Chapter 42
FORTY-TWO
"W -what was that?" I mumble numbly.
She shakes her head, confused.
More people have appeared by the side of the road, coming out of their houses after hearing the commotion. But no one tries to help. No one asks us if we're okay, just as no one tried to stop the man assaulting us.
They're just watching the show, their expressions completely blank, as if this is just another everyday occurrence.
"Where the hell are you, Cer?" Thea screams out as she wobbles to her feet, shaking the remains of the man off her. I try to do the same, but my entire body is trembling, the fear I experienced locked inside of me and running in a loop.
"Are you all right, Luce?" she finally asks, breathing hard.
Her red hair is caked with a mix of blood and some of that blue substance, her clothes ruined. I glance down at my body, finding myself equally dirty.
Raising a hand up, I feel bits and pieces of organic matter stuck in my hair and on my hoodie, and I barely stop myself from heaving.
Slowly, I shake my head.
"What the hell was that?" I whisper.
" That is why I'm not allowed to go out on my own." She sighs. "Gahh, where is Cer when I need him?" She stomps her foot on the ground.
But not a second after she utters his name, Cer appears in front of us. He looks us up and down, his nose wrinkling in disgust.
"I cannot leave you alone for one moment, can I?" He shakes his head.
"You could have come to get us! We just ran into an addict."
"You did that?" He raises a brow as he points to what's left of the man on the ground.
"No." She frowns. "He just exploded."
"Hm." He narrows his eyes. He scans the surroundings and notices the amassing crowd, as well as the glares he's receiving from the other people. "We need to leave."
Without waiting for us to reply, he grabs our hands and teleports us out.
Just like going through the portal, one second we're in the middle of the road, the next we're in a lush foyer the likes of which I've seen only in museums.
Marble columns are on each side of us, flowers in all shades of yellow and red curling from the ground up to the ceiling.
"Mother and Father don't know you're here yet. Make yourself presentable before you meet them," Cer says, turning to leave.
"Wha—" Thea blinks, grabbing his sleeve. "Where are you going?"
"I am needed. Aethon has gone missing."
"What do you mean?" She frowns.
Cer purses his lips.
"I don't know. It's not like him not to respond to summons."
"But he's Aethon . How could he have gone missing?" Thea pales.
"I aim to figure it out. Ze sent him to look into the demon incursions into the intermediary realms you witnessed." He nods at me. "Something is going on, and I don't like it."
"You don't think he's... dead?" Thea whispers.
He doesn't reply, his features taut. Removing her hand from his sleeve, he takes a step forward before he disappears.
Thea is left staring at the spot he's just vacated, her expression one of sorrow.
"Who's Aethon?" I ask, curious why she reacted like that to the mention of his name.
She takes a deep breath.
"He's Cer's best friend." She gives me a sad smile.
"I'm sorry," I try to comfort her.
"I'm sure he's fine. He's one of the most powerful deities I know. There's no way some demons could hurt him." She closes her eyes, her lips trembling. "Anyway." She blinks as she smiles forcefully. "Cer is right. My parents can't see me like this. Let's go inside and wash up."
I follow her as she opens a back door and leads me inside her home. We follow a narrow hallway, going up some stairs before we reach the ground floor. Yet what I failed to realize while being in the small yet beautiful foyer was that the main house would be so striking and so grand.
It must be the size of a football field. Or maybe two. Hell, the ceiling alone must be over fifty meters tall.
Everything is white and clean. While we are decidedly not .
The floors are polished to perfection, so much so I can see my grimy reflection in them—not to mention the fact that we're both dripping blood onto the ground. With everything so spotless, I have this unnatural urge to get down and scrub the stains away.
"Thea..." I whisper as I stop to simply stare at my surroundings.
Raising my gaze, I note a dome made out of diaphanous glass. The center is clear, allowing the unadulterated light from the sun to come down into the hallway, but surrounding it are stained glass windows of different colors containing artistic depictions. In fact, I'm shocked that they aren't too different from the church stained glass from my world.
