Chapter 19 Hollow Festival #3
“He’s the kind of man who demands respect but gives none.
He cares only for how my actions reflect on him.
He expects utter gratitude and nothing short of perfection.
” Draven’s finger traces the wand drawing.
“But I’m more powerful than he is, and he both desires that power for himself …
and fears it. If he found out we were searching for a fable, he’d be embarrassed, and if we actually found one … he’d feel threatened.”
It seems complicated, more like the relationship I had with the Lord of Westfall than my own father, who cares less how powerful I am, or what I can do for him. My father only cares if I’m happy and safe. But Thane was like this … a man whose power stemmed from making others small.
Draven looks to the map above his desk, admitting that much vulnerability brings a cost, and right now his eyes shy from mine.
I want him to know the only person I will judge is his father.
My hand slowly strokes his, and Draven’s breaths still as I squeeze tight.
The apple in his throat bobs and the restraint between us thins, a thread under the duress of a razor.
Damn. The intimacy of it fills the room, and there’s nearly no room left to breathe. So, I distract us both.
“Since we’ll be there, should we look for the elves’ Artifact, too? Hints to the ring?”
Draven blinks, the spell strung between us faltering but not dissipating.
“The ring, Seithr, or Kingmaker, has the power to exert extreme influence over any living being, completely erasing their thoughts and replacing them with its own.” Draven’s gaze narrows on the map’s flags. “It’s rumored to be the source of their vast wealth.”
He grabs another book and opens to an illustrated page.
The ring is extremely detailed, even more so than the one he wears on his right hand, which holds that magical blade of starlight and demon fire.
Seithr looks as if a galaxy is trapped within it, a band of the cosmos crowned between the layers of gold.
“I really hope they’re real.” My finger runs along the drawing.
He chews his lip and I find myself leaning closer, my eyes trailing the slope of his bare throat, the tick of a vein intersecting the bite mark. Gods, I would kill just to touch him.
A spark remains in his gaze as he glances to me, gaze flitting from my eyes to my lips to my throat.
“Something about the stories wrapped around these Artifacts …” He sighs with his whole chest, staring at the map and the flags inked across it as if they hold all the answers in the universe.
“They gave me hope when mine was taken. And that is a dangerous thing to believe in.”
It’s what the Selection became for me—something to cling to. However horrible, it was a passageway to my family, a star in the endless dark. Something to hold on to … like a dragon curled possessively around its treasure—
“Wait.”
I rush out of the room, crossing through our shared bathroom, and return a moment later with one of the many anthologies of myths and legends Draven has loaned me in the past few weeks.
It was dull to the point of tears, and I mainly kept it to hide the tantalizing romance novel I’ve been reading, but something about the elves stuck out—an image that reminded me of a dragon guarding its hoard.
Flipping through the pages, I can feel Draven half behind me, watching over my shoulder, thrumming with interest. I stop on a page showing a portrait of the elven king.
“Look at his hands.”
In the illustration, the king stands at the entrance of a mighty vault of infinite wealth.
Though tiny, merely a smudge of emerald and gold, it’s unmistakable—one of the fingers of his clasped hands bears a ring that looks an awful lot like Kingmaker.
A grin breaks across Draven’s face, like clouds parting to reveal the sun.
He scoops my face in his hands, a broad grin on his face.
“You are fucking brilliant, Rune.”
A giddy smile bubbles out of me as I look up at him, all gorgeous symmetry and angles and strength. Waiting. He’s breathing as though he’s run a marathon, his eyes darkening, hooded as if he wishes to devour me. My hand fists the front of his shirt and those pupils widen. What is he waiting for?
Is that how you ask nicely? His inner voice is more growl than anything.
My mental wards have disappeared entirely.
Just kiss me, you bastard.
Those lips part in a smile and then he grips me hard, his mouth claiming mine.
He tastes like burning hot honey and the heated edges of sex, making my knees weak from want.
