Chapter 18 Leora
LEORA
The air in the grand hall is permeated with the scent of death. Malek’s archers are nocking their arrows, the fletching brushing against their cheeks. The tension is a drawn bowstring, humming against my skin.
"Loose!" Malek roars.
"Shields up!" Asema bellows, her voice cracking but undeniably loud as if she is commanding soldiers but there is no one else.
She does not raise a shield of wood or iron. She raises herself.
I gasp, my eyes going wide as I watch her.
With a roar that sounds like tearing metal, Asema charges. She does not run toward us to cover our retreat. She runs toward Malek.
She is one woman against twenty archers and a Sorcerer Lord. She is broken, bleeding, one eye swollen shut, her armor battered into scrap. But she moves with the terrifying, singular purpose of a Miou warrior who has chosen her end.
"Go!" she screams over her shoulder, not looking back. "My Lord, go!"
The first volley of arrows flies. Most of them thud into the heavy oak of the door behind us, but three find their mark in Asema’s body. She stumbles, her momentum faltering, but she does not fall. She keeps running, swinging her sword, a whirlwind of desperate steel.
"Asema!" Imas shouts, taking a step toward her.
I grab his arm, digging my heels into the stone floor. "No! Imas, look at her!"
He freezes. He looks at his captain, the woman who has been his shadow for centuries. Asema turns her head for a fraction of a second. Her good eye meets his. There is no fear in it. There is only a fierce, blinding gratitude.
Thank you, her expression says, louder than any words can ever say. Her eyes say it all. You pulled me from the gutter. You gave me a sword. You gave me a life. Now let me give it back.
Then she looks at me. Her gaze is heavy, urgent. Keep him alive.
She turns back to Malek, who is raising his battle-axe with a sneer. Asema reaches into her belt and pulls out a cluster of black spheres—alchemical firebombs.
She pulls the pin.
"For House Imas!" she screams, and she throws herself at the base of the stairs, directly beneath the balcony where the archers stand.
"Move!" Imas roars, sweeping me off my feet.
He sprints for the narrow servant’s door hidden behind a tapestry. We hit the wood just as the world turns white.
BOOM.
The explosion is deafening. The floor heaves beneath us. Heat, searing and violent, chases us into the narrow corridor. The sound of crumbling stone and screaming men echoes behind us, a chaotic symphony of destruction.
Imas does not stop. He runs, carrying me through the labyrinth of back passages, up a hidden stairwell, his breathing harsh and ragged against my ear.
I can feel the tremors in his arms, the way his muscles spasm with exhaustion.
I can feel the grief hitting him like a battering ram—a deep, hollow ache in his chest that he immediately walls off, shoving it down into the dark where he keeps his demons.
We burst into the library—not the main archive where he burned the book, but the panic room concealed behind the false bookcase. It is a small, windowless space lined with iron-reinforced stone, stocked with dried rations and weapons.
Imas kicks the heavy door shut and throws the locking bolts—three bars of solid steel as thick as my arm.
We are trapped.
He sets me down. His legs give way, and he slides down the door, his head falling back against the wood. Blood is soaking through the shoulder of his tunic, dark and wet.
"Imas," I gasp, dropping to my knees beside him.
"I’m fine," he lies, his voice a wreck. "Just... winded."
I reach for him, my hands hovering over the wound. "Let me see."
He catches my wrist. His skin is freezing, slick with sweat and grime. He looks at me, violet eyes wild, the pupils blown wide with adrenaline and something darker, hungrier.
"We are dead," he says. It is not a complaint. It is a statement of fact. "Malek will breach this door. It might take an hour. It might take ten minutes. But he will come."
"Then we fight," I say, my voice trembling.
"With what?" He laughs, a bitter, broken sound. "I have a sword I can barely lift. You are exhausted. Asema is..." His voice cracks. He swallows hard, looking away. "Asema is gone."
The reality of it settles on us like a shroud. There is no escape. There is no clever trick of magic, no hidden exit. This is the end of the line.
I look at him. His face is streaked with dust and blood, his platinum hair matted. He looks ruined. He looks magnificent.
"Imas," I whisper.
He looks back at me. The despair in his eyes shifts, turning into something hot and desperate. He reaches out, his hand cupping my jaw, his thumb tracing the line of my lower lip.
