Chapter 15
EVANDER
THE STUDY DOOR creaks open. I keep my eyes fixed on my book as the Devaliant steps into the room, but I track her all the same—the rustle of fabric, the sweet, wild scent of jasmine and rain and soap from the bath.
“Hello, Wolf.”
“Hello, nemesis,” I say, flipping a page. Not reading a damn word.
Her feet whisper across the carpet. “I’m surprised someone as important as you doesn’t have an army of servants. I probably aged a year wandering these halls searching for you.”
“I had to tell them not to come when a mortal princess landed on my doorstep.”
“You’re more than welcome to take me back to Vartena.”
“Still mulling that over. Deciding if it fits in with my plans for you.”
She heaves a sigh. “I need to go home. I told you I have unfinished business.”
I don’t reply to that. Instead, I snap my book shut and toss it aside, pinning her with the full weight of my attention.
Her silver-white hair is mussed, cheeks still flushed from the bath.
She’s wearing the shirt I left out for her.
It hits mid-thigh, barely decent, the barest hint of cleavage.
My gaze drags over her legs, snagging on the angry welts and scratches marring her luminous skin—souvenirs from her tussle with my roses.
“Come here,” I say, patting my thigh.
A flush crawls up her neck. “You can’t be serious. I’m not sitting on your lap.”
“No?” I give her a smirk. “You had no problem straddling me when I let you play with my knife.”
“That was different.”
Was it? As far as I can tell, the only thing that’s changed is our location. She’s still looking at me like she wants to bathe her hands in my blood. I’m still picturing how she’d feel on my cock.
“I need contact for my power to work. So unless you’d prefer me to lay you on the rug…” I pat my thigh again. “Sit.”
For a moment, I’m sure she’ll tell me to go fuck myself. I practically see the battle waging behind her eyes, the swift calculation of her rapidly dwindling options.
Then, as if the concession is being dragged out of her, she steps forward and settles across my thighs as if she’s lowering herself onto hot coals. “Happy now?”
“Ecstatic.” I reach for the buttons on her borrowed shirt. “Let’s see what damage is left.”
Her hand shoots out, fingers wrapping around my wrist. “Don’t get any ideas.”
I arch a brow. “About what? Healing you? Or the fact that you’re about to be naked in my lap?”
“Both. Neither.” She blows out a frustrated breath. “Just… behave.”
“I always behave. I just have my own definition of good behavior.”
After a second of hesitation, she slowly releases me.
I take my time with the buttons, each slip of fabric a slow reveal. The delicate hollows of her collarbones, the smoothness of her sternum, the lush swell of her breasts. Her nipples pebble in the cool air, and I bite back a groan. Devla svaust, the stars made my nemesis pretty.
She tracks each movement, a faint tremor running through her. As if it’s taking every scrap of self-control not to bolt. Not to snarl and snap.
Good. If she didn’t have the sense to be afraid of me, I’d be questioning her intelligence.
“Relax,” I murmur. “I won’t bite unless you ask me to.”
“That’s not as reassuring as you think it is.”
My hands find her waist as I unwind the bandage with careful fingers.
Her breath hitches when the wrap falls away, exposing what remains of her wounds: some slight bruising, some cuts not yet fully healed, her new injuries from my garden.
Yesterday had been about keeping her from slipping into the Void, mending all the internal damage.
Today is for the rest. The small agonies.
I flatten my palms against her ribs and carefully channel my magic into her. Not too much—just the faintest lick of warmth chased by a whisper of pleasure.
“What—” Her voice breaks on a gasp. “What are you doing?”
“Healing you. Unless you’d prefer I stop?”
A shiver rolls through her as another pulse of power sinks in. Her spine arches, those long lashes fluttering against her cheeks. The scent of her arousal blooms in the air, rich and heady, and when her eyes open, she looks perturbed. Irritated.
I hold back a laugh. The Devaliant wants to fuck me—and she hates herself for it.
“Doing okay there?” I ask, all innocence.
I’m a bastard. A killer. I’m going to ruin this girl’s life. But I’m not quite cruel enough to point out that I feel the slick heat of her pussy through my trousers, not when she’s this close to bolting.
She gives her head a small shake as if to dislodge an unpleasant thought. “It feels… different from before. The pain is less.”
I hum thoughtfully, letting my touch skim over the delicate ladder of her ribs, the sharp jut of her hips.
So many lovely bones. “I was out of practice yesterday and kept it brief so I didn’t accidentally do any damage.
