Chapter Thirteen- Duty Calls
Igrumble and stir awake, groggy with no memory of falling asleep.
Crowley, Fable, Thorne.
My right side is burning up and I’m sore from sleeping rigidly on my back. Upon opening my eyes, I’m greeted, as usual, by Crowley perched on the wooden headboard above me. The heat on my right side is the Prince, who has wrapped himself around me, evergreen vines attached to a decaying structure.
His legs are intertwined with mine as if they were always meant to be there, his face squished against my shoulder as the peace of sleep kisses his face with innocence.
His lips are full of color, his cheeks too.
His forehead has a light sheen of sweat from the heat in the room, but he doesn’t release me.
I don’t make him. His bare chest against me awakens me fully, though the lull of his breathing tries to persuade me back to sleep.
I can still see the puffiness under his eyes from crying.
He has Ivy’s nose; her long eye lashes. I saw both of them cry as they lost each other; she, the day he was born—her beloved Thorian—and he, as she gave her life so that he may live.
How did I get here?
As I recall the conversation from last night, it’s clear that a question looms between us. How are we going to destroy the Kyanite and the spell that binds him?
The clock informs me that we slept for the rest of the day and half the night.
It’s only an hour until midnight and I don’t wish to wake him up, but my insides are begging for both relief and food.
I really don’t want to lose the feeling of his soft skin against mine.
The smooth, taught muscles of his arm stretching over my midsection is as sinful as raw desire itself.
As sinful as blood upon the feet of the Titans.
I throw my head back and curse silently as a torrent of thoughts plague me of all the ways I want to touch him.
The magic connecting our life bond hums from his stained arm to mine.
I can’t tell if it’s clouding my judgement, merging our desires, or just drawing me to him like a moth to a flame.
I’m just about to move out of Thorne’s delicious hold when a familiar four patterned knock comes on my bedroom door.
Thorne stiffens and his head shoots up. His eyebrows furrow as he scans me from my stomach to my face.
I wish I could capture the way he looks when his cheeks flush and he scrambles away from me.
He mutters something like an apology but I shake it off and grab a fresh shirt, royal blue in color.
“Elm,” I groan because I know his knock. I open the door and he greets me as though he’s not pleased to have been awoken either.
“Missing girl, in Whitmire. There was a Riftwraith spotted in the area. Reese chose us to handle this one,” Elm pulls on his gauntlets.
This couldn’t be worse timing. I drop my head and sigh in annoyance. Of course Reese wouldn’t go see to it himself. Then again, I did miss drills today, so perhaps this is my punishment.
There’s movement behind me and I feel Thorne shuffling in the bed. Elm looks over my shoulder curiously and I move to block his view.
“Stride and Ilkon were called away to tend a small hoard of Basket Sprites who are making a fuss in the marketplace.”
Basket Sprites are annoying and greedy but overall harmless.
No more than six inches tall, their rainbow colored skin and light wings set them apart from other Sprites.
I’d usually be more thrilled to hunt the Riftwraith and the missing child.
Now, however, the reprieve of chasing off some Basket Sprites would be nice.
I groan. All I want to do is eat and crawl back in bed next to the infuriating prince for reasons I can’t quite discern yet.
“I’ll meet you at the stables in twenty minutes,” I tell him and move to close the door.
“I’ll prepare Zena since it’s just Whitmire,” Elm nods and backs away.
I have two horses that I prefer, but Zena is my favorite. She’s better for shorter distances, Whitmire being the closest village to the kingdom at just a seven hour ride. However, we’ll use magic to make it in three.
We use our dark magic to caress their limbs, lightening their bodies and lengthening their strides.
It’s a more common spell and doesn’t drain our magic quickly at all.
The horses, however, tend to zone out, their eyes going glassy as the magic takes hold of them.
They crash hard afterwards but I am adamant about ensuring my horse is well appreciated; the stablehand, Luca, ensuring they are groomed and shod to the highest standard.
It’s only right, after their bodies are spent from the borrowed speed.
Sending knights from the palace insinuates that the guards in Whitmire are losing control of the situation and will need back up. Whitmire has had to have a heavier presence of knights and guards due to the high population of nobility that calls it home. Less now because of me.
