Chapter 21
twenty-one
With Aelen’s words and the reality of the past lingering like a dark fog, I’d remained quiet most of the evening, pacing, plotting, planning until Aelen forced me into a chair and thrust a mug before me. I glared into the murky liquid.
“What is this?”
“Spiced wine, a bit of an I’phri tradition. Most of us drink it after the ceremony to numb the pain, but I thought you might need a drink.”
“And what made you think that?”
“Maybe the well you’ve paced into the floor, or that haunted look in your eyes.” He shook his head, leaning back to hook his arm around the chair’s spine. “Drink it or don’t.”
I glanced at my frowning reflection in the mug before tipping it back. It was warm, almost welcoming. A nice break from the endless cold or the gusts screaming outside the windows.
“You don’t normally do nice things for me.”
He scoffed. “I do nice things for you all the time. It's not my fault you don’t like accepting them.”
“Name one.”
He rose to drag his chair across the wooden floor until he dropped it beside me and slumped into it. His fingers trailed up my arm, lingering over my pact.
“I brought you wine.” He grabbed his mug across the table, sliding it before me. “And gave you mine. And have saved your life Singer’s know how many times—”
I drained the rest of my mug.
“Are you listening?”
I jerked my gaze back to his, settling against his arm. My mind swirled with the drink, lulling me into a similarly warm state.
“Sure.”
He rolled his eyes, falling back with crossed arms. “Is there anything you’d like to add?”
I sifted through my hazy memories as the fog of wine fell over them. “I don’t want to talk about everything we just did. I don’t want to think about it. But I’m glad you didn’t let me die in the snow.”
His eyes widened, and he tugged the full mug from me. “By the singer’s, maybe don’t drink the second one.”
‘You tell me I should be grateful and then when I am, you tell me to drink less.” I snatched the mug from him and drained a gulp. “What do you want from me? Pick a lane!”
He cracked a cocky smile. “I don’t think you could handle what I want.”
“Is it the rest of this drink? Because you’re not getting it.”
He barked a laugh, and his hand moved from my arm to my thigh. I took another swig instead of swatting him away.
Once I thrust it onto the table, I hooked my arm around him, thrusting myself onto his lap.
“Lorelana,” he warned.
“Aelen,” I mimicked, tangling my fingers into his hair and pulling it free. It settled around his shoulders like ink to frame his ever-darkening look. Perhaps I should have stopped there, but my head swam like the lumen light on his skin and so I pressed my lips to his.
His touch was poisonous and his kiss violent as he drew me in, deeper and deeper. I parted for him, grinding against his tightening trousers, and enjoying how far away everything seemed, the distant room and the distant pain.
Our breaths mingled into one.
When I straddled him further, he pushed me back gently, settling me back into the chair with a gentle pat on my knee. “You don’t know what you do. We should get you into bed before the darkness comes out to play.”
“Come back,” I reached for him, but he was already gone, retreating from the chair to behind mine, where he helped me up by my hips.
Despite my protests, he guided me to the room and beneath the quilt, where he sighed before shutting me in there alone.
With the lantern on the other side. The dark grew and seethed, so I shut my lids against it, hoping sleep would take me and keep me far from the shifting shadows.
But my belt and trousers poked into me painfully, so I unlatched the belt with clumsy hands and threw them into a corner, settling deeper beneath the blanket.
The quilt felt closer to the gallows, yet still it pulled me deeper until I slipped into a heavy slumber. My mind flittered on the threshold of sleep—where you dance between reality and dreams, the darkness of the room falling to a cavern that pulled me down.
There I fell until a skittering pulled me to the surface. I tried to open my eyes, but found my lids leaden, closer to iron than flesh. I forced them anyway, hoping to fling them open but settled for a flutter, enough to see the shadows skate across the ceiling.
I forced them to crack and followed the shadows as they slivered down the walls, snaking up the edges of the bed where they paused, hanging like a serpent waiting to strike. I tried to grip the quilt tighter, but it felt so far away.
Am I dreaming?
They darted for me, slivering beneath the quilt, but my limbs were too heavy to fight, almost pinned to the bed. I might as well have been tied with ropes.
I tried to call for Aelen, my heart thundering a million miles away, but had no voice, and a tongue that wouldn’t listen.
I focused on my breaths as the shadows wrapped around my ankles, spreading my legs. They slivered up my calves, hanging at my thighs and pressing in but not painfully. A lingering pressure as they inched closer to my undergarment, the edges licking like a serpents tongue.
