Chapter 18 Dangerous Dealings #3
“As happy as I am to let you explore your monstrous appetites and find out, I’m not here for a roast, but to create some very believable heat.” His gaze caresses my exposed collarbone, flashing to my neck before traveling too far down. “That is going to require that we lay skin to skin.”
“I’d rather not be gouged in the eye.” Between those horns and the clawed ends of his wings, there’s ample opportunity for a maiming just by lying beside him.
He smirks, summoning the Moon, and he alters his appearance once more, no horns, no wings. “What?” His gaze seems to look right through me, and something sparks in my chest.
“It’s just … I wish I could change form like that.” My fingers twist a silken strand of hair, yet it does not hold a curl.
“You can, with practice.” His head tilts. “But what would you change? You’re already …” I suddenly can’t look away from him as he struggles to end the sentence but only lands on “normal.”
“Romantic. I’m being swept off my feet.”
“I thought you weren’t in this for desire?”
A gods damned inferno simmers in my chest. I swear to the gods he can sense it, his own flame rising in response, reflective in those ever-changing eyes. “Fine, I was going to say ‘beautiful.’”
Yet my tattoo doesn’t burn or even itch. He … meant that.
“The only way in which you are normal is that you’re still mostly mortal.”
I hate how hard it’s become just to look at him.
“The Oath’s transformation … it took something from me.
Something I’m betting you druids don’t find so beautiful.
” I blink back at him as he furrows his brows, gaze lax.
Several Sedah-born druids do have texture to their hair, like Cleona, or Kenzo, but mine disappeared, stolen away.
I still don’t understand why. My eyes roll and I pull forward a lock of straightened hair.
His jaw works before he finds his voice. “Your curls?”
“Yes.” My eyes water a bit, so I force them toward the ceiling.
“The Oath straightened it. Did what the girls in every northern territory teased that I should do every day, heat a metal comb over a stove so that I might look more like them. But it’s part of who I am.
My culture. My heritage. I liked how I looked before.
It reminded me of my father’s people, from the Isle of Riches.
But your father’s Oath forced me to become what druids find attractive, I assume. ”
“The Oath’s design is ancient, and the wording in the spell had a lot to do with recasting changelings into Azazel’s image, to strip what humans felt tied them to their pasts.” He shakes his head, as though he can see where the spellwork sensed my ties, my connections, and went too far.
The pause between us stretches, his gaze dipping over my hair, flitting to my lips. He sits up, summoning the Moon again. “Let me return what was stolen. It’s the least I can do.”
My eyes widen, but I straighten up with him. “You can fix it? Permanently?”
“I can bring back the curls, but it won’t be permanent until the Descent. Then you can make it so. You can change anything, so long as the Gods Below listen.”
His hand rises to my hair, gently lifting a white strand, and he curls it around his finger.
The Magician card creates a ripple in the air and a rush of sound like waves, and a scent like the ocean mixed with tropical fruits wafts over me for a wild, heady moment.
I grip his wrist, clenching my eyes shut tight, spinning in the memories of my father’s home, one I’d only lived in as a child.
The only place that ever felt like home.
For a moment, if I really pretend, I’m back on the Isle of Riches, surrounded by my family … still whole … before we were broken.
“There.” He tucks his cards away.
I can feel the curls, spiraling in texture. I pull one down into my line of sight, springing it, and it bounces and coils back into position. My eyes water. Maybe it’s stupid but …
“Thanks, Draven.” I can’t find any better words than that.
“You look the way you’re meant to.” Our gazes cling tightly, and I’m pulled into his orbit, like the earth dancing with the moon, careening through the night skies on a dare.
“Maybe I should darken it. I always hated being moon-cursed. I used to dye it—”
“I love the color.” Draven clears his throat.
His gaze slinks to a midnight purple as it flits up and down my face.
“Not that it matters … but … I love the snowy highlights … the tempestuous deep grays of the lows. You’re like a storm cloud.
” His knuckle caresses a curl, his mouth parting, pupils expanding.
“It matches your personality. But if you want to change it … it’s up to you. ”
“No one’s ever complimented it before,” I blurt before I can stop myself.
My cheeks and chest are afire, and when I finally force myself to meet his eyes, they’re a lovely, full violet. We’re so close, sharing the same space, the same breaths. I want to map his cheeks with my thumb, explore those full lips with mine, and follow the slope of his throat with my tongue.
Finally, he breaks before I do. “We should sleep. It’ll be an early morning.”
“More pedicures?”
“I’ll be off to princely trainings, peasant.” Ah, there he is.
“Should I go with you?” I prefer his classes over mine.
“That’s a good idea. We need to see if this works, if our scents linger.”
He rolls onto his side, facing me, and I realize what he wants.
Hesitantly, oh so carefully, I allow myself to lie in his open arms, my back against his front, using one of his arms as my pillow, and his other wraps around my waist. His skin against mine is so warm, an instant calm threatens to lull me.
