Chapter 37 #2
“What about your court?” I said, hating myself for bringing it up again, but someone had to point out the danger he had placed it in by coming here. “You care about that, don’t you? You should have stayed there, Kael. You should have stayed away from me.”
My heart broke as those words leaked from me.
Because I didn’t want him to go. I needed him here. But I was trying to be strong.
“I’m sure you can leave the Summer Court without being detected if you go now.” My words were feeble, laced with a needy sort of desperation that no doubt betrayed my true feelings—that I didn’t want him to go.
That I wanted him to tell me he wasn’t going to go anywhere.
“I should have stayed away from you?” he growled as he crowded me, all darkness and menace, and beautiful possession.
He angled my head up, forcing me to meet his gaze, his fierce but sincere, just like his words as they carved his name on my soul.
“There is nowhere beneath the stars, or beyond them, that I would not follow you, Saphira. No realm, no danger, no distance could keep me from you, because you are the air that I breathe, the sunshine that warms my cursed soul, and the reason my heart beats. Without you, there is no life worth enduring. No eternity I would choose to survive.”
The intensity of him robbed me of breath as I felt the depth of his devotion in those words, each of them so powerful that they rocked me.
“But your court,” I whispered.
He framed my face, his touch tender. “I would fight to protect my kingdom, but for you I would go to war. I am taking you back, and we will be together. For your sake, for the sake of taking you from this place and having you as my queen, I would go to war.”
I shook my head, some fragile part of me afraid to believe those words, even when I knew he wasn’t saying them idly.
He wasn’t like that. He meant everything he said, was willing to rearrange the fabric of the universe to keep his vows to me, and the braver part of me that had survived the brutal torment Lucas had put me through believed him.
He really would go to war in order to have me as his queen.
So we could be together.
Tiptoeing, I kissed him again, pouring out every drop of love and hope, and honour, that filled my heart, desperate for him to know how his words had touched me and that I believed him.
He lowered his hands and gently grasped my waist, murmuring against my lips, “Careful now. We would not want to ruffle your pretty dress.”
I pulled back to mock-scowl at him.
He smirked at the monstrosity I had been given to wear today. “Look at you… all prim and proper… playing princess.”
I smacked him on his arm.
“I don’t exactly get a choice about my clothing—or my blood.” I wasn’t sure where that last part had come from. It had just spilled from my lips. Now it was out there, a cold sort of feeling stole through me, and I found myself asking, “Am I your vengeance? My death that is.”
The air around him darkened and that pressing power he always held in check around me pushed down on me as he tightened his grip on my waist, hauling me against him as he growled, “No. Neve assured me that your death is not my vengeance.”
“Thank the gods,” I breathed.
He scowled at my clothing. “I find I do not like this dress though. I want to shred it with my claws.”
He flexed them against the waist of my corset and I felt their sharp tips, a thrill blazing through me at the feel of them so close to my skin and the thought of him tearing this dress from me.
“I hate them too,” I said as I pulled a face at the one I was wearing. “They’re always gold or white, and I much prefer deep blues and maybe a little black.”
I teasingly lifted my gaze to his as I said that.
His lips curled into another smile that threatened to have me ripping my own dress off. He looked far too pleased by my admission.
He murmured, “You do look good in the colours of my court.”
“I wish I was back in them and not the heir to the throne of this rotten court.” I placed my hands on his broad shoulders, leaning back a little to hang off them as he held on to me and I rolled my eyes while smiling at him.
His smile faded. “You are heir presumptive then?”
I nodded as he studied me closely, a little unsettled by how serious he looked. “Don’t worry. I have another year or so before I can be crowned queen. Any heir has to be one hundred for it to happen, and I usurped a complete dick and he’s letting me know just how dickish he can be.”
“I heard from Danica that someone here is not treating you with the respect they should be.” A cold grin stole over his face. “I am very much looking forward to meeting them.”
The skin around his eyes darkened, shadows branching outwards from them, and his teeth became jagged fangs.
I waggled my finger at him. “Nope. You’re not meeting anyone. It’s way too risky. Much as I love your wrathful side and wouldn’t mind watching you rip this asshole apart.”
