Chapter 15 #2
Her chest tightened around the helpless feeling within her, keeping it down and away from her thoughts.
“I’m helping you as much as I can, but already my counselors are calling me home. They think I’m interfering too much. They say I must allow you and your cousin to resolve this matter on your own.”
“They’re watching you?”
“In a manner. They are connected to me. They know my thoughts. My feelings . . .”
Another trembling twist inside.
“But my father does not know I’m here,” he said. “My counselors also fear that I will give myself away and my father will send his troops across the gulf preemptively.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Because he does not want peace. His heart-places have been methodically attacked and wounded and some destroyed altogether.”
“What is a heart-place?”
“You don’t know?”
She shook her head.
He was quiet for a long moment.
She tensed, heaving herself out of the lulling haze of his presence. Hadn’t she sent him away? “You don’t need to explain—”
“A heart-place is where an Elf leaves his heart, pieces of it. Not literally, but the spirit of his heart. The more an Elf gives away of his heart, the stronger he will be. So long as those places remain strong, so shall he. If they are weakened and destroyed, so shall his heart be. There are many aspects of it that would take a long time to explain.”
“That sounds dangerous,” she said.
“It is very dangerous,” he said. “But it can give you strength that you would never be capable of on your own.”
“And do you have heart-places?”
He winced as if she’d shouted at him.
“My counselors,” he said with a weary smile, “just reminded me that an Elf does not speak of his heart-places with . . .”
“An enemy?”
“I do have them, but far fewer than Princes of the past,” he said. “The Realms are not safe any longer.”
“Then why have them at all?”
“Because I would not be fit to rule if I were so distrustful and selfish that I could not give my heart away, nor would I be allowed to ascend the Throne. That is the law.”
“I shouldn’t be listening to you. I shouldn’t be talking to you.”
“Why? Because you might realize that Elves are not the villains you thought they were?”
“A villain would certainly want me to believe that, wouldn’t he?
Even if you are telling me the truth, that means you’re lying to Lavana.
It seems far more likely you’re lying to both of us.
But it’s not important, because you are going to go back to your Realms and you are going to stay away from me. ”
She released her twin-dragon blades, the ring and middle fingers of her right hand. The two blades joined, twining together to form a horn-like spear. One straight thrust to the stomach would cause a slow, painful death. A bit higher and upwards, a killing strike to the heart.
His gaze flicked to the blade and then back up to her eyes. “You know I am not lying about how I feel for you.”
“You’re a Prince. I am a Rae. There is nothing special about what we feel. It is instinct. Nothing more.”
“It is something more,” he said, taking a small step closer. “Lavana is a Rae. I feel nothing for her.”
“Liar.”
“Nothing like what I feel for you.”
“Yes, I know. You like me better. But there’s nothing special in that either.
I like chocolate ice cream more than vanilla, but at the end of the day ice cream is ice cream.
Just as whoever becomes the Radiant is who you will take, or try to.
But you’d better hope it’s Lavana, because if not, your ambitions will be thwarted, Your Majesty. ”
He cocked his head. “What is ice cream?”
“That’s not important.”
Leaves rustled somewhere back by the camp. The firelight was a dim, ebbing dome against the pressing darkness. They both fell silent. In that quiet moment, the ache in her seized her thoughts, struggling for control over her good sense.
But Endreas didn’t seem to notice her spear retracting ever so slightly before she regained control of herself. He was too busy gazing towards the camp.
“Tell me about your Prince,” he said.
“No. Why are you still here?”
“Lavana said he did not want to be claimed. That he resisted her, which is why she put him in her dungeon. Yet, he’s rejoined you. And he’s brought a nymph. What’s that about?”
“None of your business,” she said.
He ground his fist into his palm, still staring in Kaelan’s direction. “You have a Prince and the Enneahedron . . .”—he finally looked back at her—“I assume. All you need to do now is reach the Spire. That is where you’re going, isn’t it, Magpie?”
She pressed her lips together, afraid to move or speak. The longer he was there, the harder the craving was to control. Just to taste him one more time . . .
“You realized I was right, didn’t you? You do intend to vie for Radiant.”
Her teeth clenched, tongue flicking through hole where her tooth had been.
“But you should do your Prince a favor,” he said, shifting again, closer. Well within spearing range. He leaned in, so the sweet elixir of his scent curled around her, hooking into her chest, stretching the air taut between them. “Do not claim him.”
“Why?” she asked. “Afraid I might like him more?”
His nostrils flared. “No.”
“Liar.”
“If you claim him, then I will have no choice but to kill him. You will do all of us a favor if you allow me to appear magnanimous by sparing his life when I displace him.”
“If you kill him, then I will have to kill you,” she said.
