Chapter 24 #2
Soren ignored Thessa’s faraway voice, her eyes still on Vane. “You said Anabeth had a warning for us.”
Vane shut his eyes. “Yes. Kronos knows. That was all she could gather, but—”
“He knows what?” she cut in. “That I’m alive?
I’m not. Sora is gone. She died that day in his palace, and I know you want me to be her, but I’m not.
Her memories don’t feel like mine, and I don’t think they ever will.
You want me to be the wife you lost that day, but I don’t feel the same emotions Sora felt. I’m sorry.”
She almost expected Vane to get angry, but instead, he opened his eyes again and looked at her, his gaze searing.
The faintest hue of silver swirled in his dark irises as he closed the distance, crawling towards her.
He traced his hand up her leg, his touch featherlight as he paused at her knee.
Her throat was dry, and the memory of what he and Sora had done in that creek bed flashed through her mind.
“You say you don’t remember how you felt,” he murmured, leaning in and replacing his fingers with his mouth. “But I’ve seen the way you look at me, Soren. You remember more than you say. You feel more than you admit.”
Her lips parted, but she managed to say, “Even if that was true, didn’t you learn your lesson? Loving Sora, loving me… It’s a death sentence. Worse. How is that worth it?”
“You are worth everything,” he said, sucking on the soft skin of her thigh, his hands sliding up to the bottom of her oversized tunic. “Anything.”
Her legs widened on instinct before she could stop them, and triumph flashed in his eyes. She bit her cheek, fumbling as she asked, “Did we—I didn’t see if we had ever…” She trailed off. As Soren, she had never been with a man in that way, but had Sora?
Vane’s lips curved, and his pointer finger, the one he wore his marriage band on, slid down her leg, caressing sensitive skin just shy of her undergarments. She gasped softly, heat pooling low in her belly.
“We’re married, my love.”
“We’re not. Sora was your—”
He nipped at her thigh, and she had to swallow the moan before it could surface as he scolded, “Your soul is the same. Fate even decided to mirror your faces. But do not think I am in love with some mere figment of a memory and placing it on you. I know you’ve lived a life and have had hardships of your own.
It doesn’t change how I feel. You will always own my heart. ”
Her chest rose and fell quickly. They were walking a dangerous line, and it had grown razor thin between them. One misstep, and she was terrified she would fall for him again.
Thessa was right. There was a price for everything. Love did not come free—not for them, not in this world where kings like Kronos and Johannas reigned.
But she was tired.
Tired of fighting herself, of fighting Vane and this feeling between them.
She didn’t want to admit it, but she had lied.
She had always felt the shimmer. Fate had brought them together for a reason.
She wasn’t naive enough to believe fate would save them, but fighting against its current was more than she could handle right now.
It was weak to give in, but maybe she was just that.
Slowly, she touched Vane’s face, tracing down the curve of his cheekbone and lifting his chin to look at her.
He froze, a kind of predatory stillness a mortal could not achieve.
His shock did not last long, though, and he rose up fully onto his knees.
He was so tall and her so short, they were nearly eye level like this, with her sitting on the cot.
His hand cupped the back of her head, fingers splayed across her cheek.
He leaned his forehead to hers, his breath shuddering as the tips of their noses brushed.
Her lips parted, the rush of exhaled air that escaped her audible in the quiet of night.
She threaded her fingers in his dark hair, pulling the strands free so it fell loose around his face.
He groaned softly, his other hand coming up to grip her thigh.
She wanted to kiss him, but even now, they were still on the edge of a barrier, and if she did that, it would finally shatter.
Her resolve was pointless in the end, as it always had been when it came to him.
“Please, Soren,” he whispered, their lips nearly touching.
He was on his knees, begging, but he couldn’t know she was just as desperate. He was fire, and for so long, she had felt so achingly cold. She hadn’t realized it was not merely of her own choice that her heart was coated in ice—it was the absence of him.
She closed the final distance between them, both gasping as their lips met. There was no soft build-up, only a collision of two powerful forces. He parted her lips, and she moaned in his mouth as she tasted him finally—finally.
