the arrangement, one of them assumes the role of hunter and the other the hunted. Slaine determines if the Hunt is worthy, and if he does, he will bless us with our Bond.”
“How will we know if we’re Bonded or not?”
A soft chuckle. “I can’t say I’ve done it before, but Slaine willing, this fucking ache in my chest will finally lift. If only to be replaced by the overwhelming need to protect you. It will make me… aggressive, for a time,” he admits slowly.
“You—aggressive?” I ask with feigned shock. “Why, what an incomprehensible thing to imagine.”
One side of his mouth lifts, and my heart pounds painfully at the sight of it. “It will be similar to how your siblings likely acted around the Rut, but far worse, from what I’m told,” he explains. “Not a terrible thing, given these are times of war.”
“Wars are best fought with clear heads,” I disagree. “What did you mean by primal? That you would claim me in the most primal way you could?”
Sin’s smile fades, his jaw tightening. “Shifting does not always have to be a full body transformation,” he says.
“Like how your eyes change and your claws extend?” I ask. How your tongue becomes a barbed pleasure pad for my cunt .
He flicks his tongue across his top set of teeth. “Yes, but those aren’t the only parts of me that can become more… animal.”
Oh.
Oh!
I drop my eyes immediately, hating how warm my cheeks suddenly feel, knowing they are surely coloring before him. He can’t possibly mean …
“Does it frighten you?” he asks lowly, his hand moving to grip me around the waist.
“Should it?”
“You must have questions,” he prompts.
“Will it hurt?”
“There are… spines involved,” he begins. “They are sharp, and they will prevent you from escaping once I’ve conquered you. As human as shifters may appear at times, it is animal blood in our veins, and it is our base instinct to breed. The spines will rob you of your choice to leave once we begin.”
“ Breed ?” I echo his word, not at all processing everything else he just said.
A soft smile, and he runs a hand through my hair, his claws eliciting a pleasurable sting across my scalp. “As much as it would please me to see you swollen with my child, it is not the right time for it. The Hunt was designed for breeding, but it does not mean you cannot continue taking the tonic. Perhaps just sip a little extra the morning of.” He shoots me a smirk as sinful as his name.
His words send a wave of unease cresting through my belly that has nothing to do with the Hunt. It never occurred to me to ask before but… does Sin want children one day? It’s not something I’ve given much thought to in the past, my life never truly allowing me the freedom to entertain the idea of motherhood, but if we win this war… If we somehow pull through this, is that a life I want for myself?
Waddling through corridors with a rounded belly that carries the Black Art’s child. Sitting in a creaky wooden rocker with a newborn babe pressed to my breast, the wind howling and rustling the trees beyond our balcony. Sin and I passing a bundle of blankets back and forth while we shush their little cries and comfort the child that was birthed from our love?
“Talk to me, my heart,” Sin says, pulling me back to the present.
My eyes jerk back up to his. “Will it… will it fit ?” I half expect him to laugh, but his expression remains earnest, hearing the slight panic in my voice.
He takes my chin into his hand, guiding it up so I have no choice but to look at him. “I cannot promise I will retain enough control to force myself to be gentle, and I will not lie—it will be large , love. And”—his eyes drop to my lips—“my knot will hurt you.”
“Your what ?”
His eyes snap back to mine, a dark hunger now festering in them. “The spines won’t be pleasant, but they won’t hurt unless you try to flee. But my knot will lock inside you, love. Your tight, little flesh will stretch for me, and you’ll be reduced to nothing but a whimpering mess on my cock.” He leans down to skim his mouth across mine, his other hand moving lower to slip his fingers through the slit of my dress to grab my thigh. The Black Art groans against my mouth as my slick coats his fingertips. “It excites you,” he growls approvingly, “to think about me chasing you. Pinning you down and fucking this Bond into you.”
Sin tugs my drenched underwear to the side, and I jerk as his claws rake across my center. He doesn’t retract them, likely not by choice as I suspect he has little agency in controlling his beast right now, but he positions a broad knuckle at my entrance instead. “You don’t know how it’s tortured me, this fucking ache to knot you. Ever since we woke in that temple, it’s all I can think about, and your scent”—he closes his eyes, his nostrils flaring wide before opening them again—“has become my greatest gift and my eternal damnation, as if fate herself sent you to be my ruination.”