"I wasted so much time," he murmurs. "Centuries of noise. Centuries of cruelty. And I only found the silence at the very end."
My heart hammers against my ribs. I lean into his touch. "We have now. We have this minute."
"This minute," he repeats.
His gaze lowers to my mouth. The energy changes. The smell of blood is still there, but beneath it, the sharp, musky scent of arousal blooms, fierce and undeniable. It is the body’s last rebellion against death—a desperate need to feel alive, to burn bright before the dark takes us.
He kisses me.
It is frantic. It is messy. Our teeth clash, lips bruising against lips. He tastes of iron and salt. I encircle his neck, pulling him closer, needing to feel the solidity of him, the heat of his skin.
He groans, a low vibration in his chest. He pulls me into his lap, his hands roaming over my body, rough and possessive. He tears the ceremonial robes, ripping the fabric away until I am bare to the waist.
"Beautiful," he whispers against my skin. "So beautiful."
He trails kisses down my throat, over the pulse point that is fluttering like a trapped bird. He moves lower, his mouth hot and wet against my breast. I gasp, arching into him, my fingers tangling in his hair.
"Imas," I moan. "Please."
I don't know what I am begging for. Salvation? Oblivion? Or just him.
He lifts me, standing up with a surge of strength that defies his injuries. He carries me to the heavy oak reading table in the middle of the room. He sweeps the maps and quills onto the floor with a crash and sets me on the edge.
He steps between my legs. His eyes are black holes, devouring me.
"No more words," he growls. "No more plans."
He kneels.
His hands grip my thighs, spreading them wide. The cool air hits my skin, making me shiver, but then his breath is there, hot and damp against my center.
He kisses the inside of my thigh. I whimper, my head falling back.
"Imas..."
He ignores me. He plunges his face in my cunt.
His tongue is not human. It is longer, slightly rougher, and incredibly skilled. He licks me, a long, slow stroke that sends a jolt of electricity straight to my spine. I cry out, my hips bucking off the table.
He holds me down. He feasts on me. He eats like a starving man who has found a banquet at the end of the world. He sucks and licks and nips, driving me to the edge of madness.
"Imas, please," I sob, grabbing handfuls of his hair, trying to pull him up. "I need you. I need you inside me."
He pulls back, his face wet with me. He stands up, his chest heaving. He fumbles with the laces of his breeches, his hands shaking.
He frees himself.
I stare at him. Even in the dim light, he is terrifying. He is huge, the shaft thick and ridged with veins, the head dark purple and glistening with a pre-come that catches the faint light. It looks too big. It looks like a weapon of war, something designed to split me open and ruin me.
But I don't care. I want to be ruined. I want to be filled until there is no room left for fear, until the only thing existing in the universe is him inside me.
He grabs my hips, his fingers digging into the soft flesh, bruising me even before the act begins. He positions himself at the entrance, the blunt, velvet-steel head of him pressing against my slick heat.
"This might be our last moment, and dying with the memory of your taste is heaven in itself," he says, his voice ragged. "Let me remember you."
He pushes into me.
It is a slow, relentless invasion. I scream, a sound of pain and pleasure tangled together that tears from my throat. He is impossibly thick and long, stretching the delicate tissues, filling me so completely it feels as if he is rearranging my insides but it is so good, it reminds me I am alive.
"Leora," he groans, gritting his teeth, the cords of his neck straining as he sinks to the hilt.
"Yes," I gasp, my head falling back, my spine bowing off the hard wood of the table. "Yes, Imas."
He holds still for a second, letting me adjust to the sheer mass of him, pulsing inside me like a second heart. Then, he begins to move.
It is not gentle. It is a frantic, driving rhythm.
He withdraws almost to the entrance, leaving me aching and empty for a split second, before slamming back in with a force that knocks the breath from my lungs.
The heavy oak table rocks against the stone floor, a rhythmic thud-thud-thud that matches the violence of his hips snapping against mine.
I wrap my legs around his waist, locking my ankles behind his back to pull him deeper, to anchor him to me. My nails dig into his shoulders, dragging down the expanse of his back, scoring red furrows in the charcoal skin. I want to leave a mark. I want him to bleed for me as I bleed for him.
"More," I beg, my voice a broken sob. "Harder."
