Chapter 127 Rhea
Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-Seven: Rhea
Our next movements are slow, like the untangling of snarled threads, as Nox’s words wrap around me.
“Tell me what you want,” he says. Pleads.
“Grant me the permission to be what you need now so that I can worship you in the way you deserve, Rhea.” He brushes a loose strand of my hair away from my face, fingertips trailing down my cheek.
“Let me atone for every way I’ve failed you. Please.”
I want to tell him that it’s ironic he feels that way.
That after everything I just revealed, he isn’t the one who should carry that guilt, yet I had shown him my biggest fear.
I had confessed my darkest shame, and Nox had stared at those ugly, thorny pieces and declared me a flower worth wanting.
Had pricked his fingers as he reached for me, jagged edges and all, and it had not turned him away.
I wanted to do the same. I wanted to have him.
For the first time in so long, I simply wanted.
But I can’t make the words scrape up my throat, can’t pull them from the pit that’s still very much inside of me.
So I gently grip his tunic instead. Giving the consent he wants as I lightly tug him with me into the bathroom.
And Nox, as he has always done, understands what I can’t say as he reaches over and turns the shower on, his gaze never leaving mine.
Another unhurried dance begins between us—one where we take turns removing clothing as if there are no guards hunting us down or kings and queens desperate to keep us apart.
As if I’m not still coated in the imaginary blood of those I killed and Nox isn’t bound by the way his kingdom is turning against him.
Because, of course, we are and I am and he is.
Bare in the golden light of the pillar candles lit around us, I fight the urge to cover myself. To hide the space between my hip bones that is more concave. The ribs I can easily count beneath my skin. And the brand…
“You are so beautiful,” Nox murmurs, and if I thought it might be a poor attempt at making me feel better, one glance at him tells me that he’s not just plying me with sweet words.
With his lids half closed and his eyes glazed over, Nox doesn’t just look at me.
He studies me, venerates me with the way his entire body leans in my direction as if he’s caught in some invisible orbit.
His fingers twitch at his sides as steam begins to curl out from the shower, tendrils of it stretching in our direction, yet all is lost to him except for me.
It’s silly to feel myself warm beneath his observation.
To have my magic rising to meet his, and yet I had been so sure he wouldn’t be able to stomach the mark and, by extension, me. I had felt so lonely, and now—
Drawing in a deep breath, I reach my hand out, and together, we step beneath the hot water.
It’s darker in here, shadows that aren’t controlled by Nox or made by me cradling us as the water hits the tops of our heads and travels down our backs.
I watch as rivulets drip from the longer strands of Nox’s hair, creating pathways over his forehead and down his nose.
Over the curve of his lips, a sight I linger a few breaths longer on.
Heat, both foreign and familiar, sparks to life low in my stomach—so abruptly that it nearly makes me gasp as I flick my eyes up to Nox’s.
Finding him already looking at me. Patiently meeting me where I’m at as he’s always done.
In truth, that feeling—the longing and attraction and love—that stirs within me is frightening.
Does feeling that, here and now, mean I’m trying to absolve myself of everything that came before?
Is it selfish to want to just have this moment with him?
To find that buried beneath the cold and bitter darkness, there is warmth brimming?
That there is a yearning for him that perhaps was never snuffed out as I had thought but only masked?
Is it unforgivable that I want to surrender to it?
“Do you trust me?” The question knocks me from my own head as I blink away water that has gathered on my lashes.
The skin at Nox’s chest has taken a slightly pink hue from the hot water, evidence of just how much time he must have been waiting for me to do or say anything while I had been trying to figure out if I deserved to be temporarily absolved from my sins.
Though the answer to the question is pressing at my lips before I even take my next breath, I still force myself to say it slowly.
To make sure Nox knows that my hesitations are not because of him.
“I trust you with my life. With my magic.” I swallow roughly.
“With my body and with my heart. There is no part of me that is not yours, Nox.”
For better or worse, I am his.
