Chapter 52 #3
Augustus kissed past her jaw and down her throat. He paused just over her heartbeat and felt the throb against his tongue.
In the distance, laughter peeled into the night.
Selene drew away—just a touch. Her cheeks were a warm pink, her breath shallow. Eyes full of desire, and… Something else.
He smoothed hair away from her temple. “What’s that look?”
“Look?”
“I think you’re fighting the urge to eat me alive, but a part of you feels bad about it.” He winked. “Don’t. I’ll allow you every last morsel.”
She nudged his arm, and for a heartbeat, it was easy between them. Sweet. Playful. The tide curled around their ankles as though urging them closer.
But then her smile faltered, and the weight returned to her gaze. “I love you. You know that, don’t you?”
Augustus’s chest tightened, dread curling low in his gut. “Yes.”
“Loving you has changed my entire life.” She traced his lower lip with the pad of her thumb. “When you kiss me like that— You’re all I want.”
He canted his head. “And you’re all I want, Selene. What’s this about?”
Selene’s eyes shut for three eternal seconds, then she stepped out of his arms. She looked up at him, and the light was gone. “I need something else.” Her throat moved with a deep swallow. “I’m leaving.”
Augustus stepped backward, out of the water. Away from her scent. Her warmth.
He couldn’t feel his heart.
It must still be in her hands.
She followed him step for step. “Come with me.”
She was leaving, but pleading for him to go? “Selene, even if I were allowed to return to Perean, my dad needs us here.”
“I didn’t say I was going back to Perean. Not yet, anyway.” Her gaze lowered. “And I know you think you need to stay here for your dad... I would never dream of asking you to walk away from him right now. But—”
Her eyes lifted, and tears shone in them. “But, I love you and I’m selfish.”
“Then I’m selfish, too, because I’m going to ask you for three months.”
Selene flinched as if slapped, then said, “I know it’s not fair.”
“Fair would be five months.”
He’d take one month. All he needed was enough time to come up with a plan that suited them both.
“There’s something I have to see through, Augustus, and time isn’t something I have to give. The babies will be born soon—”
“Babies?” A jolt shot through his heart. “Are you—?”
“No,” she rushed to say, hands up, eyes wide. “I’m not— No.” She swallowed. “I can’t explain it, and that’s why I have to go. There are others out there who can help me.”
Suddenly, he was back on that dream beach facing his mother. “You and Selene have more to learn and accomplish before the end.”
But why now? They had years—decades—of life ahead of them. They’d survived that damned prophecy. They made it to their twenty-first year. Why the rush all of a sudden?
“I don’t understand why you have to go now,” he said. “Give me a few months. I’ll take you wherever you want.”
Augustus dug into his pocket and withdrew the sketch he had commissioned in preparation for tonight. He couldn’t give her the final product for months still, but he had a plan.
“Here.” He filled her hand with the pencil drawing on thin vellum. “Our ship. Our home.”
Selene stared at the drawing and read the name at the top. “The Komera.”
“And I already know what you’re thinking, but I don’t want to take her into battle. I want to fill the decks with our family, Selene. Kids and friends and Little Gus. Turos, too, if he wants.”
“Augustus.”
“We’ll be real merchants, and I’m not just saying that this time. I’m serious—”
“August—”
“They’ve already started building her. If you could—”
Her tears brought him to a halt, and pain lanced through his chest.
She met his eyes. “We can’t keep circling each other like this. You waiting for me to be ready, me waiting for you… It isn’t fair to either of us.”
“I’m not asking for fair. I’m asking for time, Selene. Please.”
She drew in a deep breath and blinked the tears from her eyes. “By the time I come back, Mettius will be on his feet again. The ship will be ready, and we’ll figure out our next steps.”
Augustus understood the argument, but that didn’t erase the desperation to lock her in a room until she came to her senses.
He cupped her face and wiped the wetness off her cheeks with his thumbs. “I just got you back.”
Selene leaned into him and closed her eyes. “You’re not losing me, Augustus.”
“Then why does it feel that way?”
She kissed him, and he gave in, breath ragged.
The tide hissed around their ankles, the dronsian cried overhead, and the world spun out of reach.
When she finally pulled back, breathless and shining in the moonlight, Augustus knew two things with terrifying certainty: she loved him.
And she was still going to leave.
Alexandra Vitalatos had been listening to Titos complain for long enough.
He’d been foolish enough to trust her counsel, foolish enough to believe her prophecies were anything but a mask she wore to keep him pliant. She’d let him use her name, let him imagine her weak-minded.
Now, she was bored with the game.
At her dressing table, she dabbed perfume on her throat and smoothed her skirts. Dinner had begun half an hour ago. That was long enough.
In the bathing chamber, eight-year-old Evander Demakis sat curled against the wall where she’d left him. Wide eyes, thin wrists, soft as the rest of his useless family. He flinched when she offered her hand, but he took it.
“You’ve been so good,” she said. “You deserve a treat.”
Together they walked the torchlit hall. Screams reached them, faint at first.
Evander’s grip trembled.
Alexandra smiled.
The double doors to the dining chamber yawned open, and the last of the screaming servants fled the room like horses from a fire.
Inside, the Demakis royal line sprawled across their feast like ruined dolls left out in the rain. The sweet rot of spiced wine and blood thickened the air.
Titos slumped at the head, eyes glazed, a ribbon of blood from nose to chin.
Daphira’s jeweled hand was frozen on the table’s edge.
Calliane and Belenor gaped like fish hauled from the river, mouths red and slick.
Even Thessa—clever, observant Thessa—lay boneless in her chair, Dyphis Flower clawing her insides to ribbons.
And there was Kassandra.
Her aunt’s eyes, so like her mother’s, forever narrowed with suspicion, were wide now in a mask of shock. Her body sagged against the carved wood.
Evander whimpered, trying to recoil.
Alexandra tugged him forward. His feet refused to move, but her hand squeezed tighter, and forward he went until his shoulder pressed beneath her palm. His little chest rose and fell too fast.
“Steady,” she whispered, brushing invisible dust from him. “You must look upon them. Remember this.”
The boy blinked up at her, confused, afraid.
Alexandra bent to his ear, her lips brushing his dark hair. “Remember it all… Your Majesty.”