I slowly take in the other features of the hallway—how is this just the hallway? The most similar comparison I can think of is the Greco-Roman exhibit at the Met, but even that pales in comparison to the beauty of this place. There's a level of detail that's as close to perfection as I've ever seen.
Surrounding us are five marble busts, while in the center of the room, there's a statue that's about three times as tall as me.
There are more white marble columns to the right and left, all situated in a circle around the hallway. At the back, there's a double staircase leading up to the second floor. The stairs are wide and long, the balustrade containing battle scenes etched in marble. From the bottom up, the scenes feed into each other almost like a movie that tells the story of a historic event.
"That's Alithea, the first Supreme from our family. The busts are the subsequent ones." She points to the statues.
"I think this would be the best time to tell me if you're a princess or something," I mumble, utterly in awe of the beauty before me.
I might have been to some luxurious places on Earth, but this? Nothing I've seen compares.
"Not a princess." She laughs. "My father is just a duke."
I swivel to stare at her.
" Just a duke?"
"Well, there are also archdukes and princes, and then there's the king. So we're not anywhere in the top three." She chuckles.
"If this is not even top three, I can't imagine what that would look like," I mutter.
An army of servants descends upon the hallway, all getting into a well-rehearsed formation as they surround us.
"Welcome home, my lady," they all say in chorus, not even daring to look at Thea.
"Are my parents home?"
"Their graces are away," one servant answers.
"What about Arwyn?"
"Her ladyship is with them as well. They are scheduled to return late afternoon."
Thea clicks her tongue against her teeth.
"When they arrive, tell them I'll meet them at dinnertime. Also let them know I brought a friend with me who's going to be our guest of honor."
"Yes, my lady."
"Thank you." She nods with a smile before she scans the servants, zeroing in on a woman. "You." She points at her. "Please see my friend to one of the guest rooms. The best one."
The servant immediately nods.
"And you." She points to another. "Please go to my seamstress and see what readymade gowns she has. Get everything she has available and deliver them to my friend's room."
"Yes, my lady," the servant bows.
This is all so foreign to me, I can only stare in wonder.
"Go with her, Luce. She'll show you to a room and you can clean up and rest. I'll have some food sent up as well, and I'll come get you when it's dinnertime to meet my parents."
I nod slowly.
"Do you think"—I swallow—"that they're going to have a problem with me being human?"
Considering what I've experienced so far, I need to ask.
"Don't worry about it." She waves her hand. "They'll love you."
I give her a faint smile, somehow not convinced.
She doesn't go into detail, though, telling me to follow the servant while she goes to her room.
The servant stops in front of me, her head bowed down. She's a woman in her forties or fifties, but I can't make out her features because her eyes are rooted to the floor.
"This way, please," she says.
"Thank you," I murmur as I follow her up the luscious staircase. We make a right turn, and that's where the real beauty of this place is.
Painting after painting adorns the walls. They're all so damn beautiful, I wish I had the time to stop and admire them. But with the brisk way the older lady is walking, I find it hard to keep up, let alone linger.
We move swiftly through another gallery, and I vow to take my time later on to study it—if I'm allowed, of course. As we walk down a long corridor, there are doors on my right and left—I assume these are all rooms.
She leads me all the way to the end of the corridor, where an ornate alcove separates the area from the rest. Upon stepping foot inside, I note two more doors, one on each side.
"This will be your room," she motions to the door on the right. "It is ready and equipped with everything you should need. The washroom has fresh towels and toiletries, but should you require something more, please ring for me."
"Ring?" I blink.
She opens the door, pointing to a button in the door's frame.
"One touch of a button and I shall be right with you."
"Oh. Thank you."
"If you'll excuse me," she says, still not looking at me as she scurries away.
I step inside the room, closing the door behind me.
I'm not sure what I expected. Certainly, after seeing the hallways , I don't think I had any expectation, since I was sure nothing could live up to any prior knowledge I had of luxury.
But this...
The entire room is rose gold, the walls adorned with marble panels in the same shade, containing more artworks.
In the middle, there's a double king-sized bed—that's the only way I could describe it since I've never seen something so utterly immense. The bedding is a darker shade of rose gold, all matching the environment.