I shivered, and inhaled as much as my limbs would let me, shocked at the pooling warmth as they coiled around my thighs, closer and closer.
Further shadows darted across the ceiling, traveling down the walls until they snaked beneath the covers, and shot below my sleeves. I gasped as they spread across my breast, gathering over my pebbling nipples where they stroked.
And then raked, as if they had teeth.
The heat at my core surged, flooding into my belly.
I should hate this, loathe this, but everything conflicted. Fear and pleasure, ecstasy and pain.
My pulse thrummed in my throat as the shadows slivered beneath my undergarments. I tried to move, but my body wouldn’t answer to my screams, unresponsive as my legs spread further and the darkness stroked down my folds.
Is this the forest? The leader Maelindiir? Or a nightmare?
Fear pooled inside as the heat grew.
The shadows parted me, finding my swollen bud and stroking it.
I groaned, the sound echoing like bells. A streak of pleasure shot across me like lightning, joining the warmth and desire.
The pressure on my nipples increased as the shadows drifted to my throbbing core, stroking and rimming me. Teasing.
I should hate this.
If I could flee, I would have. I was certain of it.
But another moan escaped as the shadows pressed into me, filling me. The shade spreading me moved to my bud, almost sucking it.
I wanted to writhe, to move, to cry out. To call for Aelen or perhaps scream his name. But I could do nothing but take it as the shadows penetrated me. They fluttered excitedly, switching between hard and a chilly liquid.
My pulse increased with the pleasure as the shadows speed quickened, and the movements grew hungrier. My core throbbed, aching for more as it pumped in me, licking across my slickness.
I gasped as the pleasure bloomed, grew until it overwhelmed me like a river.
One in which I knew I’d drown.
But I couldn’t run, couldn’t escape, could do nothing but take.
So I did, as the shadows tore across my body, licking and nipping until the dam broke in a great cascade. The pleasure consumed me like the darkness, eating my limbs and pulsating from my aching core to my fingertips.
I panted softly, fighting the wave as the shadows trembled across me, wavering.
They slid across my skin while the pleasure receded and ebbed away, with chilly snaps and soft caresses. Gathering around my thighs and stroking my swollen folds.
The thick swell of shadow finally removed itself from my hole with a wet sound, dragging my slickness across my thigh, as if it wanted me to know. The shadows lingered on me longer than necessary as they languidly removed themselves from me, settling back into the corners of the room.
I blinked my heavy lids, and they were gone. Just shadows and darkness, no movement, no nothing.
I tried again to call for Aelen but my lips wouldn’t respond to my commands, along with the rest of me. My leaden lids fell, and sleep wrapped around me tighter than the shade ever could, dragging me into the empty abyss.
When I awoke with a start, I straightened until I thought my spine might snap, gripping the quilt until the telltale sound of threads ripping came. The tepid light of late morning streamed in, painting my clenched fists in gray.
The events of the previous night rang in my head like a hollow drum. Had they happened, or was it just a dream? Once I felt brave enough, I lifted the quilt to find my undergarments still there. Once my pulse settled, I rose and began to dress, but the memories never left.
My morning illness wasn’t as severe, so I let out a sigh of relief to the empty room, nightmare be damned—that I wouldn’t have to fight my way to the bath chambers with a guest. The illness was embarrassing enough without having someone watching my every move.
I laid a hesitant hand on my abdomen to find tenderness and a grumbling that spread across it.
Not good. I hoped that would have disappeared, left somewhere in the middle of Eltide.
But the sickness remained, just no longer a quick death hanging over my head.
Now it was a distant, but still very real possibility.
When I turned the corner into the main hall, I was shocked to find Aelen darting from the kitchen. He frowned, tapping his cheek. “You look terrible, what happened?”
I chewed my cheek, considering the many responses. Verbalizing the shadows violating me wasn’t exactly a thrilling prospect, so I left it at, “Just a nightmare, nothing more.”
He shook his head, clearly unconvinced but drifted back into the kitchen with a simple, “If you insist.”
Aelen bent over the cauldron, toiling away.
“What are you doing?”
“Working on breakfast. Even given your current predicament, you must eat. Can’t say I envy that chamber pot, though.”
My cheeks flushed until I matched the embers burning in the hearth.
“Have some decency!”