“She sounds like a bitch,” I murmur, my voice a pathetic, little whisper.
His tongue darts out to lick his bottom lip. “A fucking menace.”
Sin kisses me hard, and I kiss him harder. And when he presses his knuckle into me, I moan into his mouth, arching forward and grinding against his hand. I reach for the ties of his leathers, and his hands lock my wrists, my cunt abandoned. I whimper, and Sin grips my wrists to the point of pain, slamming them into the wall above my head. The warning in his feline stare is enough to keep my hands pinned there when he releases me to unfasten the buckles and clasps of his cuirass, the heavy leather falling to the ground.
I drink in the sight of his bare, sculpted chest, his broad shoulders, the defined cords of his forearms. My lips part, desperate to drag my tongue across the peaks and valleys of his abdomen, to run my fingers through that dark trail of hair that slips beneath the pants slung low on his hips.
“Do you trust me?” he asks.
I swallow. “You know that I do.”
His pupils, now vertical slits of melted black, watch me with predatory awareness. “Say starlight if you want me to stop.”
Desire crests through me at the reminder of what the dark mage compared my taste to that first night he touched me, when he sucked my glistening cream from his fingers on a star-lit balcony. I nod, and he growls. “What are you going to say if you want me to stop, little witch?”
“Starlight,” I choke out.
Sin leans down and grabs the end of the thick chain from where it dangles from its spool, swearing under his breath as the iron singes his hand. He yanks on the length, forcing the crank on the opposite wall to release more. He’s going to bind my wrists tog ? —
I cry out when he presses the iron just beneath my breasts, wrapping it tightly around me to lock one manacle around the chain at my back. The metal bites into my flesh, and I grab it to tug it away from my chest, but the motion only presses my spine further into the chain behind me. The iron is fire in my flesh, and a glance down the deep neckline of my dress shows my skin instantly purpling everywhere it singes my skin with its spectral flame.
“What are you doing?” I seethe through clenched teeth.
He leans forward, and I retreat instinctively. A mistake, the chain searing my flesh along my spine, forcing me to reverse my step back.
“You’ve been lying to me, Wren,” he says. “Sneaking around to scheme behind my back. Making incredibly”—his nose skims the corner of my mouth—“ stupid decisions. Did you ever consider what would happen if I found you in his bedchamber? Do you know how much it took everything I had to not rip his fucking heart from his chest when I saw him hurting you?”
His tongue darts out to lick his bottom lip, and he inhales deeply, inciting a deep growl to rumble in his chest. “You do, don’t you,” he says softly. “I can smell how aroused that makes you. Always biting at me to leash my temper, to not be so cruel, but it’s all a lie, isn’t it?”
“You are cruel,” I whisper against his mouth, torn between wanting to lean forward and bite him, or to demand he fuck every last bit of his cruelty into me.
“And it fucking gets you off,” he purrs. “My filthy, little blood whore… so wet for me when wearing the same iron I bound your sister in. I had these chains wrapped around her fucking throat , Wren, and now you’re going to make such a mess for me in them.”
He gives me his back, moving to the spool of chain.
“Sin—stop!” I call out a second before he cranks the handle, realizing just how he intends to punish me.
Not punish. Test .
Sin brought me here to confront his darkest betrayal. To give me one final chance to escape him and this vicious love between us, and I refused it.
And now he’s testing that decision, ensuring I won’t regret it, and that the depth and pain of his betrayal won’t one day overshadow my love and forgiveness.
The room fills with the grinding of chain, and the iron presses impossibly tighter against my ribs, my breasts slipping out of the low scoop of my dress and spilling over the metal band. Another turn of the handle, and my feet leave the ground as I’m hoisted into the air. Each crank lifting me higher. He stops when I’m halfway up the wall and moves to stand in front of me.
His bestial gaze takes in every inch of me, trailing down the lines of my neck, lingering on my breasts that have been forced to spill over the chain, the curves of my hips, the prominent arches of my feet… There is no denying it.
The Black Art’s beast is starved .