My entire body tingles, alive for the first time in years.
Within just a few movements my mind wipes clean, my lips parting as his tongue sweeps in, warmth flooding from my mouth to the spread of my legs.
My grip on his shirt is so tight I’m sure those golden buttons will rip, but neither of us cares as his hands travel from cupping my face to my back, lower and lower.
His hips roll against me, thumbs sliding under the space where my pants rest, caressing along my pelvic bones.
Every sweep of his tongue sends a fire raging through my body, a forge suddenly roused, flame as hot as lava.
My veins fill with lightning, and my hands grip around that taut waist, hand sliding up his shirt to explore the muscles stacked over his stomach, digging between ribs, driving him into me harder.
As he pants against my mouth, his hands scoop beneath my backside, lifting me as though I weigh nothing, my legs wrapping around him.
He swipes the books and a lamp off the desk, letting them careen to the floor, and sets me down in their place, his hips joining firm against my own.
My thumb rubs over the button of his pants, pulling it loose, and his breath hitches, the taste of him hypnotic.
His hand entwines in my hair on one side, his mouth leaving my lips to suck against my neck, my eyes rolling as he unravels me as easy as loose thread—
“Your Majesty—oh!” Magda halts in the doorframe, a hand flying to her chest. She holds a couple of garment bags in her hands and sputters, “I heard a crash—”
“We’re fine here, Magda,” I pant, speaking for us, but she waits for his dismissal.
“Just leave the clothes.” Draven’s deference is at war with his body language, the guttural way his words tear out of him. His eyes haven’t left me, threatening to pull me back into this like an undertow.
The way his eyes are lit up, fervor stoked beneath the violet, turning them magenta, a couple of buttons missing from the top of his shirt, baring his muscled chest, has me dizzy with desire … I’d willingly let go of any shore, surrender to more of this.
His hips have pinned mine, but from where he stopped kissing, just shy of my peaked breasts, I’m not sure how far it would’ve gone. There’s an awkward clink as Magda leaves the outfits for the party hanging off the door handle. She leaves but we can both hear her lingering outside it.
I burst into embarrassed laughter and Draven joins me, his hand still wrapped in my hair as he chuckles against me, our cheeks pressed together. He goes to pull away, but I keep him close. The laugh dies, devoured by the want in his eyes.
I force myself to focus and whisper into his mind, When we’re in Alfheim, it’s not just the ring or the crystal we should be looking for.
He stands up, releasing me, gaze cooling as if weighing what just happened against our deal. I curse myself, realizing how it looks, like I’ve seduced him just to push my own agenda, and his voice curls against my thoughts.
I remember our vow, Wraith. I’ve been looking into leads. We find your family. We find my items. He grins, a wild, wicked thing. Then we bring this world to heel. Together.
A FEW HOURS LATER I enter Death’s Hearth, coiled around Draven’s strong arm.
I wear a flowing dress that’s more slip than anything, as white as any bride’s.
My white hair flows down my back, encircled by a woven ivy crown intertwined with crimson and blackened orchids, twigs reaching skyward on either side.
My white owl’s mask is pulled snug, a complement to Draven’s skeletal stag.
Draven wears a tight-fitting onyx suit, the accents all in gold, as he’s dressed himself like the druid’s highest god, Azazel, Lord of Death, and I am his wife, the White Goddess, who through the moon watches over souls through birth, love, and death, her cycling light a representation of her power.
The night is meant to honor Him above all—the temple on campus overwhelmed with gifts, the numerous candles causing it to shine like a beacon—but his wife is adorned with offerings, too, not only to appease Azazel but to ensure she does not end one’s cycle short.
The night is for celebrating the hollowing of one’s soul from its shell, the transformation only the most elite druid souls undertake.
It’s odd to be here among immortals revering death when mortals cling to life with such terror.
Yet immortals can die only by blade or disaster.
Neither age nor sickness will ever take them.
To them, death is a holy thing, something earned, whereas even the most devout mortals fear it above all else.
