Chapter 32 Lessia
Lessia
She never wanted to let go of him.
She never wanted this moment to end.
She never wanted to forget the happiness rushing through her every vein as Merrick carried her through the streets. The dancing and chatting people must have heard Merrick’s declaration, as they cast appreciative words their way and cheered when Lessia waved back.
And she especially never wished for the image of Merrick’s wide smile as he held her closer, carefully making his way down a weaving path lined with white stone, to fade.
His grin was so pure. So happy. So different from anything she’d ever seen brighten his features.
Lessia laughed as Merrick placed his tongue between his teeth, his eyes narrowing on the steepening path, and as his eyes flicked to hers, a thrill raced down her back, a burning need building in her core.
Merrick groaned—probably smelling her—before he sprinted the final steps down to the glittering pool of black water, one of his hands sneaking up to cup her breast under her tunic, wrangling a moan from her throat.
She didn’t even bother scolding him as he growled “Get the fuck out” to some poor Fae getting ready to go in. They blanched before scrambling up with their belongings and rushing past Lessia and Merrick to give them privacy.
This was their night. Hers and Merrick’s. She knew it was his gift to her before they started the long journey—before they yet again had to fight for their lives. And for once… she wanted it all.
Needed it. Didn’t want to think about anyone else but him.
Didn’t want to think about the friends they’d left behind.
The family. The war that was closing in on the world she loved.
The threat of death that hung heavy over him and her—the tiredness she ignored in her limbs and mind, which she knew would scare her again come sunup.
For tonight…
There was only him.
Merrick seemed to be of the same mind, because as he set her down by the edge of the lake, his fingers laced with hers as their reflections in the still surface looked back at them, and he whispered, “You and me.”
Tears stung her eyes at that, but they were happy ones.
It was him and her. Merrick and Elessia.
His eyes met hers in the mirrored surface, and she wondered how she’d ever missed it, how she’d ever thought that she’d loved before. It was so clear they belonged together—that the two people with the stars and the large moon looming above them were one.
She didn’t even flinch when more figures appeared behind them.
Merrick’s parents stood behind his right shoulder. Thissian and his mate behind her left side. So many others spread out across the hillside, standing across every few feet of the stone path and the grassy slope.
They all smiled at her and Merrick, and the acceptance—a feeling she’d never felt before tonight, but which had started to fill her in that tavern when people came up to her and thanked her for what she’d done—trickled through her body like the water she hoped would soon seep across her skin.
She felt their love, their pride, their… hope, like it was her own.
And somehow, from somewhere, she felt the presence of her own parents.
Almost like a whisper, their pride—their love—brushed her skin, and she knew…
They remembered her. They knew her. They were proud of her.
And even though they might not be around her—not like Merrick’s mother and father, who smiled at her as if they sensed what she did—they were inside her.
They were part of her. Like Merrick, they would always be part of her.
It didn’t matter that she’d changed, broken and healed and everything in between…
Their love would always run through her veins.
While Merrick’s smile had dropped, there was awe in his dark eyes as they went from the people behind them to her, and they both remained quiet—Lessia barely dared to breathe—as the people placed their hands over their hearts in the way Fae did to show their love during burials.
She wasn’t sure if it was a welcome or a goodbye—or if she really wanted to know—but Lessia didn’t have time to linger on it when something flickered behind them, and Merrick’s eyes and hers widened when the souls disappeared.
Fire and lightning lit up the lake instead, the rumbles of a storm roaring in the air, but when they whipped their heads up, the sky above them was as clear as it had been all night.
Still, the booming sounds seemed to wrap all around them, and Lessia could almost smell the smoke from the fire raging across the reflection.
She held on to Merrick as she turned back to the lake, a current running over her skin as a strange mixture of energy and tiredness swept through her. Merrick must have felt the same thing because he tugged her to him as the image once again shifted.
Lessia caught a glimpse of a ship and a lone male, with hard green eyes and wild hair so dark brown it was almost black as it blew around his face, in its bow.
The image vanished before she could blink, and it shifted to reveal the five girls from her earlier dream, causing both her and Merrick to gasp.
The girls reached for each other, their fingers nearly touching—
Their reflections were gone before Lessia could close her mouth, but she couldn’t stop her hand from grasping for the vision, as if she could hold on to it and make it real.
Only Merrick’s reflection and her own looked back at them now, but Lessia staggered when they reminded her of the ones they’d seen in the Lakes of Mirrors.
They were wrong. Twisted.
Her face was filled with rage, a defiance she’d never seen or felt. Her amber eyes became green, then brown, then a mixture of both, while Merrick’s dark ones reflected with green so deep it reminded her of vast forests.
A cold rippled through her, and she wasn’t certain if it was good or bad.
Was this the gods playing with their minds? Like they’d tried to do those weeks back?
Her worry must have echoed in Merrick because his lip drew back in a snarl as he glared around them, his shoulders stiff and muscles coiled with readiness.
More images painted the surface, moving faster now.
A burning world, the crackling of fire blasting her ears and heating her skin.
A tall mountain peppered with snow that seemed to be moving down, chasing something.
A bright realm, exploding into light, forcing her eyelids shut for a moment.
Then a darkness so suffocating it made her reach for her throat.
Elessia.
The voice sounded familiar somehow, and she was reminded of the wyverns—of the bond that allowed Auphore to speak into her mind. But she was also reminded of the gods… of everything they caused and everything they continued to be the reason for.
Her and Merrick’s death sentence.
The fear. The worry. The sorrow they’d caused. The defiance she’d felt—the foreign one that first seemed to be another’s but that she now welcomed—rushed over her skin, making her limbs tingle and muscles tremble.
No. She was not going back to being scared of the gods.
They’d already killed her once. What more could they do?
