Chapter 41
forty-one
Iwaited in Aelen’s darkened room, hiding behind the door and letting the void consume me. At some point, he had extinguished the stars, and after I warmed myself by the fire, I found my way back to the darkened room. I always hurried past the hanging, broken mirrors.
They still turned my gut.
The chill of the room sank into me as I counted the passing seconds and awaited his return.
He’d gone off to help his people and left me alone with my thoughts—the constant, cyclical thinking of how I couldn’t leave them to die.
So I remained here, with a stiletto clutched tightly.
But the door shuddered and nearly slammed into me.
When I loosed a breath, his presence loomed above.
“Why are you hiding here?”
I brandished the blade and pressed it to his throat, using his chilled breath as my guide. “And threatening me,” he growled, raising my hackles.
“I won’t let everyone die,” I said, the way I repeated a million times before he arrived. “I’m not leaving. I won’t go, not until I fix this.”
With a sharp motion, he grabbed my wrist and wrenched it until it was above me, and the blade clattered to the floor. Then he leaned in closer until his icy breath froze my cheeks. “Yes, you will. You may leave my side, but I refuse to lose you.”
“You can’t make me,” I yelled, making the two of us jump and him loosen his grip.
“I won’t go. I don’t care how difficult it is, and I don’t care that your people consistently hate and insult me.
This can’t be the end. We’ll figure this out.
” I felt with my foot for the blade and slid it closer.
Then I ripped my arm away and snatched it up.
“You will take me to Mourn, and I’ll figure this out. ”
“We cannot figure this out!”
“We have to! Don’t you steal my hope, Aelen, it’s all I have left!”
“No, it’s not,” he whispered before crashing into my lips. Tears slid down my cheeks, but in that kiss, he silenced them. His tongue found mine, and I let him—and we danced. Whatever ice he was made of melted away, replaced by our searing heat.
He pulled away only long enough to whisper. “You have me.”
Between my legs flushed, and a fire raged, one that craved him and his touch. He let the robes slip off his shoulders, revealing some tightly sewn garment that adhered to his lithe, muscular form. I couldn’t see it, but I could feel it as he pressed his length against me.
His fingers met mine, entwining together above my head before they began to rove greedily. He tore at my body and clothes, and I wanted him, and more. In that, we were back in the cottage, with the shrieking wind and my uncontrollable tears he had silenced before. The pain he had taken from me.
He stole it all again, and more as he shed my layers, tearing my clothes as if they were nothing but paper. Once I lay bare, the darkness fell on us.
“I want light,” I murmured briefly into his sharp ear.
“Then you shall have it,” he replied, flicking his hand to let the constellations alight.
“No fighting?” I mumbled while he worked his way down my neck.
“No, I’ll give you this and anything you wish if you take me. I’ll take you to Mourn and show you how to call him from the sky, I’ll give you my own dragon, Numen. I will give you whatever you desire so long as you take me.”
I stroked a finger down his tight pants, and they pressed into my palm. He wanted me more than I desired him for once. “I’ve taken you before.”
“No, not like this,” he said, wrapping his arms around my waist and tossing me onto the bed as if I weighed nothing. He wasn’t holding back or hiding himself, and his raw power was shocking. “You must take my lumen—my essence.”
“I can’t.”
“You can,” he replied, licking down my abdomen until he lingered by my navel. “I’ve done it before and can do it again. But it won’t be excruciating like it was then. I’ll make it pleasurable—so pleasurable.”
“Will there be anything left of you?”
His fingers scraped across my trembling body, begging for more. “I will not cease.” He sat up long enough to yank his breeches open and pull himself free. “Accept me.”
I hesitated. “I don’t want it to break me.”
“Why are you so afraid of power?” he snapped.
“It shattered Arthvur because he was broken before we began. From the moment our promise was uttered, he knew he would betray me. You would never. So I offer you myself, my power, and my essence with no strings attached. No, nothing, if only to assure your survival. Take it.”
I could fight him, but I didn’t want to. I wanted him to fill me, complete me, and shuttle me with his magic. I wanted nothing more than to become one.
“Fine—but I don’t forgive you.” He met my lips again with a violence that bruised them. But I opened my mouth and body to him, allowing him inside.
“Then don’t,” He growled. “Don’t forgive me. In fact, curse my name as I bring you to ecstasy.”
“I hate you.”
He pulled back enough to show me the roiling rage in his eyes. “Liar.”
He gripped my thigh and dug his fingers in as blue magic dashed up my side. It churned until it entered my mouth and stroked my tongue.