Eldershade is the furthest town from the palace and is a breeding ground for rebellion; its distance feeding defiance.
Given that it’s closest to Celestia, the kingdom of light magic, many Blessed Wyverns sneak into our kingdom through Eldershade.
Reese spends much of his time there, favoring work in Eldershade the most. I don’t get it.
“Duty calls?” Thorne sits up, rubbing his eyes. Those eyes are still so swollen with grief, heavy with sorrow.
“You should rest, Prince,” I tell him.
He looks over at me, neither of us willing to voice our feelings regarding him being attached to me in his sleep.
“It won’t be long before Prince Caelthar lashes out against my family. You should know that I intend to go to the Venomwoods after we dispose of the Riftwraith,” I inform him. I rustle through my wardrobe for pants.
“You don’t think the serpents can protect themselves? They have occupied that chasm and forest for centuries,” Thorne asks, as though he’s genuinely interested.
“I think they should have a warning. I called the wrath of Frostguard upon them when I…”
“But you did kill me,” Thorne stands. It’s the last thing I expected him to say. I tug on my pants because being so undressed in front of him threatens to send my mind scattering.
“Again—”
“I’m not looking for an apology. I’m just stating that you held up your end of the deal,” he explains and for some reason, his voice is full of hope.
I shake my head. It doesn’t matter to Caelthar that I killed the prince if said prince doesn’t stay dead. If reasoning with Caelthar that Prince Thorne had no actual right to the throne of Frostguard didn’t work, getting out of this deal on a technicality wasn’t going to happen.
“He wants your head, Thorne,” I groan. Shock settles over him and he stammers back.
“What was the plan then?” He asks as he buttons up his own tunic. The action of us dressing together is intimate, it could look to an outsider like we just…
“I was to make it look like an accident,” I start. I look away from him. Guilt reverberates through me.
“Look at me,” his voice rasps with brokenness and I remember how he kissed me in the moments before his death.
He was so desperate, begging me not to do it.
I do look at him, my head bowed in shame.
“Throwing me down a ravine might have worked, but people don’t often lose their head on the way down,” Thorne points out as he puts on his boots.
“I was going to wait for someone to discover you.” Bile rises in my throat to even say it. “While they prepared your body for the Corpsewrights to lay you to rest, I was going to take your head.”
I look away from him again; I can’t say it to his face.
“This would have been easy for you then, yes?” He asks, moving to stand in front of me as I pull my tunic over my head. I feel sick at the thought of his lifeless head in my hands, heavy, dripping with blood, and turning blue. His face is one that’s meant to be full of life, smiling.
“Once it might have,” I raise my eyes to meet his. To show him that I’m being honest. “But I sobbed over your body when it appeared before me.” I don’t know why I admit it. “Regret is new to me.”
He stands before me full of life and sorrow, bearing the weight of those who continue to use and betray him.
“Would you cry for Aleksander?” He tilts his head, his startling beauty causes me to suck in a breath.
“No,” I answer simply.
He places a finger under my chin and brings his mouth painfully close to mine.
I can taste him; my heart backflips and my stomach coils like a snake.
Everything within me boils down to an amalgamation of his skin on mine, on beholding him before me so I can sear the image of him like this into my brain.
I think he’s going to kiss me, to give me a true taste of him.
“Be safe. I’m not certain that I would cry for you,” he whispers and pulls away from me. I lull forward a moment, off balance in his absence. His cruelty is finalized when he closes my bedroom door, leaving me hollow in the space.
While Elmerov sorts out his horse, I pet the snout of a magnificent black steed with a flowing mane.
Agonizingly, I am lost in thought about Thorne’s moment of tenderness, as I know it’s not in his nature.
I have the marks on my back from our hook-up as evidence, when he was wild and unyielding.
The last time Thorne kissed me, it was rough and desperate as death called for him.
He was just toying with me, trying to get under my skin.
He is the Executioner Prince, a merciless murderer, death incarnate.
That silver-haired plague knows nothing but feeling pain and dealing it out. Blasted Prince!