Chapter Twenty-One- Reprieve
The kingdom is in a state of chaos the next morning when Thorne and I eventually stumble out of the Northwoods. He woke early, nudging me awake, at which point I summoned the Book of Binding to me so that he could read it.
Now, we walk back in silence. Whatever he deduced about breaking a binding of this magnitude… it’s weighing on his features. His mouth is downturned, his eyebrows pinched. My own face mirrors his. He’s gripping Aleksander’s key so hard his knuckles are white and I don’t know what to do for him.
Distantly, I’m aware of booming. The sound of dark magic colliding with ice magic on the other side of the palace.
Frostguard must have gone around the Titan’s Rest Mountain Range to access Netherhelm at its north-eastern border.
An army can’t march through the Wastelands and besides, they’re still fighting a war with other kingdoms there.
This, at least, means it’s not the entirety of their army marching on Netherhelm.
And for the time being, it’s contained. Caelthar probably gave King Zephyr a terrible excuse when he asked for permission to redirect troops to the north.
It’s a horrible idea—we have the advantage there as deep wells of dark magic live in those mountains.
I see this for what it is: a fool’s errand by an impulsive, ill-tempered prince.
A prince who is so scared of having his throne challenged, he would sacrifice hundreds of men in a war that isn’t necessary.
Just for a chance at eradicating the possibility of a future threat.
It’s mad, Caelthar’s obsession with killing Thorne. Though it’s a madness I’m familiar with.
“Ya know, there’s something fundamentally infuriating about your existence.” I break the silence as we trudge up the path towards the palace.
Thorne turns towards me just as I was admiring his tall frame, athletic shoulders, and thin waist.
“Thank you?” There’s humor in his response.
“It’s not a compliment. Just an observation,” I shrug and we continue walking.
“Well, if we’re making observations, you’re an arrogant prick,” he plays along.
“Coming from the Prince of arrogance himself!" I laugh and trip him as he walks, kicking his foot out from under him mid-stride.
To my delight he hits the ground hard, barely catching himself. The look he throws me could probably kill, but the effect is lost on me as I am in awe of his perfection. I am a ship cast against cliffs for the storm of him.
But then he lunges for my legs and I let him tackle me to the ground. I briefly forget the chaos that is happening around us as he crawls up my frame and pins me to the ground with a devilish grin.
“Now what, Princeling?”
He pins me with his hips between my legs and I can imagine letting him penetrate me, which I’ve never done before with anyone. I swallow hard and blink up at him. He’s about to speak when a voice shouts from behind us.
“Brother!” It’s Julien hurling himself down the hill.
Thorne bolts off of me, helping me up in the process. The reddening of his cheeks is maddening.
“What’s wrong?” He grabs his brother’s shoulders.
Julien is disheveled and has clearly been crying.
“War has come! At Xeusis’s Rest! Julius has gone to fight!” Julien pants as he tries to catch his breath.
“What?” Thorne and I say in unison.
“Father permitted it! He said he wouldn’t force us, but that we’re of age and could go if we chose!”
“Did he depart with Aleksander?” Thorne asks and pulls Julien to follow him in a way that I’m realizing is a habit of his.
“Yes, about an hour ago,” Julien sniffles.
“Titans bleed me,” Thorne curses.
“Where’s Asterin?” I ask.
“She’s fleeing!” Julien exaggerates.
“What do you mean?” Thorne demands as we make our way past the horse stables.
“She’s marrying Prince Kapron and she’s chosen to leave today to go back to Terramora with him.”
Thorne and I don’t show our relief at this, instead Thorne feigns annoyance with another colorful curse. We needed the twins to stay put indeed, but at least Asterin is still leaving.
I pull Thorne to the side; he motions for Julien to go ahead and that we’ll follow.
“What about Reese’s involvement with Asterin?” I whisper.
“I would imagine he’s pissed,” he scrubs his face.
“He’s still part of the Black Lanterns, though. This shouldn’t shift his alliance with us.” I try to convince myself more than him. We need that key.
“I know!” He snaps. “We’ll write a letter, making it seem like it’s from Asterin. Something about her being in love with him but having a duty to marry a Prince.”