Reassured by my answer, he nods and reaches past me to grab the new bar of soap resting at the tub’s edge and a clean washcloth next to it.
“When we were separated, I had the hardest time doing things alone that we had once done together,” he admits, giving me the first soapy cloth before grabbing one for himself.
My throat constricts as I watch him run his cloth up his arm.
“Eating. Sleeping. Training. Even showering. Everything reminded me of you, and doing them alone was admitting you weren’t there.
It was admitting that my heart was missing half of itself.
And sometimes—” He drags the cloth across his chest—over the ring he had given me when he asked me to marry him—and down the other arm.
My grip on my own washcloth tightens, my hands suspended in the air.
“Sometimes, I would let my mind wander to dark places. Ones where voices whispered that I wasn’t going to see you again.
That my weaknesses had led to you being taken.
That they were the cause for your suffering.
And something as simple as a shower would turn into me hating myself.
First, because you weren’t there. And then, because I was replacing the memory of us doing it together with this new, horrible one. ”
I draw my washcloth closer as I turn over what he’s said, startled at the fact that he felt similar to how I did in our time apart.
“I was assigned a handmaiden,” I begin, dropping my attention to where the wash cloth meets my forearm.
“Her name was Eve, and I’m ashamed to admit I did not like her at first. The king ordered her to bathe me, and I hated the idea that her hands, even as benign as the touch was, would replace yours on my skin.
Hated that anyone else would see me undressed and vulnerable because those were things I only wanted to be with you.
But she was bound by a blood oath to obey the king, and I was stuck under his influence because of the ring. ”
I don’t look back up at Nox, but I see his movements still, the cloth’s path halted over his defined stomach, the muscles perhaps showing a little more easily than before.
“She was persistent in her attempts to befriend me and relaxed at her job as she tended to me, and towards the end, when everything felt hopeless, she was the only bit of brightness that remained. But when I found out what the king was doing…” My voice breaks on a too sharp breath, so I focus on moving the cloth over my other arm and then my chest, waiting for the tightness there to ease before continuing.
“When I found out how he was hurting her, I knew that I would do anything to get her away from him. To try to protect her so that no one else would be hurt by him in my name. That is why I let him kiss me. Why I invited it.”
“And that act is not one that deserves punishment, Rhea,” he reminds me gently, waiting until I finally look at him. My heart aches at the tenderness in his gaze, at the softness of his expression. I love him. Gods above and below, I love him. “Certainly not from me.”
I shake my head as I stare at him. “I don’t deserve you,” I confess, the words bitter on my tongue.
But Nox lifts the corner of his mouth, just a fraction, as he shifts his body closer to mine.
“Funny, I was about to say the same thing to you.” I can’t quite laugh, the gesture too unfamiliar now, but that small blossoming warmth within me grows.
And I find myself eager to latch on to it.
To let it give me hope that we might be okay. That, one day, I might.
Lifting my cloth from my body, I reach it out towards Nox, a fluttering in my stomach signaling my nerves.
And as I watch his expression shift from that slight playful edge to something more reverent, I decide that surrendering to our love could never be a bad thing.
He takes the cloth from me, and I turn around, my breath caught in my chest.
I feel him come up behind me, close enough that the heat of his body battles against that of the shower but still not touching me.
In the small pause that lingers, I feel the question that he hasn’t asked.
I had given my consent earlier, but this is another step further.
This isn’t just permission to see me naked but to touch me.
Even if it is just something as banal as washing me and nothing more, Nox needs me to say that I want it, and I need him to know that I trust him.
I look over my shoulder at him, taking in the way his hair is plastered to the sides of his face.
The slight stubble that shadows his jaw and the way my ring is nestled right over his heart.
“I want you to touch me, Nox,” I say, eyes moving up to his.
Infusing my voice with the love I have for him, I add, “I give you permission to touch me however you want.” Turning back, I let my eyes close and force my fingers to relax, even as my heart races.