Chapter 19
NINETEEN
Nova
Aday passed. I was eager to get back to my kingdom—back to a realm where my magic was much easier to wield—but there were reports from Orin’s other allies that the route we’d taken from the Nocturnus Road was being watched.
We needed to be cautious, prepared for the worst, and the ordeal at the Hollow Grove had stretched us thin enough that we decided it was safer to wait.
In the meantime, there were plenty of things I needed to discuss with Orin, anyway. Plenty of things he and Thalia needed to talk about, too. She was less than thrilled about essentially being forced to reconnect with her father, but I did see them exchange a smile by midway through the second day.
Progress, at least.
Meanwhile, Aleks continued to keep his distance from me.
I still thought it was because of whatever effect the collected soul shard was having on him and his magic; he refused to even inspect it alongside the rest of us.
When Zayn had attempted to press him about it, it had resulted in an argument, and now the two of them were hardly speaking either.
As the sun began to sink below the tree line on the second day, I left the shard of Lorien’s soul in Thalia’s care and set off to find Aleks. I was determined to understand his strange behavior, and to make sure our group didn’t continue to unravel.
To my surprise, it didn’t take long to find him; he sat on the edge of the rickety wooden porch, his gaze fixed in the direction of Rose Point.
I came to stand beside him, leaning over the porch railing. It creaked and swayed a bit, but seemed sturdy enough, so I let it support even more of my weight while I tried to decide what to say.
Aleks ended up speaking first.
“I imagine people have started to swarm Rose Point by now,” he said. “I wonder what they’ll make of it all?”
“They’ll be glad to be rid of it and the spells surrounding it, I’d guess. They’ll probably finish tearing it down. Burn it, cleanse it through some bizarre ritual…whatever they can do to rid themselves of the memory of me and the shadows I brought upon that place.”
He glanced up.
“…They never liked me much,” I said, quietly.
“Their loss, wasn’t it?”
My cheeks warmed a bit. Looking back toward Rose Point, I lost myself again in thoughts of what had been—and what might have been, if things were really as simple as I’d once believed them to be.
My political betrothal hadn’t seemed simple at the time, but I would have taken it over what we faced now, no questions asked.
“I was truly prepared to marry you that night, you know.” The words slipped out before I could stop them.
“Really?”
I took a deep breath, steeling myself just as I had on that fateful night. “For the sake of my family and this kingdom that I so desperately wanted to prove myself to, I would have done anything.”
Aleks laughed. “Anything? Well, that makes it less of a compliment to me, doesn’t it?”
I shrugged. “I might have been somewhat attracted to you, too.”
“Only somewhat?”
“Fine. Very attracted.”
He got to his feet, amusement still lighting up his features. “Interesting.”
“You might not be aware of this, but you’re an incredibly attractive person.”
He drew close enough to kiss me but stopped just short of doing so.
My heart skipped a few beats as I stared into the golden depths of his eyes.
Those eyes always seemed to catch the moonlight in the most beautiful, intentional way, as if that heavenly sphere couldn’t help being captivated by him, too.
“I’m actually very aware of it,” he said.
I gave him a little shove.
He laughed again, and it sounded so real—the only real, meaningful thing in a day filled with unraveling truths and crumbling beliefs. It also sounded more like the Aleks I knew, making me forget about the odd way he’d been acting.
He looped his arm through mine. We walked for the better part of an hour, following a little offshoot of the larger creek I’d sat beside earlier.
It was dangerous to venture too far, so we simply traveled in a circle, doubling back again and again, talking and teasing one another as if we were far more careless than we actually were.
I’d spent so much of these past months walking in frustrating circles, it seemed like. But I didn’t mind this. It felt good to be directionless with him. No thoughts of beginnings or endings, no fears about where we’d come from or where we had to go next.
The few stray clouds across the full moon parted, bathing us in bright blue light.
We paused beside a relatively deep pool of the otherwise trickling stream, taking in the sight of our reflections.
In the glassy water, I watched his arms circling around me from behind, his head coming to rest on my shoulder.