I nod, unable to help my smile. The idea is juvenile in its simplicity and so is his excitement about it.
“So are we doing it?” Julien asks as we catch up to him and push through the entryway of the palace. “Are we going to get Jules?”
His nickname for his twin makes my heart hurt.
“I—” I pause to look at Thorne.
“We can’t go get him, Julien,” Thorne bends down to meet his little brother’s height.
I know why, of course. Because we have a million things to do. Because trying to take Julius from the convoy would result in another confrontation with Aleksander. Because we have a hit on our heads…
Wait.
A hit.
I tug on Thorne’s sleeve as he calms Julien down. I don’t hear what he says but Julien storms off.
“We killed all of the knights that heard Aleksander declare us traitors…”
“Yeah?” He leans against a stone wall. The candlelight casts him in a golden honey color.
“Do you think Reese labeled us as traitors to the king? Or to anyone else? We don’t know what we’re walking into.”
“I think Julien would have known if we’d been declared traitors.
Besides, Aleksander failed to capture us and Reese is the only one besides Elm who knows.
They aren’t going to tell. Aleksander wouldn’t have said anything because he would have to admit defeat,” Thorne explains, carefully calculating the situation.
I step into him, finding him irresistible this way. Disheveled, calculated, bathed in shadows and soft light.
“All good things,” I nod my understanding.
“All good things,” he whispers and looks at my mouth as I grip his hips. The air charges, this desire rising between us like an untamed beast.
“Serpent,” he warns.
“Princeling…” I tease, leaning into him.
I take his lips into mine, hungry and unabashed.
My tongue skates across his deliciously plump bottom lip, reveling in the taste of him.
He is sin and cedar, dark magic and the winds of the Northwoods on my tongue.
I swear there’s a whimper, low and pleading from him.
It’s enough to bring me to my knees. This beautifully cruel prince, with an army of bodies before him, reduced to whimpering for me.
Titans, he is silk in my hands and I need him, I need this.
I need to unravel him and take him down to mere threads before me.
I break the kiss before I take it further.
“You smell like blood,” I smile as I rest my forehead against his.
“You smell worse than blood,” he counters and shoves me back.
I turn on my heel, confident he will follow me. We have entered the palace on the side where my quarters are. The next steps are unspoken; wash, dress, find Reese and Elm. Use the attack in the mountains to get down to the Titan’s Kyanite in the antechamber.
The air between us as we push into my bedroom is heavy, pulsing with electricity so thick that my magic coils away from it.
I swallow against the tension in my chest. He’s been in my room before, but right now…
the taste of him lingers on my lips. Need has burrowed so deep into my bones that they ache for him.
I hear his boots fall behind me and he clicks the door shut.
And locks it. I opt not to look at him, but to move directly to the washroom.
Once I’m clean, I give him time to decompress and bathe, to do whatever he needs to do. I won’t pressure him into sex, but this need between us…
I’m flipping through the Book of Binding, trying to make sense of it when he pads out of the washroom. My body tenses at his presence, goosebumps trailing over my body. My cock twitches against the loose cotton pants I’m wearing but I can’t look at him.
“Serpent,” comes his taunting voice from my bed. I can’t breathe.
I don’t turn around, sensing what’s behind me. I know he’s not dressed. I feel like I need to prepare myself to behold him in such a way. So I pause, gathering myself.
“Princeling,” I warn.
“Please,” he whispers. It’s a plea that breaks me.
I’m already standing as I turn to face him. His perfect body is bare, scars and all. His pale skin is luminescent against my black silk sheets. He seems almost nervous, as if my reaction means more to him than it should.
I take him in, the perfect smooth planes of his body.
His skin is marred with years of rapidly healed-over scars, his throat still wrapped in that damned chain.
I don’t take for granted the fact that he’s not wearing his gloves.
That he doesn’t have to wear them with me.
I see how special that simple truth is for him when I lean over him and he runs his hands over my biceps.
He’s taking me in greedily with his eyes, his hands.
Those killing hands that are so smooth and gentle with me.
I can’t see the blood on his hands, can’t feel the blood on mine.
It doesn’t matter, these hands were made to find this body.
To find this body alive. We melt into a devouring kiss, my bare chest against his.
It takes me back to the first time I tasted him and molded his form to mine.
I am a painter with no muse until he folds into me, wraps me in his hands with a gasp into my mouth.
It’s like flying, being touched this way by him.
I shudder as he grips me, kisses me, strokes me.
The Titans themselves couldn’t get me off of him.
There are no gods, no Titans, no religions here. Just us, just this disastrous union.
He pulls my hand up to his mouth, sucking two fingers between those sinful lips and swirling his tongue as he looks at me with piercing blue eyes. His eyes heat with desire as he guides my fingers from his mouth and down between his legs.
He’s unbelievably tight, untouched in so long. I’m gentle, giving him what he wants when he wants it.
“Tell me you waited for me,” I groan as I prod and stretch him with my fingers. He is unbelievable in the dim candle light, splayed out across my bed with his silver hair fanning around him.
“I haven’t… ah!” His face screws into pain and then pleasure as I work two fingers inside of him. He curls his fingers into the sheets beneath him.
I believe him. He may have fucked other people but no one has been inside of him. My heart skips at the thrill of it, at the possibility that our night together back then was sacred to him, too.
The two of us. This is new, this is real, this is the heat of the sun burning into the fabric of my soul.
When I push into him, there is a claim made, a marking.
I am finally taking him, making him mine.
He brands my skin once more, trailing his nails along the same path where the scars remain.
Where I wouldn’t let my skin forget him, just like I couldn’t.
He is perfect in the way that he writhes beneath me, winding his hips to take his pleasure shamelessly.
“Harrow.” He whispers my name in worship as I sink every inch of myself into his warmth. He’s so vulnerable and needy this way, awakening the most serpentine and predatorial parts of myself. The urge to lean down and…
“Harrow!” He shouts as I sink my fangs into his neck. He thrashes for a moment, then my venom takes hold of him and he’s almost purring.
When Sylvithria started feeding me her venom as an infant, a long and complicated evolution started.
My greatest weapon, which can be wielded for far more than simply causing pain.
My venom can be a cruel, poisonous thing but it’s ultimately mine to control.
Instead of death, I use my fangs to pump deep rivulets of pleasure into him and his body comes alive.
It’s as if I’ve turned him into a rabid animal for me.
It’s everything I’ve ever wanted with him, to experience pleasure so real and raw.
He is a carnal wild thing now, forcing me down onto my bed and riding me.
He throws his head back, his eyes swimming with dark magic as he loses himself in the high.
He’s fucking perfect. I wrap my hand around the long column of his throat, pumping upward while I stroke his erection with my other hand.
I take care to grip his throat below the chain, knowing how he’s been tortured with it.
I desperately want to rip it off. I grit my teeth at the sight of the permanent marks left by the silver rings.
I’ve never given the gift of this high to any of my partners and I shouldn’t have given it to him yet. But I needed to. I can unravel this need to give my everything to him later. Right now he’s crying out my name… or I’m crying out his.
The room blurs into a symphony of pleasure as we turn this into something like a competition, both of us determined to drive the other over the edge. He tightens himself around me and I pump deeper.
I take him on the floor, the desk, the bed, and even the windowsill.
We are one, a combined being crying out together. We take out all of our hatred on one another. We expend our need, we expend our grief. It is beautiful and healing. I feel the pain he’s lived through when he claws at me.
I nearly buckle, holding him against the wall as I explode inside of him.
He crashes his head back against the stone wall, coming undone himself.
I bite into my lip while my orgasm causes tremors to rack my body.
My spine straightens when he slumps into my arms, my own shaking body irrelevant to his need to be held.
I lay him in my bed, kissing him as he sinks into my sheets.
Cleaning him up isn’t a question, neither is ensuring he is hydrated and comfortable. It takes long minutes for either of us to speak, so I simply hold him.
He cools us with a gust of chilling wind as the heat between our bodies becomes noticeable.
“Thank you,” I hum.
Pride swells in me as I know he’s still learning about his ice magic. I want him to come into his full power, I don’t want him stifled… I… I don’t know what that means about my feelings for him.
“We have to go,” I whisper to him and kiss his temple. He groans. He knows we can’t stay here. I would keep him like this forever if I could.