Lessia saw the resolve in Merrick’s eyes at the same time as she ordered, “Enough!”
The world silenced, the cracks and rumbles fading, but those images of worlds she didn’t know but that called for her all the same kept flickering on the lake, and she did the only thing she could think of.
Dropping, Lessia picked up a large stone and threw it across the surface like she’d done when she was little. It bounced five times, almost in a circle instead of a line, before it vanished into the lake without a sound, erasing whatever was left of the strange imagery.
“Fuck,” Merrick cursed, his wild eyes flying over her, behind her, and out across the lake. “That was—”
“Let’s not.” Lessia took a step toward him, relishing the sense of unruliness that had taken root in her—the one that erased the last of the fear and the worry for the future and only left her with a sense of direction, a sense of fate that she would not escape, but that was hers, and hers only.
Slipping her hands into both of his, she turned to him, angling her face to his. “We’re alive.” She released him, dragging her hands up his arms, over his shoulders, down his muscled chest until he shivered under her touch.
Lessia trailed her hands lower, sliding them under his tunic and pulling it up, displaying his beautiful skin, the words she’d tattooed on him stark in the light of the stars.
His arms lifted for her to get him out of the shirt, and once his chest was entirely bare for her, she kissed every single word she’d carved onto him—onto her mate.
“We’re alive,” she echoed again after her lips left the word Time, the farewell she’d whispered to each wish echoing in her soul—but not in the choking, horrible way they had before she died.
No, whatever happened now… she would be all right.
“For now, for tonight, and hopefully tomorrow, too… we’re alive, Merrick. Let’s act like it.”
Merrick placed two fingers under her chin, lifting her face to his, and she could sense his confusion—the strange feelings that coursed within her reverberating in him.
“I was wrong,” Lessia whispered, and his frown deepened.
“I don’t need this.” She nodded to the words across his chest.
“I don’t,” she repeated when she could tell Merrick was about to argue with her. “I just need you.”
A smile broke free across her face at the distrust in Merrick’s eyes, at the harsh tension in his face that she knew meant he loved her more than anyone had ever loved another.
“I know you feel it. I know you feel what I feel,” she whispered, glad for the flicker of awareness in his dark eyes, which mirrored the sky above them.
“As long as I have you, Merrick, I’ll be all right.
I’ll be happy, even. So let’s not tonight.
Let’s leave the worry for tomorrow. Let’s just be you and me. Please.”
She could tell the muscle in his jaw worked hard not to go taut, that he worked hard not to fight with her, but finally he smiled back, albeit not the smile he’d had before.
“You’ll have me in every lifetime, Elessia,” he said roughly. “In this one, and what comes next, and whatever comes after that, you’ll have me.”
“Good,” she responded. “That’s enough for me.”
When Merrick just stared at her, what appeared like a million thoughts crossing his face, she tilted her head. “I thought you promised to fuck me in the lake.”
Merrick blinked at her. Then she was in his arms, and she giggled when he—without a second of doubt—waded into the cool water, she fully clothed and he still in his trousers.
There was nothing short of utter devotion in Merrick’s eyes as he took his time to get her out of her clothing, and as they were finally free of any fabrics, he pulled her to him.
When they reached the side of the lake, Merrick leaned his back against the bank, and she wrapped her legs around him. The moon played in his eyes as he guided his cock to her entrance, and they remained open as he nudged her pussy, a warmth filling his darkness when she ground herself against him.
“I love you so fucking much,” he grunted as he grabbed her hips and thrust himself deep inside her, the spot he hit making her see stars.
Lessia’s head fell backward at the sensation, but Merrick threaded his fingers into her golden-brown strands, forcing her eyes back to his, and she nearly came apart at how his gaze consumed her as he began pumping his hips, driving up deep within her with every stroke.
Merrick’s movements were slow, calculated, and every time she whimpered, he slowed further, letting his cock slide so leisurely into her that she could feel every inch of her pussy contracting around him, sucking him in.
There was a challenge in his eyes that drove her wild.
When he lifted his lips in one of those lethal grins that made her heart skip a beat, she tried to roll her hips, but Merrick almost pulled out entirely then, only the tip of his cock remaining, leaving her with a sense of emptiness that had her cry out.
He captured the sound with his lips, kissing her as he thrust into her again, and she whimpered into his mouth. Pulling out once more, his cock shaking with the effort to hold back, he stilled, his eyes finding hers.
Lessia’s nerves lit on fire as the tip of his hard length teased her, only sliding in an inch, then out again, driving her nearly insane, and her entire body trembled as Merrick’s eyes flashed and he growled, “It’s not enough.”
She knew he didn’t mean this—he didn’t mean his cock—but she nodded anyway.
“Say it,” Merrick grunted, his teeth biting down on his lip as his hands squeezed her ass, his cock hovering by her entrance, teasing her pussy as the water sloshed around them, but not giving her what she needed. “Say that it’s not enough.”
Lessia closed her eyes for a second, her head tipping back, and she moaned as Merrick’s mouth found her neck, nipping and sucking at her skin until she squirmed. But still his cock didn’t enter her—not even when she arched her back, trying everything she could to get him to fill her.
“Say it,” Merrick whispered against her skin.
Fuck. It must have been the delirium from the love she sensed in him—from the need surging within her, from the liquid fire burning through her veins—that made her do it, but she finally whispered, “It’s not enough.”
She wasn’t disappointed.
Merrick thrust into her so deep they both moaned, his eyes holding hers hostage as he merged them together, filling her so perfectly she thought he’d always remain there.
As he rasped “Good” and drove into her again, she came apart, squeezing his cock until he spilled inside her, his grunts piercing the air as he held her so close she decided they’d probably have to stay there forever.