Chapter 21
Evie
At the baths, Naila had spoken of Kael’s love for the hunt. Despite not being a wood elf, he had learned to move like one, to climb trees as if born to them, to glide through the forest silent like an owl searching for prey.
Somehow, being alone with her made me feel closer to him. I was learning his story, his roots, the parts of him he kept silent at the Court.
Then she said something that stole the breath from my chest.
“With you, he is calm. Like the storm doesn’t matter so much anymore. Like he can forget the destruction that lives in him.”
I only hummed in reply, but inside, butterflies burst through me, wild and dizzy.
That was the moment I knew I was falling, for all that he was.
For his silence and his fury, for the beauty that thrived in the ruins of him.
And call it wishful thinking, but I wanted, oh so dearly, to be the shelter he deserved.
When I entered our chamber at night, I was trembling with that wish. I wanted him to share a bed with me, to end this endless waiting, to let the fire between us burn as it wished. To consume it or let it consume us.
He said he would sleep on the floor, but I wouldn’t let him.
He looked sculpted in gold beneath the candlelight, his ash-blond hair still wet from the lake. When he pulled off his shirt, the temperature itself shifted. Heat gathered low within me.
The flame caught on the long lines of his body—lean, strong, all sinew and shadow.
The tempered frame of a hunter. Muscles shifted beneath his skin like moving rocks, his chest marked by faint scars.
When he turned, I saw the largest of them, a pale arm of lightning scrawled across his back, branching to his shoulder like roots of fire long cooled.
Was that where it had begun?
Had the scar made him, or had he been born with it?
He was silent as stone, his jaw tight, the grief of the day coiled in every breath. He had just learned of the death of many of his tribe, his mother among them. I felt foolish to think of surrendering to him then, yet his nearness made every thought burn.
But he wouldn’t talk to me. Not at first. He sat beside me, and I saw the darkness in his eyes. The clouds I had once mistaken for disdain, I now recognized as desire.
And I knew I could have him if I wished.
Never in my life had I felt that kind of certainty. With Kael, it felt like permission, like I was allowed to want, allowed to reach.
Maybe it was the tremor of the day, the way I felt bound to him after hearing his story, or the candlelight that softened him to something human. But the sudden will to please him surged through me, fierce and tender all at once.
I wanted to kneel before him and return the pleasure he had given me, to let him feel the same shiver of yearning he could draw from me with a single glance.
I wanted to show him how wholly I belonged to that moment, how much of myself I was willing to give.
So I kneeled. I undressed him with trembling hands, ready to please the Court Wizard. The thought sent a shiver through me, warmth blooming low in my belly, my breath catching with the force of wanting him.
The sight of his length stole my breath for a moment, but I steadied myself and lifted my gaze to his, seeking permission in the silence between us.
I knew Kael responded to surrender, that obedience could reach places words never could.
I took him in my mouth, as deep as I could.
I could only reach halfway, so I used my hand, drawing more shattered breaths from him.
I savored his cock, teased it, glided along the shaft while my tongue explored every inch of it.
And it drove him insane, I felt it. The twitch in his thighs, the clench of his fingers, the shudder beneath his restraint.
Restraining what? Come now, Kael… Show me how far I should not go.
His hand found my hair, sudden and sure, and I couldn’t move anymore. He thrust into my mouth hard and fast, and I let every muscle of my face go still, yielding to his touch.
“That’s my good girl…”
I moaned. Muffled and raw. It made his cock twitch against my tongue.
Tears spilled freely from the strain, and when our eyes met again, something in him broke.
He was close. So close. I was ready to welcome his seed and taste all of it.
Then, all the heat in the room turned to ice. Kael wrenched me off him with a guttural growl, and I stumbled back, catching myself on an elbow upon the bed. At first I thought he might come apart on me instead, but he drew up his breeches, movements sharp and final.
I stared at him, frowning, shock twisting my features, confused, afraid I’d somehow done something wrong.
“Go to sleep,” he said sharply.
His hand lifted, ready to snuff out the candles with a spell.
“No.” The word slipped out before I could think.
His eyes flared at my defiance. “You do not say no to me.”
“Or what?”
He said nothing.
The world tilted, breath scraping my throat.
Shame burned through me, then confusion, then anger, at him, at myself, for feeling either.