But the most stunning feature of this room is the back of it.
There are floor-to-ceiling windows across the entire wall. I walk deeper into the room, and the view simply takes my breath away.
There's a sprawling garden in front, with intricate shapes molded from trees. Intermingled in the green space are marble gazebos and other beautiful statues, while in the middle, there's an enormous fountain, water pouring out from a jug held by an equally imposing figure of a woman. Immediately, I recognize it to be the representation of the statue from the hallway—the first Supreme. The basin is surrounded by a mix of marble and flowers, highlighting the contrast between nature and man-made.
Only in the distance do I see other equally ostentatious palaces, though they're so far I can barely make out their shapes.
Thea had said her father is merely a duke. But this is far more extravagant than any ducal estate I've seen in history books or period dramas.
Though I'd like nothing more than to admire the view some more, the smell wafting from my body is becoming increasingly harder to ignore. While I wait for the dresses Thea asked for me, I should at least wash myself and remove this stench.
Throwing another glance around the room, I release a satisfied sigh as I imagine rolling around in those luxurious sheets after I've bathed. It feels like forever ago that I enjoyed a modicum of comfort, and my body yearns for it.
As I tentatively open the door to the bathroom, I'm once more taken aback by the extravagant design.
The walls follow the same rose-gold theme, with the furniture made entirely out of marble. There's a vanity right by the entrance, and I note a variety of products spread out on the counter.
In the middle of the room is the bathtub—if I can call it that. The sheer size alone makes it more like a pool than a tub. I get giddy just looking at it since I'm in dire need of a good soak. At the very back, I make out a waterfall shower.
Stepping farther into the room, I pass by the toilet and the accompanying washing facilities. Everything is spotless, and I'm at once scared to stain it with my clothes. I look around in search of an area to deposit my soiled garments, but I eventually decide to just place them over the sink.
Slowly, as to not drip more grime onto the clean surface of the bathroom, I remove my clothes. My hoodie is entirely ruined, and I don't think I can salvage it. But the leggings are still in good condition and would be wearable after a good wash. Unfortunately, my white sports bra is completely stained, so I'll have to discard it. My socks are too dirty to keep, and even my shoes look as if they've been bombarded with a cocktail of blood and guts—not salvageable either.
I release a sigh as I place them by the sink, silently hoping Thea would give me a new pair of shoes, too.
Once I'm naked, I head to the tub, fiddling with the faucet until I get the right temperature for the water. While the tub is filling, I decide to use the waterfall shower to clean most of the grime off me. I may be dying to soak in warm, clean water, but if I step inside the tub as I am, that water will be decidedly not clean.
It takes me a good ten minutes of scrubbing to get everything out of my hair. But after I feel I've cleaned most of the blood off me, I turn off the water and move to the tub. I dip my toes into the warm water before slowly submerging myself.
"Oh my," I whimper as all that warmth envelops my body, cocooning me in sublime comfort. This is dangerous. I need to make sure I don't fall asleep since my eyes are already drooping.
Smiling, I let myself relax and forget everything that has happened in the last few days. Unfortunately, no matter how much I try to expunge the disappointment from my heart, I cannot seem to do so.
My thoughts stray to the what-ifs —if Ze had been with us, we wouldn't have been attacked. If he'd been with us, we would have never been targeted or singled out in the first place.
If he...
"I'm so damn silly," I groan, submerging myself entirely underwater.
I hold my breath as I squeeze my eyes shut, hoping that by cleansing my body I could cleanse my heart and soul too.
"Damn it," I breathe out as I come up for air.
My limbs are trembling, my heart beating loudly in my chest.
Instead of the relaxing bath I was hoping for, I just made myself more anxious with thoughts of Ze.
"He doesn't deserve it," I mutter to myself as I get out of the tub. "He's a bad man. A bad, bad man. So what if he was nice to me once?"
Grabbing a towel, I wipe my body and dry my hair as best as I can.
"Okay, maybe he was nice to me more than once. But that doesn't change his behavior or his insults," I tell myself with a nod.