But this gift wasn’t for the battlefield.
It was meant for worship.” I pause, meeting her gaze.
“For giving pleasure as well as mending.”
Her thighs clench around my hips and her ass squirms right over my cock. I grit my teeth, shifting her back so she doesn’t feel how hard I am. If she keeps moving like that, this is about to get uncomfortable fast.
“Let’s keep things strictly clinical, shall we?” she says tightly. An attempt to reestablish boundaries eroded by proximity and sensation.
“If you insist,” I say, shrugging. As if I’m not aroused just from having her here.
I gentle my touch and keep the contact chaste as I work. She swallows, glancing away to focus on the roses snaking up the chamber walls and nearly covering the ceiling.
“Your roses are lovely. The way you talked about them before, it was almost as if…” She pauses, careful. Deliberate. “As if you spoke to them.”
Something tightens in my chest—some wounded thing I buried three hundred years ago. My hands flex against her waist before I can stop them, an aborted flinch. I’m tempted to remind her of her place. Show her the cost of prodding at old scars.
Instead, I shove down all those inconvenient thoughts and say, “The realm granted me the power of an Eternal. It recognizes me as part of itself. Sometimes, it speaks. Sometimes I listen.”
“And what does it say?”
And this is the side of her I don’t know what to do with. Always pushing, pushing, pushing. Seeking out the ugly, squirming bits and holding them up as if to say, Look what I found. Aren’t you curious? Aren’t you dying to unearth all the broken pieces of yourself?
No, vicious girl. You don’t get to see. You don’t get to pluck out all my ugliest secrets and pin them to the wall for your perusal.
The roses creep and curl along the stones of my tower, an ever-present reminder of my failings. Of the king I refuse to be. And each year, the branches grow thicker, the blooms more suffocating. The realm’s wordless message grows louder.
You’re abandoning your responsibilities. You’re wasting all that power I gifted you.
I lean in and whisper, “It says you ask too many fucking questions.”
She snorts. “I hope it scolds you for being a neglectful gardener. The weeds are staging a revolt. Your roses are strangling your tower.”
“My duties keep me away,” I say curtly. “You’re very chatty and judgmental for someone at my mercy.”
“You’re awfully defensive about some roses. Maybe I want to know more about the male who’s going to kill me. Is that so strange?”
“Strange? No. Foolish? Absolutely. The more you know about the monster, the harder it becomes to despise him.”
“Bold of you to assume I could ever stop despising you.”
I glare at her and shove another pulse of magic into her body, watching her eyes flutter shut. A low moan catches between her teeth as the last injuries knit closed without a mark left behind.
“You’re as mended as you’ll ever be.” I run careful fingers over the smooth skin. “Not even a scar. See? I’m very talented.”
Emotions flicker over her features as she takes in the flawless expanse of her torso. “It’s like it never happened.”
Something in me gentles. “The worst ones never really go away. No power in either realm can heal those.”
Those are carved into the soul, knotted up and gnarled in all the black spaces. The holes where something precious used to live before it was ripped out at the root.
My attention snags on her arm—on the ladder of neat marks scoring her flesh on the inside crease of her elbow. Deliberate. I trace the outer ridge with my finger with a barely there graze. “These aren’t from a fight.”
They’re too precise. Each notch is the same depth and width, five of them lined up like little soldiers.
A sudden tension thrums through her. “No. Those are private.”
“And this?” I shift to the mark slashed across her throat, a brutal seam of scar. It was a killing stroke. “Is this private?”
The Devaliant clears her throat, shrugging back into my shirt.
“It was given to me,” she says, doing up the buttons, covering up all that flawless skin again.
She makes no move to dislodge herself from my lap.
“By a nobleman who thought he was entitled to take whatever he wanted. When I refused him, he decided if he couldn’t have me, no one would. ”
A quiet rage simmers through my veins. What sort of cowardly piece of shit tries to murder a woman over saying no?
“Give me his name.” I can’t keep the anger out of my command.
The beginnings of a slow, savage smile tugs at her mouth—a glimpse of the creature she could become if given enough time and the right incentive. “He’s already dead. The palace guards saw to it.”
Some of my bloodlust banks. “Then where are his remains?”
The amusement stays. I love that expression on her, the way her face lights up. “Planning to decorate your garden with a rotting corpse, Wolf?”
“Don’t be crass. I’d get you a courting gift first. Carve his spine into twin hunting knives and present them to you on a bed of his viscera as an early deathday present.”