46. WEN
Iscramble up on legs still shaking in the aftermath of satisfaction. “Godric?—”
He cuts me off. “And that’s when I haven’t even stripped you naked and scored your flesh with my nails and teeth, or branded it with my tongue and cock. When I haven’t exposed you to proper torment, or given you true ecstasy.”
The resurgence of hunger feels so wrong now. I tamp it down, and ask the only question that matters. “C-can you rebuild this place?”
“I can.” Before I breathe again, he adds, “But it will only be a replica. I picked this spot because it was the focal point where the magic of the Celestial Region converged. I don’t sense any magic anymore.”
“Oh, Godric, no …” A sob catches in my throat as I wrap my arms around his waist. “W-what about the lake? Will it still serve its purpose to you?
“I’ll find out the next time I need it.” He wraps me in his boundless power, seeming to draw runes across my back as his lips roam my forehead. “I didn’t even intend to touch you, let alone all the rest. But it was beyond my control.”
“I now really realize what control means to you. So if you don’t want this …”
The storm intensifies in his eyes. “Oh, I don’t.” My heart convulses as I withdraw to meet his turbulent gaze. “Want is a flimsy feeling, using it to describe what I feel for you is an affront. I crave every second with you, every spark of you. I covet your every delight and disaster, my bane.” He scoffs, resigned, morose. “But I failed to predict anything like this—even when I was being a ‘drama queen.’ Now I know there will always be worse. This explosive thing that came into being between us crossed realms, ignited an internal war and now wiped out the most ancient magic on Earth. And it will continue to shatter our expectations, in every figurative and literal way, forever.”
Suddenly, I’m terrified this is going into a direction we can’t come back from. “You’re thinking too far ahead. Let’s focus on avoiding something like this happening again. You love to investigate, so find out why this explosion happened, and how to prevent it. But more importantly, how to teach me to have you-induced orgasms without shooting off the Richter scale!”
His eyebrows shoot up. “You want me to train you to come—in safe mode?”
“Yes! You already trained me to recognize the void, to use it without unleashing it, and to keep it contained. You intend to make me on par with you in Melek prowess. And I bet you intended to train me out of my Oblivious Novice status, and into sexual virtuosity. Why not train me out of my seismic climaxes, too?” He starts to scoff again, and I grab him closer. “There’s nothing we can’t do together. So let’s resolve our current problem without worrying about the future, let alone forever. I don’t have forever anyway.”
His eyes turn black and bottomless as something frightening lashes out of him. “Don’t say that.”
“What else am I supposed to say? Even if I’m not exactly human, I’m still mortal.”
“We don’t know that.”
His growl warns me to stop, but I persist. “We do. I get hurt, as easily as I ever did. My healing ability is nothing like your regeneration, and it probably worked so far, because I haven’t been injured badly enough yet. We have no idea if I have the potential to live longer, but even if I do, it certainly won’t be forever.”
His arms fall off me, leaving me feeling cold and bereft. I’ve barely blinked and he’s at the semi-obscured entrance, on the other side of the vast cavern.
The sight of him, staring at me across the wreckage, is unbearable. It feels like a symbol of the status of our relationship.
It takes me a while to catch up with him, with my shaking legs and the treacherous ground. He stands there, watching me, not offering to help.
Before I reach him, he turns and heads to the stairs. Like the lake, they’ve been outside the radius of destruction.
Once we’re back in Jegudiel House, he picks up speed.
Before he leaves me behind, I call out, voice shaking, “Don’t do that. Don’t shut me out again.”
He stops, but doesn’t turn. Then his voice reaches me, its bass, subdued tone compromising my already precarious balance. “Don’t come to the Arena tomorrow.”
This hits me as hard as if he’d told me I won’t see him ever again. “Aren’t we supposed to start Phase Two?”
“I’m giving you a week off. Take two if you need. Now go eat dinner while you still can, White.”
“Wen. Say my name, Godric.”
“No. You will remain White, and I will remain Godawful.”
I come around him, reach up both hands to touch his face. I expect him to pull away. He doesn’t, lets me cradle his working jaw in my stinging palms.
“There has to be a way around this,” I whisper. “Just promise me you’ll look for it, and that you will let me have all the time I can with you.”
He looks away, his expression shuttered. “You will continue to have time with me. Nothing will change.”
“But everything has changed.”
His gaze tears back to me, as if against his will. “Everything has already changed irrevocably since the day I caught you and brought you here.”
Then putting his hands over mine, he removes them from his face with great restraint, and turns away.
Even before he takes off and leaves me behind in the storm of his departure, I know there’s nothing more I can say. Not now. Maybe not ever again. He’s made his decision.
He’s ending it before it even had a chance to begin.