CHAPTER 29 AILEEN
CHAPTER 29
AILEEN
Ragnor knew. Ragnor knew all this time. He fucking knew. And yet all he seemed to care about was when and what Atalon knew.
Still, I told him everything. My talks with Atalon. How Atalon seemed to want to get back at Ragnor and was using me to do so. By the time I finished talking, the food arrived.
We ate on the bed in silence. I glanced at Ragnor from time to time, but he seemed lost in thought. His eyes had yet to return to their midnight blue. It seemed his emotions were riding him hard.
Many questions ran through my head now that I’d finished telling him what Atalon said before—everything about his artistic powers and my time stopping. I wanted to ask him about it all and shake him until he gave me the answers I was looking for. I wanted to know how he had been flying and glowing. How he had managed to kill the Jinn. How he’d known where to find me.
But I had to bite my tongue and wait until dinner was over. It didn’t feel like Ragnor was ready for another talk.
Once we finished, we cleaned up the trash, and then Ragnor said, “Let’s go for a walk.”
Since I was feeling stuffy in this room anyway, I was happy for the suggestion. Getting to spend time outside after being stuck in Atalon’s dungeon was a gift, and I was going to have to remember to thank Ragnor for it later.
Ragnor took me to the village’s park, which was illuminated by a few paper lanterns. We arrived at a river, and he led us to a bench on top of a hill with a splendid view of the village, the river, and the forests beyond.
The moment we sat, and without me even asking, Ragnor said, “I had first suspected you had some sort of power after the Auction.”
Staring at the tranquil river, I felt anything but. “How?”
Stretching his arm across the back of the bench behind me, he said, “Before the performances, there was an essence of magic present.”
I glanced at him as he stared ahead, a pensive look on his face as if he were actually remembering the Auction at that very moment. “It’s not such an unusual case in a place where a significant number of supernatural creatures gather. Magical essence is bound to appear. But this time, it was different.” He turned to look at me contemplatively. “This magic felt as if it was waiting for something or someone.”
He turned his gaze to the river. “After you finished your performance, the magic was gone.”
Despite how forthcoming Ragnor was, I couldn’t shake the feeling of dread that settled in my chest. Getting answers to questions I’d had about myself since before the Auction from the man whom I’d tried my best to forget about felt anticlimactic and strange. Still, I hung on to his every word and turned my body in his direction.
“Magic is erratic, almost sentient, in a sense that it does things that don’t always make sense.” Ragnor grimaced. “That it left abruptly didn’t seem odd to me, since magic behaves strangely sometimes. But when the Auction was over, I realized it disappeared only after you performed.”
He returned his gaze to me. “After I give the Imprint to a newcomer, I taste their blood,” he said. “It’s to determine the levels of Lifeblood they have in their body, to know if they’re Common or Gifted. Yours wasn’t different from a Common’s in the beginning, and it remained the same during the other times I drank from you. This was why, even after I realized that magic’s strange behavior after your performance, I dismissed the thought of you being Sacred, though not only because of that. I mean, what are the odds of a Common becoming a Sacred after merely three months of vampirehood?”
“Zero,” I answered, even though his question was rhetorical.
He nodded. “Since I didn’t have conclusive proof, nor did I think it was plausible to begin with, I decided it wasn’t worth thinking about.” He paused. “Until the gala.”
I locked his gaze with mine. “How did you know, then?”
He gave me an amused smile. “Your hair.”
I blinked. “What?”
He chuckled, the sound low and sexy, and my heart flip-flopped against my will. “Magic requires its owner to be natural and without any body modifications,” he said, his fingers brushing a few blonde strands from my face. “Piercings, hair dye, tattoos ... Once the magic fully settles inside you, it won’t allow you to have any of those.”
And just like that, it made sense why my hair rejected the dye all the time. “So that means I can’t dye my hair anymore,” I murmured, bringing a few locks to my gaze, scowling.
Ragnor grabbed my chin and lifted my face to his. His eyes searched mine. “Why have you dyed your hair to begin with?”
I pushed his hand off gently, doing my best to deny the heat between us. “It doesn’t matter now,” I deflected. “If you don’t mind, there are far more pressing matters than my hair at the moment.”
He didn’t speak for a few long seconds, and while I looked down at my hands, I could feel his stare boring holes in my head. Then he said, “All right. Let’s talk business, then.”
Glad he let it go, I returned my gaze to his. “I need to save Isora.”