“You would have to try to kill me,” he said. “But you would fail and yield to me. I know you need him to strengthen your claim to Radiant, and for that reason alone, I will tolerate his presence.”
“And what did Lavana say when you gave her this speech?”
He grabbed her arm, but she remained as she was, blades poised. “I will kill Riker regardless.”
“Magnanimous and just, through and through. So very important for everyone to see that, I can tell.”
He pressed his nose to her temple, his lips skimming her skin. Every hair on her body rose, her skin prickling, her breath quickening.
“Riker slept with you?”
She drew back, only far enough so that she could meet him in the eye. “Actually, I slept with him, because I wanted to.”
“And so I will kill him, because I want to.”
“Perhaps Elf women find murderous jealousy attractive,”—she ripped her arm away from him—“but I don’t. So if this is part of your ruse to seduce me, it’s not working.”
“It is the law. All former lovers of the Queen and King must die before the two are joined.”
“You have some fucked up laws.”
“Is that a Pixie turn of phrase, or a human one?”
“Women have slept with you even though they knew it would end in their deaths?”
“They always think that I will fall in love with them and make them my queen.”
“And you let them think that?”
“No. I tell them there is no chance, but Elven women are very persistent.”
“You still didn’t have to sleep with them.”
“They knew the risks.”
“You’re disgusting.”
“You don’t have to kill them if you don’t want to. The nobility will protest, but since you are not an Elf . . . what can they do? Secretly, they will be relieved. Most of the women I’ve slept with were nobles.”
His hands were wandering over her hips again, raking over the small of her back, closing the space between them once more.
Push him away! A voice in her head screamed. Kill him!
His lips found her neck, his tongue tracing over her skin.
His teeth grazed her just before his mouth sealed against her throat.
That screaming voice drowned under the wave of him.
Once again, the overwhelming intensity of his desire fluxed into her through his hands, his mouth, his body pressing against hers, breaking over the flimsy barriers of her good sense.
Through the empathic channels, she became aware not only of the outflow of his passion, but also the friction.
He strained to hold back from her, just as she did from him.
She didn’t know if it was possible to trick her empathic senses or not, but if it was, then he had accomplished it.
Though it was too complex to define with terms like lust and love, what he felt most simply could be called want.
Whatever other lies he might tell her, whatever else may or may not have been true, he wanted her. And she wanted him.
So when his tongue slid between her lips, hers responded.
When he worked his hand under her waistband, slipping down into the wet heat that he had created simply by appearing to her.
She leaned into his touch. When his fingers dipped into her, the sudden surge of fervor stopped both of them at the peak, breaths held, eye to eye.
And then an emotion she could not name pulsed off of him—blinding and cleaving and unyielding, like a blade plunging into the earth.
At that same moment, he moved into her and she forgot about the pulse because with one sure stroke he sent her over the edge.
She knotted around him, hands digging into his shoulders, gasping, drinking in his breath, shivering and shuddering as the ache in her was finally, momentarily, assuaged. With just one touch.
He tensed, wincing, as if her pleasure caused him pain.
He grasped her waist firmly as her knees weakened during the aftershocks.
All the time his black eyes watched her, studied her, as if burning every flutter of her eyelids into his memory.
And yet, she could already feel him retreating from her, drawing back his desire, closing off.
Soon, his hands followed, trailing from her.
He kissed her in a gentle way that left a sense of sadness floating around her chest, bumping against her heart, bruising it.
He lifted his hand up to his lips. The tip of his tongue ran over the edge of his forefinger.
A familiar heady scent, her scent, wafted off his skin.
His eyelids fell to half-mast, the black gleam misted, and a fresh wave of want broke off him, plying against her.
And if he’d tried to take her then, she would’ve let him.
But he didn’t.
He moved back from her, widening the space between them so they were no longer touching.
Lingering tremors of her climax cascaded under her skin, making it hard for her to hang onto any reasonable thought for long.
But who was she kidding? She had given up reasonable thoughts the moment she’d let him kiss her.
The muscles along his jaw flexed as though he were in some kind of pain.
“Lavana’s warriors are less than a day behind you, and they ride.”
She swallowed hard. “This changes nothing.”
“Wrong, Magpie. Everything has changed.” But he didn’t look happy about it. “Try to stay clean this time.”
His wrist twitched. A gust of wind blurred her vision as her clothes were cleaned once more.
A hollow pang in her chest told her that he was gone even before her vision had cleared to find nothing but darkness before her. And his absence hurt.
“Well, that was interesting.”
She tensed, cursing inwardly. From the corner of her eyes, she saw Damion emerge from the darkness of the trees.
“My own blood and sworn mistress, a traitor.”