Stopping by the vanity, I look around the various containers until I find some moisturizer. I leave my towel on the chair as I apply generous amounts of the cream all over my face and body. And because I haven't experienced such luxury in so long, I also dab some perfume behind my ears and on my inner wrists.
There's a wide selection available, but I go for a tuberose one, needing some flowery sweetness to banish the melancholy of my soul—but also because this happens to be Nikki's favorite.
When I'm done, I twirl around a few times to let the moisture sink in before I go back to the bedroom, ready to jump on the bed and close my eyes.
Yet as soon as I open the door, I spot a shimmering mist hovering right at the edge of the bed. The shadow takes the form of a man when I come closer, but particles of sparkling dust still hover in the air.
"Nikki?" I whisper in shock. I wouldn't have expected him to show up here, or now. "How did you get here?"
The shimmer intensifies.
"Where you go, I go. I thought you knew that by now," he says, his voice low and gravelly, echoing into the large enclosure. I don't think I'll get used to this disembodied voice of his anytime soon, yet I'll always be grateful to have at least this.
"You were able to follow?"
He nods.
I walk closer to him, ignoring the fact that I'm not wearing any clothes—it's not as if he hasn't seen me like this before. At least now I smell good—although I'm not sure if his ghost has any olfactory capabilities.
"Can you smell me?" I blurt out.
"What?"
"Never mind, that was a silly question," I mutter under my breath.
"Now I'm curious what you meant. Tell me," he murmurs, bringing his hand to my face, his cold fingers caressing my heated cheek.
I avert my gaze, blushing furiously.
"I felt good for the first time in forever. Clean. Pretty..." I trail off. "And I know you love this scent on me, so I thought maybe... I'm so silly, aren't I?" I shake my head, a sad smile painted on my lips. "You're just a ghost and here I am wondering if you can smell me, or if you're still attracted to me," I add in a low whisper.
"Luce, look at me."
He tips my chin up to look into his shadowy face. I try with all my might to imagine the features of the man I love in its place. He might not look like the man I'm used to, but he feels like it—mine, just like I am his. And to my shame, I crave him all the same. Black shadows or human form, I desire him just as much—maybe more due to this prolonged absence.
"I'm a mass of atoms. And they all vibrate in concert with yours. I may not be fully corporeal, but I can still feel you."
His tendril-like fingers caress my face, going lower.
"I'll always feel you ," he whispers.
His touch is cool, yet it burns my skin all the same. Moving down my neck, to my chest, he pauses when he reaches my breasts.
I hold my breath as he makes contact with my sensitive nipples. A shiver goes down my back as desire pools low in my belly.
Is it unnatural to want him like this? Is it so abnormal to desire him in any shape or form?
"I missed this," I whimper breathlessly.
"You did?" he asks, his voice rough.
I nod fervently, keeping myself still for fear this moment will be over and I'll be left bereft once more.
"Tell me more, sweetheart. What else did you miss?"
He teases my breasts just enough to get my heart rate up and fill my head with countless scenarios. But as he continues his journey down my body, a new type of want blossoms inside of me. One that cannot possibly be normal, but it feels right nonetheless.
"You. Inside me," I whisper, my cheeks reddening. "Filling this aching emptiness."
I never saw myself as a sexual being before him. He awoke my desire, lighting a flame inside of me that's been fighting to stay alive after his death.
"
Sweetheart ," he groans.
He trails his fingers lower, hovering over my belly.
I'm so gone that not even the presence of my scars bothers me anymore. They are a part of me, and every part of me is his.
"You're so beautiful," he rasps in a ragged voice. "Most beautiful thing I've ever seen."
He reaches between my legs, and before I can anticipate what he means to do, he plunges two thick fingers inside me.
I gasp at the sharp intrusion and struggle to keep my balance as I hold on to his shoulders. Shadowy tendrils wrap themselves around my arms as he keeps me in place, bringing me closer to him.
"So warm," he speaks, his tone one of awe. "So tight."
He thrusts his fingers all the way inside me, and I struggle to keep a straight face as he pumps them in and out.