It commanded me to look at him and speak the truth. Those bitter words rolled off my tongue like it was nothing. “I love you.”
His fingers wandered to where the fire flamed, and my core roared for him. “And that is why you deserve not only this, but the world.”
I gasped when his fingers entered me. But it wasn’t painful, I groaned from his promised pleasure.
Soon, when I was moaning at his touch, he moved, and his tongue replaced his fingers.
I writhed and rolled, tightening my thighs around him like a vice.
He didn’t complain to tell me to stop, only commanded me once more to scream his name.
And I answered.
By the time he met my lips I was shaking, ready, willing, and becoming more impatient by the second. “Why bring me to the edge but not let me cascade past it?”
“This edge is sharp as a knife and must be done carefully, otherwise you might bleed.” He moved his hips until he encased me in his arms and poised himself between mine. “Grip me,” he growled.
I wrapped my hand around his girth. It was no wonder he made me feel untouched.
I stroked him gently, and he jerked, inhaling sharply. His pleasure was written across his face, and the shadows in the corners writhed. His blue magic seeped from his hands, twisting around me like a viper. Then it condensed to a mist that cloaked my skin.
It plunged me into a deep perspiration, but Aelen held my gaze. “Don’t look, just feel.”
I yanked him into a kiss. He came freely, and at the apex of it, he pressed himself inside me. He plunged to my core, and I whimpered from the sheer pleasure. I shook at the intensity, and his skin soon glistened with the starlight of the walls.
But his eyes reflected hunger.
The magic undulated across my skin as his tongue met mine, and he deepened his embrace. Beneath his pallid skin, his chest began to glow that familiar sapphire, the same that swirled behind his iris.
The color of power and the tinge of gods.
And when he plunged deeper, the lumen spread into my core. It bit like ice. I gasped, and he rocked against me to coat the feeling with pleasure and soften the sting. But as it coursed through me, I felt every sharp throb.
His lips left mine and found my breast, lingering there with licks and kisses. He rocked into me faster, begging my climax to return. The magic ached, and yet somehow brought it ever closer, with an erotic edge. My core pulsed against him, enjoying the surge of magic.
Soon it coursed through my veins and pooled in my chest angrily. It surged behind my breast, and he ran a finger down my sternum to encourage it. Behind my flesh, it thrummed, and the heat inside became too much to bear.
With a scream, I spasmed on him, and he thrust deeper until I was breathless. He pressed himself harder until the final peak of my ecstasy passed. From his placid smile, he’d reached his too.
We sat gasping, trying to catch our breath in unison. until he pulled himself free, and spread the last of his emission on my throbbing bud.
My skin remained dewy, but the panic had faded. Yet the feeling in my chest was unfamiliar, full and fluttering with every movement.
He clutched me tightly against his chest. “You’ll get used to it.”
I swallowed. “I don’t think I will.”
“It needs to settle, then it will be like a friend who’s always there. But it’s not a person, it’s yours to command.”
I pressed my sternum, only for the magic to shiver deep in my chest cavity. “It feels alive.”
“It’s not. Don’t fear it.”
He was right, I shouldn’t. I wouldn’t become what my father had. It wouldn’t twist me into an unrecognizable monster. He was a monster long before the impetus spread into his veins.
I tapped his chest and watched as his skin took on a pale blue shade. “How do you feel?”
“Empty.”
I dug my nails into his skin. “It’s gone?”
He scoffed. “No, not gone, just… less. I’m used to there being so much it wishes to pour from my fingertips and shape the world.”
“I don’t think mine wants to come out of my hands.”
He cupped my cheek. “It will if you tell it, but you don’t have as much as I did. I needed enough to remain so as to not cease breathing. My body still requires it to function, to live.”
“Because you were born a god—”
“Mortal,” he snapped with venom.
Why he held on so dearly to his mortal side was clear as a moonlit night. Like me, he wanted to pretend the darkness of his origins wasn’t there. He wanted to cut it out like an overgrown tumor.
I couldn’t deny I wanted to do much of the same. But I’d have to cleave mine with an axe.
A long silence fell over the room. A hush that spelled uncertainty.
He pulled me nearer again, so close I could hear his thundering heart beneath the shell of my ear, and it ticking ever faster.
The wan light illuminated him enough that I could see the shredded skin around his horns, where they must have been forced to sprout in his body.
It must have been excruciating.
I laid my palm across my breast and felt the impetus surge beneath it. It carried a bit of him in it—excitement, anger, rage, revenge. All jumbled together until I could no longer tell where his ended and mine began. But I knew one thing for certain.
Aelen might want me to use this to flee like a coward, but I had other plans.