Fire and Night.
Death, burning and ablaze.
“Gods,” she breathed between kisses.
He paused, pulling back, his eyes nearly black as he traced her swollen lips with his thumb and said in a low voice, “You and I are the only gods here, my love.”
A strange, heady sensation spread through her at his words—the feeling of power. She nipped at his bottom lip, and he hissed, but as she looked at him again, his eyes widened.
“There she is,” he murmured, his gaze locked on hers.
She blinked. “What is it?”
His mouth curved. “Ether, in your eyes. I can see it again.”
Ether…something only a powerful god possessed. Silver-hued magic, imbued into their bodies, into her body, and he had finally pulled it to the surface.
She curled a hand in his tunic and tugged him closer, kissing him desperately now. Need coursed through her, a current she could not—did not—want to fight. Not now, not anymore. But Vane hesitated. She could feel him holding back.
“You’re still healing,” he murmured.
She pressed her lips together. In the minutes that passed, the ache in her abdomen had faded even further. Something was happening to her, some change, perhaps brought on by the ether. Maybe she was becoming more of Sora than of the mortal she had been born as.
Carefully, she lifted her shirt up to find there was still a raised red scar where Kelshie’s dagger had embedded itself in her stomach, but the wound was closed, and it didn’t hurt any longer.
“I think I’m alright,” she said, tracing her fingers over the scar.
Vane put his hand over hers and nodded once. His eyes were dark and heavy-lidded as he said in a rough voice, “Scoot to the edge.”
Heat flooded her everywhere as she realized what he was intending to do, half from desire and half from embarrassment. No one had ever seen her, not even in the state she was now, and he wanted to see all of her.
“Now, Soren,” he ordered, flicking his gaze up to hers.
She bit her lip, and before thinking, she replied in a sharp voice, “Yes, sir.”
He smiled darkly as the power play began. It had been like this between them, or at least it felt familiar enough that she thought it must have. She would submit, and he would bring her to the edge, but in the end, she always won. She was a god, after all, and he was hers.
His calloused hands slid up her thighs, widening them. “You’ll need to stay quiet,” he said against her skin, his mouth migrating further and further up. “Do you think you can do that?”
She opened her mouth to reply, but then he pressed his mouth to her center, over her thin underclothes, wetting the fabric. She had to bite her lip hard enough, she tasted copper to stop herself from moaning.
He chuckled, the feel of the vibration against her core driving her mad. “Good, darling. You’re doing very well.”
She fisted her fingers in his hair—a silent demand. A low noise rumbled from his chest, and he murmured, “So impatient. Hips up.”
She obeyed, and he slid the undergarment off, tossing it to the side. Heat burned her cheeks. She was ready for him, almost too ready, swollen and already soaking wet. But he merely rasped, “Fuck, Sora,” laid a hand flat against her stomach, and licked across her center in one long swipe.
Her hips bucked and her legs closed, but he held them firmly open, sucking on her clit. Pleasure lit her up, every inch of her sensitive and aching. He groaned against her, and then… Oh gods, she thought she might actually die as he tongue-fucked her.
When he replaced his tongue with his fingers, he rasped, “Touch yourself, wife.”
She didn’t even remember to argue with him about the logistics of their marriage, instead lifting her hand to her breast. He pumped his fingers inside her, knowing just how to work her. He knew her body, even now, even after all these years.
“Wait,” he ordered, sensing her near the edge.
Her chest rose and fell in heavy breaths, the game coming to a peak between them.
They had reached the deciding moment, and perhaps as Soren, she would have submitted.
But there was another piece locked inside her, and it was coming out to play.
Perhaps it was Sora, or maybe both of them together.
It had always been there inside her, and it had taken Vane to obliterate the lock and throw away the key.
Her words were broken, but her voice was firm as she told him, “Come—with me. Now.”
She had no doubt he was close, even just doing this to her, even without her touching him. And from the way his breath caught just before he went down on her again like a man starved, she knew she had won.
She barely had the wherewithal to cover her mouth with her hand as release barreled through her, arching her back and filling her vision with stars.