Ragnor gave me a nod. “I understand,” he said, face grim. “It’s partially my fault that she’s in danger now, so we’re going to do this together. Though it will have to be tomorrow; we still need more rest.”
I was relieved to hear him say that. Having Ragnor by my side was the best-case scenario. Despite all that had happened between us, I couldn’t save Isora alone. “Thank you.”
He cupped my cheek, his touch sending shivers cascading down my spine. “You don’t have to thank me, Aileen,” he said, face serious. “I’m here now. I’ll do anything you want me to.”
Heart an erratic drumbeat, I stared into his eyes and blurted out the exact opposite of how I was feeling right then: “Even if I tell you that what I want is for you to stay away from me?”
He gave me a humorless smile that made my chest tighten. “This is the one thing I can’t do,” he said quietly, his free arm wrapping itself around my waist and drawing me closer. “I need you, Aileen. I want you beyond reason.”
Pain filled me. “I don’t want to talk about this,” I whispered, not wanting to have this conversation but not yet ready to leave the warmth of his embrace. It wasn’t fair. Ragnor had betrayed me. He’d rejected me. He allowed me to be swallowed up by a monster. So no, I wasn’t going to make it easy on him to worm his way back into my life, even if he was going to help me save Isora. Not now, and perhaps never.
In one swift movement, Ragnor brought me onto his lap, enveloping me in his strong arms, his smell intoxicating. An involuntary shudder caused me to squirm against him as need burst to life in every part of me. “But I do, Aileen,” he said, sliding his hand from my cheek to cup the nape of my neck. “You need me to grovel? Need me repentant? I will grovel for the rest of my existence if necessary. I will apologize profusely every day if that’s what it takes to have one more chance.”
The pain of what he’d done pierced my heart, even more now that his own pain and desperation brightened his eyes. “You hurt me, Ragnor,” I found myself saying, anger and sadness bringing tears to my eyes. “I offered myself to you, laid myself bare for you, and you broke me to pieces.”
His face contorted in agony. “I’m sorry, Aileen,” he said raspingly as he pressed his lips against my cheek, catching a tear that fell with his mouth. “Back at the Auction, I had let my pride take over. I hesitated too much, even though I wanted to bid on you, wanted to buy you. But in the end, I was too slow to reach a decision because I was torn between what I should do and what I wanted to do.”
Both his hands were on my cheeks now, and I found myself grabbing his shirt. “I begged you,” I said, voice breaking. “I begged you to buy me. I never begged anyone like that in my life. And what did you do? How did the great Ragnor Rayne respond? You trampled all over me.”
“I know,” he said, growling as he pressed his forehead to mine. “I know, Aileen. I deserve your hatred and fury. If I was less of a selfish man, I wouldn’t even dare ask for another chance. But I’m not that kind of man.” He leaned back to look at me with cobalt eyes. “I’m jealous and competitive, and I refuse to leave you with the likes of Atalon, who only wants you to both spite me and to use your powers. I refuse to live with the regret of what could’ve been. I refuse to be away from you.” His lips were inches away from mine. “Do you really feel like you can let us go without regrets?”
His words broke something inside me. His use of the word us both infuriated and healed me. Because Ragnor said everything I’d been feeling ever since he sold me. He was saying what I had wanted him to say since the Auction.
Behind my anger and disappointment that he’d taken so long to come to this conclusion and worry that if I took him back, he would hurt me again, there was this fear that I would never find someone like him or that I would never feel anything remotely close to how I felt with him. That I would never again be part of an us .
That’s why I had been secretly relieved every time Ragnor came knocking on my door at the Atalon League.
That’s why, deep down, I was relishing him chasing after me during his stay, feeling, for the first time, that someone was doing such a thing for me.
And when I gave him the ultimatum—have one last night with me or leave, and I’d give him a month to prove himself—he chose to leave, making me realize that he was serious about me, even if I refused to admit it.
At the gala, too, he tried to protect me from the Jinn’s attack.
He came to save me from Atalon and the Jinn without hesitation.
He wanted to help me save Isora from the Jinn.
I would never be able to forget what he’d done at the Auction. It would always be a bitter memory, knowing that he’d thrown me away once.
But perhaps what mattered the most was what he would do going forward.
“One month,” I said quietly just then, my lips against his. “After we rescue Isora, I’ll give you that one month.”
A victorious growl left him before Ragnor crashed his lips against mine.