Chapter 34
Chapter Thirty-Four
“ Y ou are thinking too hard,” Tallon muttered, drawing me closer to his chest. Shivers went down my spine as he ran his fingertips over my arms, tracing the marks there. “You should be resting. We will need to get up soon enough for the damned party.”
“I cannot rest,” I admitted, clinging to the warmth and safety of his arms before it was taken from me as everything else had been. “My mind is racing. We should not have done that.”
His hands froze around me. “Why do you say that?”
My words stuck in my throat, too jumbled and messy. “I… We…” I swallowed hard, trying to fit together the thoughts swimming through my head. “I failed. Failed my mother, and now Emyl is going to die, and I’m going to be alone. No family. Nothing to show for all the sacrifices I’ve made. I shouldn’t be allowed to have this, to feel this, to waste this time with you when I should be finding another way to save Emyl. You say you’d give me everything, but the castle would snatch it from us before we even had the chance. It already has.”
“If you think I will let anyone in that castle take this from us, you do not know me at all.”
“You’re right, I do not. We’ve barely known each other a fortnight.”
The muscles in his jaw flexed. “This was not a mistake, Odyssa. And it certainly wasn’t a waste of time,” he said as his hands resumed their path. “You deserve something good in your life. You deserve someone who thinks you worthy without you having to do a godsdamned thing for them.”
“You were injured, too, protecting me because I am too weak to protect myself,” I protested. His words were nice, but he couldn’t mean them. Our bargain ensured I’d do something for him at some point.
He fell silent for a moment, and then shifted and I was beneath him. His knees bracketed my hips as he sat tall above me. My mouth dried out. Golden skin and dark tattoos, the herald of Death indeed. He grabbed my hand and placed it along his side where the wound had been. “What do you feel?”
I ran my fingers over the skin, but felt nothing. Where the stab wound had been, jagged skin and gaping flesh, was smooth and unblemished, albeit still bloodstained beneath my hand. “How?” I demanded.
“I told you, I heal quickly here.” He traced his fingers over my shoulder where the gouges should have been. “So do you, it seems.”
My hand flew up to meet his, feeling only smooth skin there as well, where there had been still-healing flesh just hours ago.
“And even if I didn’t,” he continued, “do you truly underestimate yourself so much that you think I would turn down a chance to have you beneath me like this?”
“Why me?”
“Why not you?”
“Don’t tease me, please.”
He rolled off me, settling in at my side and running his thumb over my cheek and lower lip before grasping my chin and turning my head to face him. “I felt you watching me that first night you were here, up on the balcony, and it felt different. People watch me all the time, make no mistake, but they are watching me out of caution. You were curious, but there was no fear in your gaze.”
“Surely someone has been curious about you before, Tallon.” I tried not to roll my eyes.
He offered a wry smile. “Yes, but much like how you say people treat you, they were only curious as to what I could do for them. What I could offer, what my magic could offer. You have never looked at me like that, even when I was avoiding my end of the bargain we made. You were curious just to know who I was. Curious for the sake of knowledge, not of anything to gain.”
“And yet you tell me you’d give me everything.” I shook my head, squeezing my eyes shut. As much as I wanted to believe him, to believe that this could be real, I couldn’t. “We need to find out if Eadric is going to retaliate or if we will have another chance to find the treatment before Emyl passes.”
“I would have given you everything, even then.” Tallon sighed softly, moving off my body and letting the cold air surge in between us. I’d never felt more alone in that moment, cold air on all sides of me, but I tried to remind myself this was for the best. “He will not retaliate. He would be foolish to try anything. No, he will wait and form a strategy first.”
“Your bargain with him is broken now, right?” I pointed out, looking up at the ceiling. “Wouldn’t it be wise for us to strike back before he can gather a strategy? You said that if one of you hurt the other, the magic would retaliate. So he is dealing with a stab wound too. Would he heal as fast as you, or would he still be injured?”
He froze beside me, letting out a soft exhale like he’d been punched in the stomach. I turned my head to see what revelation he’d had and was met with hands gripping both sides of my face. “You are brilliant, my wolf.”
The kiss he pressed to my mouth was rough and quick, though it held no less heat than the others we’d shared. He lingered for a moment, his gaze darting between my eyes and my mouth. He kissed me once more, slower this time but still brief, and then he was rolling away to turn on his stomach and look back at me over his shoulder.
“Is there still a mark at the base of my neck?” he asked, his voice muffled by the muscle of his shoulder pressing into his mouth. “Vaguely shaped like an hourglass?”