He had wanted me. I’d seen it, felt it. Yet now he looked at me as though I was a danger he couldn’t afford.
My power trembled between my thoughts, restless as my heart.
I pushed myself upright, drew a steady breath, and found my voice. “You don’t get to touch me like that and then walk away, Kael.”
It came out steady. Too steady.
His eyes pierced right through me. He leaned forward, crawling closer until I was forced back on the bed, pouncing like a beast cornering me.
“If I don’t walk away,” he growled, voice low and rough, “I won’t be able to hold back.”
“Then don’t,” I breathed, voice small and frail. I wasn’t sure if it was fear or something darker that thrilled me. Perhaps both. But what, gods, was he so afraid of?
He exhaled hard, the sound torn from somewhere deep. “You were never supposed to come this close…”
“Supposed to?” I said, meeting his gaze. “Well, I am now. So stop pretending you don’t want this. Take me. If I have to beg for it, I will.”
Something flickered in his eyes, a shadow sparking into light. It wasn’t gentleness. It was hunger. He wanted me to beg.
He straightened, caging me between his knees. That look in his eyes… I knew I could push him further, drag that restraint to ruin.
“Take me, Kael…” I wasn’t begging yet. “You can’t do all these things to me and vanish, or run to another woman.”
His jaw locked, a muscle jumping beneath his skin. “I would have killed you that night,” he said quietly, almost to himself. “And I didn’t fucking care if I killed her.”
My breath hitched. The thought of his loss of control, of what he might do, of how easily he could do it, both terrified and drew me in.
“You won’t kill me,” I whispered, unsure whether I believed it. “But you will take me, Kael.”
His growl filled the space, every muscle drawn tight, his fingers brushing the fabric at my throat. “Do you care if I tear your shift?”
I shook my head, breath shallow.
With one harsh motion, he tore through the fabric. The sound split the air and rang through the alcove.
A shiver rippled through me. I wasn’t wearing undergarments. His eyes gleamed as they swept my chest, my neck, my stomach, lower, then found their way back, pouring into my gaze.
“I could shatter every bone in your body with one thought,” he rasped, his fingers finding the curve of my breast and squeezing.
Heat bloomed low in my belly at his words, the fear he ignited within me a strange and thrilling sensation. My hand moved of its own accord, tracing the contours of his skin, the hard planes of his pectoral muscles, drawing shivers from him.
The air crackled, and I was reminded of his rage at the tainted village, a memory that only stoked the fire within me further.
He leaned in, claiming my lips with a kiss, releasing the breath he had been holding. The kiss wasn’t kind.
His arm slid beneath me, lifting and adjusting me until we lay properly on the bed. He pinned me beneath him, towering over me, every nerve alive.
“When I’m near you, Evangelina, I can hardly contain myself. From the first moment I saw you in the academy courtyards, long before you came to Court, I knew you would be my undoing.”
He kissed me before I could respond. And when our lips parted, it was as though he couldn’t breathe anymore.
“I watched you,” he whispered. “From a distance. Making sure you stayed there. You were never meant to take Bramwell’s post, never meant to stand in castle halls. But when you walked through those doors, all I wanted was to keep you close.”
His words struck me like a flash of white lightning. I’d thought he’d barely noticed me before the Court, that I was just the seerling cluttering the halls, but he’d known me. Long before the Academy Ball, long before the magisters’ dinner, long before I’d dared to dream of him. My pulse stuttered.
“All this time… and you said nothing?” I whispered, more accusation than question.
The thought twisted something deep inside, a strange mix of awe and fear, of being chosen and hunted all at once. My skin tingled where his gaze held me, every breath torn between running and reaching for him.
How had I not seen him? Had he been at the academy often, haunting my classrooms, watching me from the dark?
How long ago had he started?
“You draw out everything that’s most wicked in me,” he said, his teeth finding the tender flesh of my neck, eliciting a hiss from my lips.
I arched my back, my chest pressing against his. I parted my thighs, allowing him to settle between my legs. His power crackled in the air, a force that could reduce bones to ash.
“I don’t think it’s wicked,” I murmured. “I think it’s the true you.”
His voice was low and raw. “Same sin, different name.”
He kissed me again, a fierce, ravenous, and desperate kiss. It was not careful, not gentle. It was teeth and breath and restraint shattering like glass, like lightning splitting the sky.