46. Elysian Pair
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Elysian Pair
Iyanked at his tunic and spaulder, but the leather did not budge under my weak grip.
I searched his body until I touched the blade at his side.
With it in hand, I slid it through the leather strap.
Cutting downward from the collar of the shirt, I exposed bare flesh and a littering of seeping wounds.
Numbness spread to my fingers. He has to be well—he has to!
I sank my teeth into his flesh as hard as I could until I broke skin. The bitter, metal taste of his blood flooded my mouth. I bit him again. Another explosion of blood on my tongue.
I pulled back, swallowing another gulp. I shuddered, sitting back on my bottom. My vision wavered. Cassiel wrenched upright with a groan, head tipping forward.
Images flashed through my mind, as if I were seeing it through his eyes. I stared down at myself. Bound at the wrists, dirt staining my cheek. A rush jerked my shoulders, then I was inside the vision.
What an annoying girl.
Nothing special other than what she will become. I could not help but linger over the way her cheek curved. The Vessel was perfection.
I gasped, wrenched out of that memory. I hadn’t a moment before another memory seized me.
I stared at the image I had finished. It was as if I had been possessed by a Hollow entity if I drew such blasphemy. The girl had not ceased shuffling about, tugging and yanking upon the front of her corset, her breasts threatening to spill free.
“Stand,” I ordered.
She jumped, causing her breasts to bounce.
I pressed my quill between the pages and slapped the book shut. How could I . . . want this mortal? With her thin bones and frail skin?
She stood, studying me with her too intelligent eyes.
She seemed to see things despite how I tried to mask them.
I grasped her hip, bringing her closer, her back toward me.
Relief. If she had not, I might falter and fuck her on my desk.
The ties of the corset had been done halfway.
Her warm skin seemed to radiate sunshine. She shuffled foot to foot.
“Stop moving around,” I snapped. The harshness in my voice was spurred by the inescapable desire she stoked.
Saints. She may undo my centuries-long resolve.
Then him watching me sleep.
Such beauty would only be stained by me.
The short memory wove into a different one.
Amara lay unconscious.
I tugged the fur higher on her shoulders. Her mouth puckered with pain. It crippled me. How easily I had lost myself to jealousy. Her hand upon that boy’s chest. My hand trembled where I held it to her cheek.
This pressure expanding in my chest—the breathlessness I could not help but feel—it was love. I loved a redblood woman.
The visions began to shift.
Hunger cramped my belly.
“Out, you urchin bastard! Your mother will not be back for you!” a woman shouted at him, shooing him away from the only home he had ever known.
If I was not here, how would mother find me?
Then another and another. Flashes of sleeping on the cold, hard ground. Him hungry and begging for scraps at the door of the bread maker in his village. It wove into a slower memory.
Him arriving at the Citadel.
“She will ensure your needs,” a blonde, waifish woman claimed, waving to the youthful girl at her side.
Since arriving at the Kingdom, the blonde had seen to all my needs being met.
If I required a specific kind of fur, she had it brought.
If I wanted parchment, food—anything, she ensured it.
With a curtsy, she left the girl behind.
The girl went to the tub and turned the spout.
I had yet to bathe since being brought to the Citadel, which the council claimed to be mine because ‘I was chosen’.
The entire situation seemed mad, but if they were feeding me and offering me such luxuries, I would not refuse.
The girl stepped back from the steaming tub. I had not seen so much clean water in one place. And warm. After only bathing in ponds or lakes, this would feel different.
The girl approached and reached for my pants. I stepped back from her reach.
“Leave,” I ordered.
She shuffled away, quickly and frightened.
I disrobed in the silence of my own company.
I stepped into the tub and sank into it with a moan.
Warmth engulfed my body, a floral smell wafting up.
Dirt stained most of my limbs. I swiped my hand over my arm and the dirt lifted, exposing clean skin underneath.
I had not seen my flesh so clean. When the council claimed I was the chosen monarch, I did not believe it, but I would make it so. I would be what was necessary.
I scrubbed my skin harder and harder until blue blood welled.
I would never return to having nothing.
Then I got to meet Volcan.
“Cassiel!” A bellow turned me to find Volcan shoving into my study. He strode toward me, a swagger in his stride. We had both become Warlords mere dawnlight rotations away, and he had been gone most of it. Meanwhile, I remained at the Citadel.
“You are much too dour.” Volcan slapped the top of the page of the book in my hand. A riveting tale of Saint lore. “I heard you snarled and snapped at all the women sent to please you.” He wiggled a brow. “You are frightening them.”
I grunted, shutting my book. Volcan seemed on a mission, and he wasn’t easy to ignore.
“I am not interested in their simpering,” I said, resting my book on the desk. Volcan fell onto the seat across from me, slamming his dirty boots on the surface. I contained my snarl.
“But they simper so well.” He shivered. “I had six, one after the other. