43. Eradin #2
“For the same reason you did.” She met my eyes again.
“Maybe I’m a fool for reminding her that some of my family still lives.
But someone I love is dying, and this is the only way to save them.
My father died not long after we arrived in Shaleside.
My mother…” She blinked fast, choosing the words carefully.
“She became a ghost whose body stayed but whose soul walked out the day we were stripped of status.”
I was terrified of losing Tolross. Lyndie had already lost her mother. She was trying to get her back.
“The wish,” I said.
“The wish.” She nodded. “I want what they took from her when they took everything else.”
“I’m sorry about your mother,” I said. “About all of it.”
Her eyes went shiny before she blinked it away. “Don’t be. Pity makes it worse.”
“It’s not pity.” I picked at the grass between us. “It’s recognition. We’re both trying to save someone who’s already gone in the ways that matter most.”
“Only one of us gets the wish. I won’t forget that. Neither should you.”
In other words, we could help each other survive, but eventually we’d have to choose between alliance and winning.
“Do you trust the prince?” Lyndie asked, glancing toward his tent.
“I do.” If nothing else, I had that.
Lyndie nodded, but she couldn’t have expected that answer. “Be careful. Elite always have motives, even when they seem genuine.”
She stood and walked over to duck inside our tent, leaving me sitting in the grass near her dragon.
I stayed there when I should’ve gone to bed myself, watching the elite camp.
Fen’s shadow still moved inside his tent.
Finally, I got up and went inside the tent.
Lyndie lay on her bedroll, facing the outer wall. I couldn’t tell if she was asleep or not.
I stretched out on my bed, every muscle groaning.
The tent fabric glowed faint orange from fires outside. The scent of smoke and leather and grass hung in the air, but underneath it I swore I could smell clean linen and dragon-smoke. Him.
“Eradin?” Lyndie’s voice was so quiet, I barely heard her. “Whatever you’re feeling for him, be careful. Elite break things. It’s what they do best.”
“I can take care of myself,” I said.
I closed my eyes and tried to sleep. Instead I dreamed of the last trial.
Water trying to push down my throat. Drown me.
The stone dead, attacking.
Selira and Aristus battering at the outer part of the dome.
The magic had stripped away every defense, and in the dream, it stripped away everything else too. No armor. No careful layers. Just skin and firelight and the terrible honesty of wanting someone while they looked at you and knew it.
Fen’s emotions bled into mine until I couldn’t separate his want from my own.
His warm fingers closed around mine. He tugged, and I went willingly, floating closer through the air until barely a breath remained between us.
Our clothing disappeared, and we were naked. I took in his muscular body, his flat abdomen, his cock jutting up between us.
His gaze moved slowly over me, like he was trying to memorize something he knew he’d have to give back.
His palm cupped my jaw. Every nerve I had focused on that contact. The rough calluses catching on my skin. The tremor running through him that I felt in my bones because somehow his body and mine were speaking a language neither of us had words for.
“I shouldn’t want this,” he said, his voice a low rasp.
“No.” My heart was trying to beat its way through my ribcage. “You really shouldn’t.”
“But I do anyway.” His gaze dropped to my mouth, then darted back up. “I want you so badly it’s breaking everything I’m supposed to be.”
“I can feel it. I’ve been feeling it since the underwater trial, and I want it too. You. This. All of it.”
My hands were already reaching for him, latching onto his shoulders, pulling him closer. His forehead dropped to mine. I could feel the unsteady rhythm of his breathing against my lips, the warmth radiating off his bare chest, and I pressed into it, closing the last of the distance between us.
“Trust me,” he breathed.
I did. I hadn’t lied to Lyndie.
I did.
And that was the scary part. In a dream, with my defenses dissolved and his hands on my skin, I could do everything I’d craved for too long.
His mouth found mine, a question I answered by parting my lips. He kissed me deeper, hungrier. We were both drowning, and this was our air. His tongue swept across mine, and I whimpered, needing more.
One of his hands slid into my hair, cradling the back of my head, angling me exactly the way he wanted me.
The other traced down my spine, leaving heat in its wake, until it settled at the small of my back.
He pulled me flush against him. The hard planes of his chest and the rigid length of his cock pressed against me.
When his mouth left mine to trail along my jaw and down my throat, I tilted my head back to give him full access. His breath heated my collarbone, and his hand came up to cup my breast, his thumb brushing over my nipple. The sensation shot straight through me, and I arched into his touch.
“Fates,” he murmured against my skin. “You’re perfect.”
He kneaded my breast gently, his fingertips teasing across the nipple, while his mouth continued its path lower. When his lips closed around my other nipple, I gripped his shoulders harder, digging my nails in. He groaned, and the sound made heat swirl through my belly and dive down.
His hand drifted lower, skimming over my ribs, my waist, and my hip.
Lower still. I knew where he was going, and I wanted his touch there with an intensity that should’ve frightened me.
When his fingers brushed between my legs, I pressed against him, into his touch, trusting him with this vulnerable part of myself in a way I’d never trusted anyone.
“Yes,” I breathed, and it was permission and plea all at once.
He explored me slowly. I was already slick with want for him, and when he circled my clit, my legs nearly gave out. He caught me, one arm banding around my waist to hold me steady while his other hand continued its delicious torment.
“So sweet,” he whispered against my temple. “So wet for me.”
As his fingers stroked, I surrendered to the sensation, to the building pressure, to the intimacy of him learning what made me gasp and shudder. And when he finally slid one finger inside me, then another, stretching and filling me, I cried out his name.
“Fenian. Prince Fenian. He’s—”
“Prince Fenian,” a voice cried out. “Someone has killed the prince!”
The bellow shattered through camp.
I jolted awake, slamming back into my body.
For one warped moment both were true at once. His hands on my skin and his name on a stranger’s lips. My skin still burned where the dream had touched it, and the camp was shouting that he was dead. The two could not share the same night.
The dream dissolved. The meadow, the tent, and the cold grass under my bedroll. All of it was real and Fen was—
No.
The word tried to claw its way up my throat. My hands were already scrambling for the tent opening before my brain caught up to what my body already knew.
Fen.
They’d killed Fen.
The terror was so big it couldn’t fit inside my chest. All I could think was not him not him not him like a prayer to fates I wasn’t sure existed.
“Don’t.” Lyndie’s hand clamped around my arm. Fear creased her face. “This is elite business. You need to stay out of it.”
I ripped away from her, crawled out of the tent, and lurched to my feet.
The cold, wet grass coated my bare feet as I raced across the meadow.
Elites were emerging from tents, their voices rising. Someone was shouting orders.
I dodged between tents, stomping through mud, shoving past a man who tried to block my path. Another grabbed my arm, and I tore free, my skin burning where his fingers dug in.
Nothing mattered except getting to Fen’s tent.
Royal blue canvas with House Lancifer’s crest.
The entrance flap hung open, a carnivorous mouth.
I threw myself through the entrance.