Chapter 37 #3
Kaeleron distracted me by telling me everything he had been doing while we had been apart and I forgot all about the high king’s daughter as I listened to the vast and dangerous changes he had been making just so I could be his queen.
So we could be together.
I pressed my hand to my chest, feeling my heart thumping against it as I stared at him, touched that he would do that for me, that he had been changing his court and working to uncover a way out of his contract with Elduin, all so we could be together.
While I had been a bundle of doubts tangled with despair since discovering I was part seelie, Kaeleron had been out there working in the shadows to show me that it wouldn’t come between us.
I had thought maybe he would burn the world and let the flames cleanse our paths of obstacles, but instead he had reshaped the world, letting the flames reforge it into something more suitable for me. Like the master blacksmith he was.
“Challenging the high king like that. Kael—”
He cut me off, more serious than he had ever been as he looked me deep in the eye and said, “I will have you as my queen, Saphira Harper. You will be mine, even if I must change this world to achieve it. No obstacle will stand between me and my path to you and the forever I desire with you. I will not allow it.”
I couldn’t stop myself from kissing him again.
When we broke apart this time, I asked, “Why did you come?”
“Neve saw me here, and that I would have a role to play in what is to come.” He caressed his fingers along the neck of my dress, brushing my breasts, making my breath hitch together with that darkness that lurked in his eyes, warning me that he was angry about something.
What? Before I could ask him, he continued, “But there is another reason I came.”
He pulled a small, supple leather pouch from his pocket, opened my hand and gently tipped the contents onto my palm.
“I promised you this.”
I looked at the beautiful, tiny silver dagger.
Furious, but touched.
My first token of my travels. The first charm for my bracelet.
“You could have waited to give this to me.” I looked at it, studying how perfectly he had recreated my dagger in miniature form, sure it had taken him hours of work to craft this for me, just as it had taken him hours to make my dagger.
“I waited too long as it was,” he said. “I should have given you this sooner, before there was ever a whisper of danger that I might lose you.”
“You won’t lose me.” I shook my head and took the pouch from him, and placed the charm back into it before pressing it into his hand and closing his fingers over it. “Keep it safe for me?”
He stared at our joined hands, darkness building in his eyes.
“What is it?” I whispered and lifted my free hand, softly cupping his cheek and brushing my thumb over it. “What torments you and has the darkness running close to the surface? I can feel it in you.”
“I am not so sure I will not lose you.” He swallowed and closed his eyes.
“Neve’s vision tormented me nightly, filling my head with scenario after scenario, robbing me of sleep.
I focused on what I could do while I was forced to wait for the flowers to bloom, signalling it was time to leave…
and then Malachi returned with Danica, and she told me of the things you have been facing, the threats you have survived…
and I could not wait any longer. I had to be here. I had to come to you.”
I stroked his cheek, my words soft as I said, “I still think you shouldn’t have come. Your court is in danger now. You’re in danger.”
“I am in danger?” he growled. “I care not about my court or myself… or this world. I would burn it all to the ground right this second to make you safe, because you are not safe, are you?”
I stilled.
Pulse picking up.
His gaze lifted to clash with mine, a corona of crimson around his pupils, bleeding into the silver.
“I can see it in your eyes, taste it in the fear that taints your kiss, and feel it in the way you tremble as you hold me.”
The air around him darkened and the trees swayed, wind whipping around us to pull at the skirt of my dress.
“So I will ask you this only once, my little wolf.”
He threaded his fingers into my hair and then ran them down the shorter braid, until he reached my back.
“Who did this to you?” he snarled as his fingers unerringly traced the lines of my scars that I had hoped to hide from him.
I shivered at the quiet wrath in his deep voice, my nipples beading against my corset and heat rushing through me. The darkness that lurked within me rose to the fore, purring at the vision of him tearing Lorien apart for my sake.
My weapon of delicious vengeance.
“Give me his name,” he growled.
“Why?” I swallowed at the wrath building in his eyes as crimson bled into the silver to devour it all.
His skin paled to moonlight, the inky shadows that surrounded his eyes making them even brighter as his lips darkened, and his fangs flashed between his lips as his claws gently stroked the line of the worst scar—the one down my spine that had broken me.
His words were a song to the darkness in my heart.
“So I might know who I must kill.”