“No, there’s nothing like that,” I said, reaching out to touch the skin at his nape, tracing over the points of swirling black that hugged over the tops of his shoulders and draped down onto his back. His skin was warm and smooth beneath my fingers and I pressed my palm flat between the expanse of his shoulder blades, watching how his muscles flexed around my hand.
A full body shiver accompanied the goosebumps forming along his arms. I drew my hand back as he shifted.
“If you want me to believe you when you say this was a mistake,” Tallon drawled, twisting to look over his shoulder more as he pressed up onto his palm, “then you really shouldn’t touch me like that, my wolf.”
My face heated, and suddenly, my lap was far more interesting than the expanse of naked flesh in front of me. “I never said this was a mistake, Tallon, just that we shouldn’t have done this now, when there are more important things we should be focused on.”
He turned to lie on his side, propping his head on his fist. I forced myself to keep my eyes on his face and not on the way the muscles of his stomach flexed with the movement. Based on the smug smirk on his lips, I didn’t do very well. The smirk softened and he reached out to tuck his index finger into my fist, tugging slightly. “Odyssa, nothing could be more important than this, not to me. But I do understand.”
I took a deep breath, nodding my appreciation. His words stirred something in my chest and made me want to hide beneath the covers with him for an eternity, but my mother’s voice echoing in my head had me frozen. I nodded my head towards his neck. “Do I have a mark from our bargain? Shouldn’t you have one from our bargain too?”
“You do, and so do I. They are not all in that same place,” he said. He flexed the arm lying beneath his head and pointed to a spot on his inner bicep. It was tucked between the stark lines of the marks, and though it was the same inky black, it was clear it didn’t belong in the pattern. More abstract, like spilled ink across a page rather than painted lines, it was shaped oddly like an hourglass. “I don’t know where yours is, but you do have one. Do you want me to find it for you?”
Were it not for the lecherous grin and teasing tone that accompanied his question, I might have let him. “No, I was simply curious .”
“Pity.”
“Now that the bargain is broken between you and the prince, can you not remove the curse or the magic or whatever you call it from Emyl?”
“It doesn’t work that way, my wolf. I am sorry.”
“But you can help me more now, yes?”
“Of course, and I will.” He tipped his head. “What are you thinking?”
“Good. We will get the treatment tonight then. You are more powerful than him and no longer bound to not harm him.”
“You are more powerful than him too,” he said. “But yes, we will get it tonight. After earlier, he will likely keep it on him or somewhere else, not in his study.”
There were too many things in that short statement that I wanted to ask about. I opened my mouth to speak several times before finally deciding to start from the beginning. “How am I more powerful than him?”
“How long has it been since your bout with the plague, Odyssa?” he asked. “A year? Half a year? Less?”
“About five months, yes.”
“It took me decades to master my magic, and I was created with that as my sole purpose.”
The room began to spin slightly. “Oh.”
“So yes, you are infinitely more powerful than that sniveling child prince could ever dream of being, even with the perverse hold he has over that castle.”
“What control does he have over the castle? The Soulshades?” I asked. “That night you found me in the hallways, they came out of the walls, and the walls moved to block me from running away.”
He frowned, the furrow between his brows running deep. “I’ve never been able to figure it out, myself. Dark magic, certainly, but not any that would come from a being like me.”
“There are more like you?”
“The gods all need their servants, don’t they?”
“Is it another god then?” I asked. “That’s giving Eadric this power?”
He hummed. “Perhaps. Though I couldn’t begin to guess which, given that it gives Eadric control over the Soulshades and the castle itself. The Soulshades, at least, should be under Kalyx’s dominion.”
“How do you know it’s not Kalyx?” I asked. He seemed so certain it was not, but from the stories my mother had told me, there was little morality amongst the gods.
“It is not Kalyx. I’ve asked him. I sent him a letter through the Beyond when I first realized there was something else happening there.”
“And he would tell you the truth?”
“Absolutely.” He shook his head, reaching up to pinch between his brows. “It is not Kalyx, Odyssa. I promise. It could be Cethin, I suppose.”
“I never believed in the gods,” I admitted. “Who is that?”
“The god of shadows, darkness, night,” he explained. “He’s the only one that would make sense to be able to give Eadric that power.”
“And what do we do if he is in the castle helping Eadric?”
Tallon hesitated, looking up at the door for a moment. “Ideally, I’d want Kalyx to back us, but he is not here and we do not have time for me to search for him.”
“How do you know he’s not here?”
“I can sense him.”
“Oh.”
“If it is a god—if it is Cethin—I will get you out of there immediately and bring you back here. And we will wait until Kalyx returns, treatment for your brother be damned.” He pressed a finger against my lips to stop my outraged cry. “I cannot protect you against a god, Odyssa, try as I might. I need you safe. Please don’t argue on this.”