"A bit slower," I tell him with a wobbly smile. "It's been a while."
My inner muscles struggle to accommodate the girth of his fingers, a stinging sensation echoing around my entrance.
"How long?" he barks as he rests his head on top of my shoulder, the shadows enveloping his body becoming wilder, more out of control. Shimmery particles circle around us like a cocoon.
"You know," I answer.
"Tell me," he demands, his fingers curling inside of me and making me tense. I dig my nails into his shoulders, but they easily slip through the undulating shadows that become increasingly more chaotic.
"Since the day of the accident," I whisper. "Please tell me you're not still jealous."
He doesn't reply.
"You're not jealous, are you?" I repeat, a little apprehensive.
"With you, jealousy is a constant state of being," he says tensely.
I blink in confusion.
"But you know I'd never..."
"Luce," he calls my name in a strangled voice. "You are mine. Do you understand that?"
He thrusts into me again, more forcefully.
"Say it," he urges, flattening the back of his palm against my mound and cupping my sex, his fingers buried deep inside of me.
The shadows cling to him like smoke clings to a flame, growing bigger and bigger as his emotions heighten.
Inside me, his touch is cold yet hot, a paradox I cannot explain. A pleasure marred by pain I should not enjoy—yet I do anyway.
"I'm yours." I swallow. "I'll always be yours."
More dark tendrils slither from him, enveloping me entirely. The speed of his pumps increases too, and tears stab at my eyes from the mix of pain and pleasure.
A sharp cry resounds in the air, one I barely recognize as my own voice.
"Please." I tug at him.
I'm unused to this side of him, but more than anything, I'm surprised by my reaction to it—by the fact that a part of me craves this harsh claiming.
Our lovemaking has always been gentle, mostly due to my past and the fact that he never wanted to do anything that might make me uncomfortable. But I've always known there was more to him—a raging storm masked by an undisturbed calm. There were moments I witnessed this untamed side of his, just as there were moments I wished he'd give in and simply take me.
Just like this. A wild, intense, almost primitive mating that has nothing to do with reason, only feeling.
Only unfettered desire.
Before I can draw in my next breath, I find myself on the bed with him looming over me, his fingers still inside me as he adds a third digit.
I thrash against the cool sheets, the sting of his possession searing itself on my flesh.
I'm full. So full.
"Nikki," I whisper, cupping his face and staring at those maddening shadows. "I'm yours. Never doubt that," I say as I tilt my hips, urging him on. A tingle goes down my spine, my muscles clenching as I tighten my grip on him.
I throw my head back as my breathing intensifies, the pain giving way to the sweetest pleasure. A little more. Just a little...
A knock at the door puts a stop to everything.
"Miss, I have brought your dresses," a feminine voice says from the other side.
Before I can blink, I'm all alone in the room, the shadows dissipating until the soreness between my legs is the only thing attesting he was here at all.
I quickly get out of bed and run to the bathroom to put on a bathrobe before opening the door and instructing the maid to leave everything on the table in the back.
She does as told, and as she leaves, I lock the door after her.
My heart is thumping loudly in my chest, my mind barely able to make sense of what just happened. A trickle of wetness slides down my inner thigh, and I get some tissue to wipe myself. As I part my robe to look between my legs, I'm not surprised to see a pinkish liquid cling to my skin—a combination of blood and arousal.
He wasn't gentle with me. He was rough and demanding. And despite the lingering sting of pain, I find myself wishing the maid hadn't knocked on the door.
Maybe I shouldn't even entertain thoughts of doing this with him as he is now, but the only regret I have is that we didn't finish what we started.
I didn't finish, despite being so close.
"Oh, Nikki. Ghost or not, you always like to torture me." I tsk to myself.
A smile plays on my lips as I wipe off the residual blood.
Yet now that this has happened, the idea of intimacy is sown into my mind, and I can't help but wonder.
Could we go further?
Could we...
The thought alone makes me blush to the roots of my hair. I don't care how taboo or wrong this may be.
He's my husband.
And shadows or not, I'll always welcome him in my body.
Even when his touch holds a bite of pain.
Maybe even more then.