The warmth of his body and the feel of his heart beating against my back made me feel steady. Safe.
Taking my hand and spinning me around to face him, he asked, “Would you still marry me?”
I grinned. “Are you proposing?”
His smile was softer, less teasing this time. He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he crouched beside the stream and ran his fingers over a few sprigs of green shooting up through the mud. I watched with a mesmerized little smile as those shoots blossomed into full flowers.
Every movement of his hand made more bloom around us, until an entire carpet of glowing flowers stretched before my feet. He collected a few handfuls, taking care to arrange them just so.
Rising back to me, he said, “I think of it sometimes, too. Not the pomp and ceremony, or the political maneuverings of it all—I never cared much about any of that. But the possibility of waking up beside you every morning?” He handed me the bouquet he’d collected.
“I would have been the luckiest man in the world.”
“You are proposing to me, aren’t you?” I teased. “Aren’t you supposed to be down on one knee?”
“You know I rarely miss an opportunity to kneel before you, but…no. I’d like to think I could plan a better proposal than this.”
“I think a spontaneous proposal would be lovely.”
“You would, wouldn’t you? Chaotic little beast.”
“What would you do without the chaos I bring into your life?”
“I don’t know.” He took my hand, lifting it and brushing a kiss across my knuckles. “And I don’t particularly want to find out.”
I melted at the words. At the way he was looking at me as he said them.
He still wore that softer, more vulnerable smile that I so rarely got to see, and everything around us blurred as I stared at him.
I could only think about kissing that smile—so that’s what I did.
I pulled him closer, throwing my hands around his neck, dragging his mouth down to mine.
It was several minutes before we pulled away from the kiss and returned to our hideout, quietly slipping away to the room Finch had prepared for me, which was tucked away at the very back of the house.
I locked the door behind us.
The small room felt like its own world. A single oil lamp flickered on the bedside table, casting dancing shadows above us as we collapsed onto the bed.
Through the thin walls, conversations occasionally drifted in from the main part of the house.
And there was movement out there—so much restless movement—but we somehow ignored it all.
Aleks turned to face me. I closed the distance between us, reaching to cup his face in my hand. He leaned into my touch, eyes closing for a moment. When they opened again, the desire burning in them ignited my entire body.
His lips crashed into mine with dizzying force.
And just like when we’d walked in circles outside, we no longer cared about all the plans waiting to be made or the battles looming ahead.
But we weren’t directionless in this room.
Every brush of his body against mine felt intentional, weighted with meaning.
We shed our clothes slowly, reverently, as if following the steps of something sacred.
He trailed his fingertips across my bare, trembling skin.
Swiped his tongue over the peaks of my breasts with the same torturous intent before finally taking them into his mouth and sucking until I gasped out his name.
As I tried to catch my breath, he slipped his arm around my waist, yanking me closer. Our hips pressed together, his desire hard and obvious as it throbbed against my own pulsing need.
He took one of my legs and draped it over his body, opening me more fully to take him in, then shifting his own position until we were perfectly aligned.
With a slow, powerful thrust, he buried himself inside of me.
As he pushed deeper, his gaze met mine. Held it.
Even if he hadn’t been moving inside me as he did it, it still would have felt devastatingly intimate—the way he was watching me as he claimed me.
As if he saw every bit of me. All the messy, unraveled parts.
The fears. The uncertainties. And he still wanted to bind himself to me despite it all, to push deeper and deeper until there was no chance either of us could ever deny our connection.
I didn’t last long under that intimate stare. I didn’t want to last. Didn’t want to hold anything back from him.
I wrapped an arm around his neck for leverage and met his deep, powerful thrusts with increasingly desperate thrusts of my own.
He moved his fingers with expert strokes across my center while his arm shoved against my thigh, pushing my legs farther apart, all while he continued to pound into me, and the combination of it all quickly sent me over the edge.
My cry of release likely would have been loud enough to concern the rest of the house, had Aleks not pressed his mouth over mine as it came. The sound faded into gasps of pleasure, swallowed up by his own answering groans as he spilled himself inside of me.