Yet there’s still distance between us, as if to get closer would be to risk us breaking our bet.
Huffing, I slink my body until it’s flush against his.
He purrs, “And here I thought you weren’t trying to seduce me, yet you keep being so deliciously wicked.”
I glance over my shoulder. Even in the dark of night I can see the hunger in his gaze.
“World chosen or not, keep it in your pants if you want to see the sunrise, Princeling.”
My breaths remain tight as he chuckles, his chin resting above my head; those first breaths with my back pressed against his chest are uncomfortable, even though our bodies mold together, as if they’re made for each other.
Yet I can’t relax; my nerves are at the edge of a cliff.
I’m afraid one wrong move will put us both past a point of no return.
He hisses, “You are fidgeting like a child stuck in a lecture.”
I roll my eyes to the intricate ceilings.
“I’m not used to having a stranger in my bed.
” Not for sleep anyway. I can nearly hear his mind churning out a roasting retort, so I blurt, “Tell me something about yourself.” His breaths hitch and I press before he can think too much, “Tell me about when you were Selected.”
He’s quiet a long moment, and my tattoo itches, but then—“My father was in the uprising.” His chest rises and falls as if he trapped all the oxygen in the room inside it, and with the confession comes a release of pressure.
“The end of the War meant vengeance against the mortals involved. It was King Altair of the seraphs that suggested turning us all in front of our parents, before executing us as repayment for the Curse. But when I was turned, the World card was drawn to me, right from King Silas’s own deck, and he stopped the executions of me and the other children. ”
The heaviness of his tone puts me on edge. Not because I’m afraid of him, but for him.
“I’ll never forget the look on my father’s face when he saw me as a changeling. The disgust there.”
The Great War was fifteen years ago, but I know at some point immortals stop aging. Did he fight in the War? I break the sharp silence with a serrated question. “How old were you?”
“Six.” His answer stops my heart, squeezing it to pulp. “I won’t settle in age for another ten years, at minimum.”
My hands tremble, voice quaking as I ask, “And your real father? What happened to him?”
“King Altair executed him. Then King Silas adopted me on the spot. I was the first to be adopted by an immortal king, though not the youngest.”
His breaths are jagged in my ear, as though they whisper through shattered glass.
I relax my body a bit more snugly against him and his breathing normalizes a bit.
My mental shields lower, more parapet than solid wall, and I realize how much of myself I can see in him.
The trauma we share might not be a mirror, but two rivers stemming from the same cruel mouth.
“King Silas saved you and raised you. When it comes to the throne—”
“He stood by as they killed my father.” His voice is darkness wrapped in fury.
“Would’ve let it happen to me and the others if the World hadn’t decided otherwise.
Six is old enough to know when you have been wronged.
Young enough to grow around that betrayal until it is a part of your very foundation. As I’m sure you know.”
“Do you hate him?”
“I hate all of them.” He swallows hard. “The immortal royals have caused so much strain on Arcadia and Vexamire both.” He shifts and I find myself slinking my body against his.
I can feel his heart thudding through his chest. It beats awfully fast, yet as I lean into his strong chest it begins to slow, matching my own.
“But I am one of them. I’ve been given the chance to change things.
To save the immortals and mortals from themselves. I can’t waste it.”
His hand comes around mine, interlacing over the top of it, his fingers weaving between my own. Draven’s breaths send shivers across the nape of my neck, my shoulder. His other hand draws the blanket higher, tracing up my thigh and turning my bones molten. “Your turn.”
“Ask me something.”
“Who is Kiana?” His question stills my heart, but the pressure of his body lining mine stops me from trembling. He pulls back a little, angling his head to check my face. “You don’t have to answer. I heard the name in your thoughts when you first arrived, over and over.”
“We were together. Before, in Westfall.” Breathing the truth into the darkness releases a weight I’ve been carrying for some time. “She was all I had. She died.”
“I’m so sorry.” He doesn’t ask follow-up questions, not like I would’ve. He accepts as much truth as I’m willing to give him. His hand squeezes mine tightly. “I wish I knew what it was like to be loved like that.”
“You’ve never been in love?” The revelation surprises me so much I turn, looking him over. He lies in the shadow of moonlight, eyes like mirrors, animalistic. A shiver races over my skin yet I don’t withdraw. I want him closer.
“I …” His face lifts toward mine, and I’m drawn to those full lips. He’s never looked at me so serious before but he just swallows, watching me as if I hold the answers to the universe. “Was it worth it? Opening yourself up like that?”
I haven’t had to consider it. But the answer is too clear to deny. “I would do it again. A thousand times over. To feel that once more. Even if just for a moment.”
His lips lift in the corners, hope shining through those ever-changing eyes. “Why, Wraith, you may just make a convert of me yet.”