A squeak burst from me as he tugged me against him, and he devoured it in a searing kiss that had that urge to climb him returning. I relished it again, soaking up the feel of his mouth claiming mine and the warmth and hope and strength it poured into me.
“You are my enemy,” he murmured between kisses, “and yet I cannot seem to stop kissing you.”
I tried to take it as the jest it was, but his words weren’t exactly untrue.
I only realised I had stopped kissing him when he drew back.
Concern shone in his eyes as his brow furrowed and he feathered his knuckles across my cheek. “My love?”
Damn, I loved it when he called me that.
I smiled tightly and shook my head. “It’s nothing.”
“It is not nothing.” He glowered at me and looked me over, as if seeking an invisible foe he needed to vanquish so I would be happy again, and then his eyes met mine again, softening as that murderous intent faded. “Was it what I said?”
I nodded and shrugged it off. “I know it was just something silly… that you were just teasing me and we’ve been acting enemies, but… but—”
“I have not exactly given you reason to believe my feelings for you would remain unchanged by the revelation that you bear seelie blood in your veins.” He summed it up perfectly.
I nodded stiffly again, feeling a little sheepish for being so insecure when he was here, with me, and had just been making my toes curl in the grass.
“It was wrong of me to say those things, to view all on this side of Lucia with contempt because of the actions of a few, allowing it to colour my perception so thoroughly that I was blind to the good among them. When we were apart, the things I said to you haunted me. I knew how they would wound you, how they would torment you, and it killed me to know you were here, so far from me, believing my feelings for you might have changed. I wanted to come to you immediately. I needed you to know my heart remains yours.” He wrapped his arms around me, grasped my backside and lifted me, bending backwards slightly to support my weight, so I was looking down at him for a change.
“I will say this as many times as you need to hear it, my little wolf. Nothing, not your blood, nor your lineage, nor anything you might say or do, could change my feelings for you. You could sit on the throne of this court and wear its crown and they would not change. They are constant. Immutable. Unbreakable. I am forever yours, Saphira.”
I slipped my arms around his neck and kissed him again, sinking into it.
I couldn’t seem to stop kissing him either, and he wasn’t making it easy.
Every fear I’d had over the last few weeks was erased by his words and his kiss, and that honest devotion that filled his eyes as he lifted me slightly to gaze at me.
“My love,” he murmured and I decided I would never tire of hearing him call me that. “I am taking you home.”
He turned to leave and looked as if he might growl as I pushed from his arms, landing silently on the grass.
“Not yet. I want to go home, Kael, I really do, but I can’t.
Not yet.” I pressed my hands to his chest when he looked as if he might grab me and whisk me away anyway.
“Despite how I miss those piles of bacon and all that meat you enjoy feeding me, and that this court has an unhealthy obsession with eating far too many vegetable dishes, I have things I need to do. I’m so close to uncovering what happened in Belkarthen.
I can feel it. I’m so close to finding your brother. ”
“Oberon says he never reached this court, and that he is in the Stygian Isles.”
“Oh.” Something inside me deflated. “Well… let me at least find out who was behind the attack.”
His lips flattened, but he looked as if he was thinking about it, a myriad of emotions flitting across his eyes.
He huffed like a beast. “I will consider it. Elduin gave me reason to believe the architect of the attack on Belkarthen is still alive. But you will vow not to kill them. I do not want my vengeance, Saphira. I do not need it. Swear you will not kill them.”
I crossed my heart with my fingers. “I swear I won’t. Just let me find out who it was… and what the hell were you doing speaking to Elduin?”
My hackles rose, my wolf side snarling within me as what he had said hit me.
I narrowed my eyes on him.
“Was Vaeleryn there?”
He did a glorious impression of me by rolling his eyes. I was a bad influence on him.
“Yes, briefly. She entered as I was finishing toying with Elduin, manipulating him into revealing his secrets, and greeted me but I left. I have no interest in her, my love. I swear this to you.”
I knew he didn’t.
But that growling, snarling part of me didn’t care.
It wanted to claw out her heart.