Sin sinks to his knees before me. Grabbing the backs of my thighs, he lifts my legs, forcing them to bend at the knee to rest on his shoulders. My dress hikes to bunch around my waist, and he hooks a claw into my underwear, shredding them with a single tug.
“Lean back to arch your hips for me, and the pressure against your chest will lighten. Pull away from me, and the chain gets tighter.”
He presses his mouth to me, and I gasp, leaning back instinctively which forces my hips to lurch forward. Forces my cunt to grind against his face. Lean back and the pressure against your chest will lighten. The sudden lapse of fire in my skin gives clarity to his words.
Without my feet on the ground for balance, my weight forces me forward, right into the fucking iron. With my thighs supported on his shoulders, it allows the chains to slacken when I lean back, creating a hair breadth of distance between the metal and my skin.
To keep myself from burning, I need to hump his face.
I lean forward, wincing as the chain digs into my ribs. “This is depraved.”
Sin glances up from his feast, and holding my stare, dips his now pointed, feline tongue into my entrance.
“ Fuck ,” I moan, my head falling back, and my body following without my consent. The chain slackens once more, offering a moment of reprieve to remember what he had said before.
Starlight .
One word, and this sick, twisted game will end. This perverted test of my loyalty. Sin’s barbed tongue dives through my pussy, coaxing pathetic whimpers from me as I gush into his mouth.
Wrong. This is so wrong.
“Stop,” I pant. “Sin—please.”
He growls, pulling away just enough to replace his mouth with his fingers, claws now retracted. “You have no idea how hard it makes me to taste the betrayal in your cunt.” He pushes two fingers inside me and flicks them side-to-side, filling the cell with a wet slap, slap, slap . And I can’t help it. I pump my hips against his hand, my pussy soaking the fingers of my sister’s captor.
Shame bleeds into my veins, and I want to say it. So badly I want to utter the word that will make him stop, to release me from this wicked game.
He moves his thumb to circle my clit, the pressure just enough to keep me right on the edge, to keep me desperate . He rubs faster, giving little flicks and pinches to my clit, and my thighs shake fiercely around him, the pressure mounting.
“Look at you making such a mess for me. You’re going to come so fucking good for me, aren’t you? Say it. Look at me, little witch,” he barks, angrier now.
I force my eyes open and will myself to lean forward just enough to peer down at him, my gaze immediately swept up in the tempest that is his.
“Tell me how you’re going to come for the man that broke you. How wet it makes you to be bound in the same chains I once wrapped around your sister’s breakable, little neck. How you are aching to come against my mouth.”
Goddess, fetch him.
He gives another pinch, nearly making me lose the last fraying strand of resolve I have left. “Fuck you, Singard,” I hiss. “For making me need you. For making me this unrecognizable to myself, this desperate for…” His touch slows, but his pressure deepens, and I trail off in a stuttered moan, unable to suppress it. He groans at the sound of it. “Desperate for how you show your love in the most hateful of ways. Now shut up and”—I cry out as he works my cunt in slow, steady strokes—“and show me how much you fucking hate this love.”
A wolfish grin curves his lips a second before he flattens them to my pussy once more. He licks me roughly, his shifted tongue like sandpaper, offering pain with his pleasure as he glides through my heat, lapping my slick while masculine groans boom in his chest.
I whimper as he slips a finger back into me, curving it to stroke that spot, and…
“Fuck, you’re going to make me soak my own pants if you keep moaning like that, Wren. So fucking beautiful. Come for me, heart. Come against my mouth and drip your hate down my throat.”
A heat that rivals the iron against my ribs detonates inside me, and I do as I was ordered to and make a mess on the Black Art’s face. Sin makes a throaty sound of approval and licks me in slow, deep pressured strokes, his tongue replacing his finger to lap up every drop of my glistening cum. “You taste so good when you’re pissed at me. Doesn’t exactly motivate me to stay on your good side.”
I slowly right my head to glare down at him, the earth-shattering orgasm not making me forget how fucked up all of this is. “How fortunate for you then, given you have a habit of pissing me off.”
Sin unlocks my thighs from around his neck and rises to his full height. “Do not mistake my need to claim you to mean I am not also angry with you.”