The torches in the tent extinguished, and a touch of that dark ichor seeped from the prison she kept it in.
Her breath caught as she felt it, panic flooding her.
But Vane gripped her hand, breathing hard against the curve of her hip, looking up as he assured her, “It’s alright…it’s alright. I give you a part of me. You give me a piece of you.”
“But the magic is Death. It’s—”
“I’m fine, my love. This is how it’s always been. You didn’t hurt me.”
She relaxed slightly, and the torches lit around them again, bringing her back to the room. She felt dizzy as he kissed her stomach, gentle over the scar. But as her mind began to work again, catching up to the conversation they had been having, unease prickled at her skin.
“Vane?”
“Mhmm?”
“King Johannas knows what I did during the battle, doesn’t he?”
Vane stiffened then lifted his head and said quietly, “Can we just have a few minutes?”
“Vane, it’s almost dawn—”
“Then we wait.”
She pressed her lips together, understanding his request. They’d had so little time, even when she had been Sora, daughter of Nyx and Thanatos, and him just a half-mortal man in a farm field. Fate did not smile kindly upon them, even though she was sure it had plans for both of them.
He wanted just a few minutes. She could at least give him that before she tried to let him go completely.
So, she whispered, “Alright. Until dawn.”
“Thank you.” His breath fanned across her skin, a featherlight touch that made her shiver.
“Do you need to…wash?” she asked, scolding herself internally for her embarrassment, especially after what they had just done.
He smirked, his expression full of smug, male satisfaction. “Yeah, I do.”
She bit her lip and turned her head, averting her eyes as he stood to his full height. But he touched her face, forcing her to look at him again. Her cheeks were aflame, and yet she was curious, because some reckless part of her wanted to know everything about him…see everything.
He dropped his hand and walked towards the small basin in the corner. She didn’t look away when he pulled off his shirt, though she nearly gasped when she saw it. His back was a mess of scars, overlapping and long.
The whip in the memory. Kronos had done this.
Rage made her feel cold, and the torches flickered. Vane must have sensed it, because he turned his head back, anger mirrored in his eyes. Not for himself, she knew, but for her, especially as he said, “It was nothing, that pain. I deserved that pain for not stopping what he did to you.”
Her rage quieted, replaced by a heavy sorrow. “There was nothing you could have done,” she whispered. “He would have killed us both.”
Vane laughed bitterly, shirking off his pants.
Now, she did look away. Not because she didn’t want to see him like this, but because, for a moment, looking at him at all was too heavy, too painful.
There was a deep wound between them, the knife still buried in both their chests where Kronos had ripped out her heart.
And for it, for all Vane had suffered, for Kelshie, she would rip out his.
The cot bowed as Vane sat next to her, wearing his usual leather breeches, his chest still bare.
“It’s almost morning,” she said, and he nodded.
She sighed heavily. Outside, a dragon screeched, and dim light filtered in through the tent. She glanced at Vane. “King Johannas—”
But Vane cut her off, kissing her hard. She gasped against his mouth, though it was over by the time it had really started.
He pulled away, still cradling his face with one hand as he said, “He’ll likely send someone to investigate.
You were quite high up when it happened, so there’s no telling what they all saw. ”
“That I was going to try and kill him,” she confirmed sharply. “The masked rider.”
Vane took a quick breath. “Yes.”
“And the rest of it? The others in Aren’s army who I…” She trailed off, not quite able to say it.
Death was a whispered beat inside her. It always had been, but that didn’t stop her from being afraid of it.
Vane’s expression grew hard. “Johannas likes his weapons, and he prefers to be on the winning side. If you can provide him both of those things, he won’t touch you, at least not personally.”
“Vane…does he know about you?”
His gaze dropped as he opened his mouth, but then a horn sounded from somewhere in the camp. Vane shot to his feet, grabbing a shirt and leather chest armor, tugging them both on.
“More rebels?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know, just—” He cut himself off, swearing softly under his breath. His hand twitched at his side, and he muttered, “Damn it.”
“What?”
“The king is here.”