“On Hollow Festival, we celebrate the ecstasy of living. As if it’s our last night in this world,” Draven whispers into my ear, sending chills racing up my spine. I forget how connected druids are said to be to nature—and sex, it seems, is akin to holiness.
We wend our way through the expansive Hearth, at least three to four times bigger than our own, made up of a large living space surrounded by twisting corridors to all the rooms surrounding it like a spiraling labyrinth.
White veins slink through the black marble floors like drags of paint, and the walls are a darker obsidian than I’ve seen anywhere else.
It’s packed wall to wall with people drowning in drinks and excess, or gyrating together in every pocket, some coupled too close for dancing.
I can’t help pressing the thought to him, Here we go.
He shakes his head at me, and I know from the lack of answer, verbal or mental, that he’s reminding me to be silent.
Any High Priestess Arcana could be listening in, possibly spying for his father or others in the Court.
Especially those who’ve already been chosen by backers.
We pass a pillar decorated with realistic skulls, living bats clinging to the walls, their moving bodies making the space pulsate.
Music plays from a stage along a wall of windows, some brought in via an illusionist from the Devil Arcana.
The song is dark and haunting and utterly unlike anything I’ve heard.
The drumbeats keep me rooted as the piano and violin loosen my body.
“This is wild,” I tell Draven. The Lord of Westfall was known for lavish parties, but none had magic, and most of the events were stiff, formal affairs, their after-parties a den of sins.
The crowd buffets us closer. I clutch his hand in mine; the other one snakes around his arm so we can’t be separated.
I realize why so many people were out on the lawns, even for a space this size, there’s just too much going on, too much heat.
It takes me a moment to realize the bats aren’t real but made up of shadows.
I wonder how much magic must be getting channeled to keep up the décor alone. I can taste it like iron in the air.
A large, winged druid nearly runs me over, but Draven’s magic shields me, a shadow more solid than any in this space, and the druid goes sprawling.
When he rights himself, the shadows slink into the floor like a fog, and the male braces to yell at me.
The moment he notices Draven standing undaunted at my side, Death Arcana still summoned in his hand, he straightens, eyes wide, and walks determinedly in the other direction.
A little ring of space expands around us, shadows nipping at the heels of any who get too close.
At the corner of the room some guards corner the druid who almost crashed into me.
“Do they ever take a day off?” I ask Draven, watching the guards pull the druid away.
“They’re supposed to back off for the evening but … even on a night of revelry they won’t take a break.” Draven shrugs, and with a free hand smoothly tucks a loose strand of my hair behind my pointed ear.
The unexpected touch causes heat to course through my chest and neck, and my body arches into his.
My mouth opens a little, and an increasingly familiar sensation tickles my gums: my fangs have extended.
That small stroke unraveled me, and I swallow, mortified, even though he can’t know—my wards are too on edge to have dropped.
Yet the way he looks down at me, smile genuine and ravenous, eyes twinkling in a violet fever, I’m sure he suspects.
“Dance with me?”
The question hangs between us, and it feels as if he’s desperate for my answer.
I nod, grinning, and his grin leaves me breathless.
He puts his hand at my waist and pulls me close, and the world narrows to the two of us.
The Devil Arcana controlling the music shifts the songs until a satyr is projected, his face not quite human or beast, eyes a haunting white, and he sings a ballad that fills the hall.
It’s soft and eerie, the melody slow and evocative.
Then Draven pulls me flush to him. I loop my hands around his neck, nearly on tiptoes to do so. When he leans in, it sends chills down my spine, and his whisper coils against my neck.
“Now is the moment we convince them.”
Right. The performance. The thrill threatening to shatter through me douses a bit.
When my gaze lifts from his muscular shoulder to scour the room, nearly every head is turned our way.
He grins. “Let’s make it believable. Or like hounds baying on the hunt, they will scent us out, our lies will crack like bones, and they’ll devour us both. ”