Chapter Sixteen #2
Stefan’s bruising kiss cut me off before I could invent broad shoulders and beautiful eyes for the mage—luckily for my dedication to honesty.
He’d been handsome enough but hardly overwhelming.
Not like Stefan, who had me melting into the floor, whimpering into his kiss, that morning’s possession of my body echoing inside me as he ground his hard cock against mine through too many layers of clothing.
Far too many, and if I concentrated, perhaps they’d vanish—
“What the fuck?” Stefan demanded, pushing up to his knees and rubbing at the front of his breeches. “That was very strange.”
Oh, no. “What was?”
He glanced back up at me. “My breeches were blazing hot suddenly. As if they almost burst into flame.”
“Surely that’s impossible,” I stammered. “You must be imagining things.”
“Or you are,” he said slowly. “Imagining things. With a mage’s imagination that can become real if there’s some force behind it. I’ve spent enough time with Benedict to know that can happen. Remi?”
I squirmed under that knowing gaze. “Yes?”
“Remi, do you want to set me on fire? Or do you want my pants out of the way? If it’s the first, then I’ll help you up off the floor and keep a wary distance. If it’s the second, then I’ll simply take them off. All you have to do is ask.”
Keep a wary distance from me.
Because now I had power, didn’t I? I did.
Power of my own, that I could control and use.
In all my years of thinking about what being a dawn mage could mean, I’d always framed it as a choice between using my potions to prevent another man from controlling me, or submitting to someone else’s control and having no power at all.
The possibility of there being a third way had seemed infinitely hazy and out of reach.
A husband I loved and trusted would be the third way.
And that had been impossible while I’d been confined to an abbey and forbidden to return to the mainland where I could conceivably build a normal life—or as normal as someone like me could have, anyway.
Even without love, it seemed there could be some degree of trust. Something like…Stefan. The man I’d been forced to marry.
The man who’d been at best manipulated into marrying me.
I couldn’t, I simply couldn’t, and the throbbing in my skull had ratcheted up to a dull roar in my ears, Stefan blurring in my vision. I pressed my hands over my eyes. It didn’t help.
“Remi? What’s happening?” His hands were on my shoulders, not restraining me but tugging, as if he wanted to move my hands from my face. “Remi!”
“Let me go,” I choked out, barely able to hear myself over the pounding of my heart.
His hands went away, and then the warmth of his body as he got up and off of me. I rolled to the side, scrambled to all fours, and staggered to my feet, chilled to the bone.
Out. I needed to get out of here, somewhere Stefan wouldn’t be watching me in horror as I lost my mind. I lurched my way to the door.
“Are you—obviously you’re not all right. Fuck. What can I do?” His voice had drawn closer.
I couldn’t look at him. I simply couldn’t. I stared down at my hand on the door.
“I’m fine. I need—I’m fine. You can’t do anything. Please don’t follow me.”
The doorknob slipped in my sweaty palm, but I wrenched it open and fled, out onto the landing and up the stairs, tears gathering in the corners of my eyes.
He called my name, but he didn’t follow me, thank the gods, and I ran all the way to my own room and shut myself inside, turning the key in the lock and then sliding down to the floor, back to the wall, burying my face in my knees.
I stayed there for a long time, simply trying to catch my breath.
The house lay in almost complete silence.
What would Stefan be doing now? Brooding in his study?
Going out to find someone to relieve his unsatisfied arousal?
I’d hardly even blame him if he did. After all, the consort he hadn’t wanted in the first place had kissed him, tried to seduce him, nearly lit his breeches on fire with him in them, and then gone mad and run away.
The worst part of it might be that I hadn’t wanted to marry him in the first place, either…but I could easily imagine another set of circumstances in which I’d have chosen him.
In another world. Another life.
No, the very worst part had to be my certainty that he still wouldn’t have chosen me in that other life.
My magic, a supposed gift from Dromos, had never felt like one. A curse, a burden, the reason for my separation from my mother and my sister. For one shining moment today—literally, when that beautiful summoned globe of light had gleamed in my hand—it’d seemed like a true gift at last.
But it’d come at too high a cost. The desires surging through me had to be suppressed. Before, I’d hated my magic and its curse for depriving me of that far more common gift most of humanity took for granted: the ability to give pleasure to another person, and to receive it.
And now I knew the bitter truth. Desire was its own kind of curse.
Pleasure didn’t give happiness. Taking Stefan into my bed hadn’t put me at his mercy because he could refuse to soothe my curse and allow me the use of my magic; it had put me at his mercy because of how much I wanted him, and only him, to do the soothing, while he’d be equally pleased with my body or that of a whore.
How the Lord Chancellor would laugh.
I couldn’t let this consume me, and if I waited any longer, allowed myself any further indulgences, I’d never stop voluntarily.
My potion would end this. Both of my gifts, washed away. And then perhaps I’d be myself again—the self I’d gotten used to. The one with control.
I pushed up off the floor and went to my dressing table, where the potions had been put away in one of the cabinets below. Bracing myself for the vile taste, I lifted one of the bottles to my lips, closed my eyes, and swigged deeply.
And then the bottle fell from my hand and crashed to the floor, spattering the potion everywhere, as I ran for the bathroom. I made it barely in time to vomit up every drop of the potion and half a decanter of wine.
For the third time that day, I collapsed to the floor, this time panting and wiping my chin with my sleeve.
Oh, gods. What now?