My anger still simmered, but I deflated slightly at the panicked plea in his eye and nodded my agreement. The finger that was pressed against my lips traced over my cheek, and I reached up to hold it. “And if Cethin is not there?”
“Then we will kill Eadric and finish this for good.”
“Can we kill him? If he’s protected by Cethin?”
“Of course. It would only be more difficult if Cethin is there. But my god controls Death and the dead; no one can stop him forever.”
I did not answer, instead settling into the knowledge that he’d shared. I sat, here in the palace of a god in a realm that was not my own, and we were to be facing down the prince and possibly another god.
“I never believed in the gods,” I repeated, shaking my head slightly. They had been a children’s story for me, nothing more. Something to dream about when I was sitting alone in my room at night, listening to my brothers play. I twisted my fingers in my lap, wondering what Tallon thought of the admission, given his place at Kalyx’s side.
“You should. At least one of them certainly believes in you.”
My head snapped up. “What do you mean?”
“It’s just a theory,” he said, waving his hand. He traced the marks down from my neck all the way to my fingertips, twisting our fingers together when he was finished. “Your marks look like mine, not like any other survivor I’ve seen. They act like mine.”
“Other survivors can’t do this?” My pulse hammered against my throat. I’d assumed as much, given Zaharya’s words about her own marks, but to hear it confirmed was so different.
“No, my wolf, they cannot.”
“Why can I?”
“I told you, I have a theory.”
“Then share it with me.”
He hesitated and I pulled my hand from his, standing from the bed and pacing.
“Tallon, no more secrets. Tell me,” I commanded. This was precisely what I had wanted to avoid, why I knew it was foolish to fall into bed with him, despite how much I had wanted to—still wanted to. “You do not see me as your equal, so how can whatever this is ever stand against that?”
“You are not my equal,” he said, sitting up. “You are far better than I could ever dream to be.”
“Then tell me the truth.”
A hand pushed through his hair roughly. His other hand joined it shortly after, resting on the back of his skull. He groaned, closing his eyes for a moment. “I do not know how much I can tell you.”
“Tell me all of it. ”
“You misunderstand, Odyssa. I mean I do not know how much I can physically tell you without Kalyx punishing me for revealing secrets that aren’t mine to reveal.”
“Secrets?”
“The Beyond has many secrets, and not all are ones that just anyone can know. There’s magic in place to keep anyone from entering the Beyond, from sharing those things. If you even knew what you had seen there, if you’d seen something that was protected, you would not have been able to tell even me.”
My blood chilled at the mention of the Beyond. I’d forgotten we were here, in Tallon’s rooms inside the Beyond rather than back in Eadric’s castle. I stopped pacing and licked my lips. “The Beyond. Does your theory explain how I was able to transport us here?”
“It does.”
“It feels different this time, than in my nightmares. Why?” I felt no fear in this room, only comfort.
“It’s not a bad place, Odyssa. Every soul goes to the Beyond after they pass. It looks like how you will it.” Tension crawled up his shoulders, and for a moment, I wondered what the rest of the Beyond looked like to him. And why it looked so terrifying for me.
“I am certainly not willing it to look like every nightmare I’ve ever had rolled into one, I promise you that.”
He sighed, rubbing at his temple. “Perhaps you are different, then, but I cannot say. I’d need to spend time there, in our archives, to find out, time and access that I didn’t have before because of the bargain with Eadric. I would inquire for you now, though, if you wish.”
I bit my lip as I debated. “After we get the treatment. Then yes, please do.”
“As you wish.” He looked over at the tall clock in the corner and rose from the bed. “It’s time to get ready for tonight. Go bathe, and when you come back I’ll have something for you to wear.”
My eyebrows rose. “I’ll not be joining the other attendants?”
“No. I want you by my side tonight. I want everyone in that castle to see you and know exactly what you are capable of, my wolf.” He stepped up in front of me and his marks reached off his skin to caress against my own. “I want them all to know you are mine, and that you answer to no one. I want them to know you are their reckoning.”
I swallowed hard, electricity thrumming through my veins. “A tall order for a dress, I imagine.”
“The dress is merely for decorative purposes,” he said with a smirk. He nodded to the bathroom. “Go clean up now, before I take you back to my bed and convince you to forget about all of this and just stay there with me for the rest of your life.”
My knees were barely able to hold up long enough to get me into the bathroom. I leaned up against it with a sigh. I wanted that desperately, what Tallon offered, but it was not mine to have. Not yet.