I exhale sharply. “I said I was sorry for not telling you about Torin.”
“Fuck Torin,” he growls. “While I dislike you scheming behind my back, I can at least find comfort in knowing your mind is keen, and your wits are sharp. What I cannot tolerate”—he leans over me, grabbing my jaw roughly and forcing me to look up at him—“is you walking into another male’s bedchamber alone. Never let me find you in a male’s bed again, lest you wish for their blood to be on your hands.” He releases me, leaning over to jerk on the crank.
I crash to the ground in a clank of metal and yelp as the chains tangle around me, singing my skin everywhere it touches me. Sin reaches around me and unclasps the manacle, letting the iron fall to the floor in a metallic heap before he kicks the chains to one dark corner.
“Do you understand me?” he whispers.
I swallow, and his eyes drop to the bob of my throat. “Yes.”
He makes a sound of approval. “That’s right, little witch. Now be a good girl and take my cock out.”
My gaze drops to the bulge in his pants, and my throat dries at the sight of the strained leather, the outline of his length prominent. I lick my lips and reach for the ties of his pants, pulling them apart.
His pants fall to his muscular thighs, and I take him out, slowly running my hand down the deep amethyst veins of his shaft to the bulbous head of his cock, already heavily slick with seed.
A primal growl rumbles in Sin’s chest as I begin to pump. Up and down , up and down , causing more pre-cum to leak from the slit of his crown. He’s so fucking hard, pulsing in my hand as I stroke him faster, smearing his cum up the length of his cock.
I startle when he suddenly reaches forth and grabs my jaws, his thumb and forefinger forcing my lips to pout. His other hand fists his dick, and he presses the tip to my puckered lips. “Show me what else this mouth is good for, besides pissing me off all the fucking time.”
He shoves himself inside of me, and I open for him immediately.
Sin ruts into my mouth violently. One hand twists into my hair, his claws prickling my scalp while he leans back and thrusts himself between my lips. The room fills with a cacophony of slurps and mouth-fucking noises, and I gag around him as he suddenly arches his hips forward, driving his cock to the back of my throat.
With a low hiss, Sin pulls out of me, yanks me to my feet, and spins me to face the wall. He grabs my hips then, tugging me backwards to bare my ass and cunt to him.
The Black Art thrusts into me with a deep, masculine moan. The sound of his pleasure sinks into me, somehow making me wetter as if I wasn’t already drenched. He fucks me with as much mercy as I deserve, his thick cock gliding in and out of me with the sounds of our mixing cream echoing in the cell.
“Fuck, Singard,” I half moan, half cry his name.
He collars my throat, then slowly slides that hand up to grab my jaws again. “That’s right, say my name, love. Tell me I’m the only one that fucks you.”
He tears into me, thrust after thrust, my muscles forced to stretch for him. “You’re the only one that fucks me, Singard,” I whimper.
He growls, the sound a deep, primal thing. “This will be the last time I fuck you as a maiden. The next time you writhe on my cock, it will be as my wife.”
He hooks two fingers behind my molars, jerking my head back as he pumps his hips in a deep and desperate rhythm, each of us chasing release. “Fuck, you’re gripping me so tight,” he spits. “Come now, give me one more, love. Make a mess on my fucking dick.”
A second orgasm rips through me, shredding my nerves in a release almost painful with how it tears through me with an all-consuming pleasure. The Black Art follows me over the edge, roaring as his cock pulses and spits inside of me, flooding me with his seed. He unhooks his fingers from my teeth and wraps both hands around my waist, pulling my back to his chest and pressing his lips to my ear.
“I love you,” he whispers. Gone is the anger in his voice, replaced with nothing but tenderness and… relief .
A knot twists in my stomach as I consider how Sin brought me down here to test my absolution, and how he may have feared tonight was our last. That when we reemerged from this cell, it would be as enemies once more.
That’s the irony in love, I suppose. Sometimes it’s the parts we loathe the most that end up being the parts we cannot live without. Sin and my story is not without its tribulations, but sometimes there is no better kindling for passion than a hate that burns just as bright.
“I love you, too,” I say. “But the next time I say that, it better be as your wife.”