He growls, a guttural, animalistic sound. He nestles his face in the curve of my neck, his hot breath washing over my skin. He bites down on the sensitive cord of muscle there, not breaking the skin this time, but marking me, claiming me.
He pumps into me, a piston of flesh and desperation. The friction is blinding. It burns, a sweet, agonizing fire that builds in my belly and radiates outward to my fingertips. Every thrust hits a spot deep inside me that makes my vision blur, makes my toes curl.
"Say my name," he commands, thrusting hard, hitting my cervix with a jolt that makes me cry out.
"Imas!" I scream. "Imas, I love you!"
The words hang in the air, fragile and true, cutting through the scent of copper and arousal. He did not reply, but I understand. To someone like him, love is a foreign word. And to a slave like me, it is a privilege that not everyone is given the chance to feel.
He freezes for a second, looking down at me with wide, stunned eyes. The vulnerability on his face breaks my heart. Then he kisses me, swallowing my scream, his tongue sweeping into my mouth, mimicking the savage rhythm of his hips.
He pulls out abruptly. I whimper at the loss, but he does not stop.
He grabs me, lifting me off the table as if I weigh nothing. He carries me across the room, my legs dangling, my center throbbing and empty. He slams me against the tall bookshelf, pinning me against the spines of the ancient texts.
"Wrap your leg," he orders, his voice rough.
I hook my left leg over his arm. He hikes it higher, pressing my knee toward my shoulder, opening me completely to him.
He drives upward, impaling me again.
The angle is deeper, sharper. He hits places inside me I didn't know existed. The bookshelf creaks ominously behind me, the wood groaning under the force of our collision. Books tumble from the upper shelves, raining down around us, but we ignore them.
He fucks me wildly, his hips pistoning, his hand gripping my thigh to keep me open. He is feral. He is desperate. He is trying to merge our bodies into a single entity, trying to erase the line where I end and he begins.
"Look at me," he snarls, driving into me so hard my head knocks against the books.
I look at him. His face is a mask of ecstasy and agony. Sweat drips from his brow, landing on my chest.
The pleasure builds, a tidal wave of light and heat rising from the base of my spine. It is agonizing. It is transcendent. It is the only thing that is real.
"Come for me," he growls against my neck, his hips stuttering, his rhythm becoming erratic and frantic. "Come for me, Leora."
I shatter.
My vision goes white. My body convulses around him, my inner muscles clamping down on his shaft, milking him, squeezing him in rhythmic spasms that tear a high, keening wail from my throat.
He shouts, a raw, guttural roar that vibrates against my chest. He drives in one last time, burying himself to the root, and pours himself into me. I feel the pulses of his release, hot and heavy, filling me up, coating my womb.
For a long moment, we just hang there, suspended in the aftermath. He presses his forehead against mine, his breath sawing in and out, mingling with my own.
Then, his strength gives out.
We collapse, sliding down the bookshelf until we hit the floor, a tangle of limbs and sweat and bruised skin.
He holds me. He holds me so tight I can barely breathe, his arms wrapping around me like iron bands. He buries his face in the curve of my neck, and I feel the wetness of his tears against my skin.
"I'm sorry," he whispers, his voice thick. "I'm so sorry."
I stroke his damp, matted hair. "Don't be."
We lie there on the cold stone floor, shivering as the sweat cools on our skin. It is quiet in the panic room. For a heartbeat, we can pretend the world outside doesn't exist. We can pretend we are just a man and a woman in the aftermath of a world shattering ecstasy.
Then, the sound comes.
THUD.
A heavy, reverberating impact against the iron door. The sound vibrates through the floorboards, jarring my bones.
THUD.
The wood groans. The steel bars rattle in their brackets.
"Open up, Imas!" Malek’s voice is muffled but distinct, dripping with cheerful malice. "Don't make me rude."
Imas stiffens against me. The tension slams back into his frame, turning the lover back into the warrior. He pulls away from me, looking at the door. The resignation is back in his violet eyes, but it is harder now. Sharper.
He stands up, his movements stiff. He fastens his breeches with hands that are steady, though his knuckles are bruised. He reaches for his sword, which lies on the floor where he dropped it.
He looks at me.
"Get dressed," he says softly. I hurry to put on the ruined fabric of my clothes.
The door splinters. A jagged crack appears in the wood, revealing the flickering orange of torchlight beyond.
We have minutes left.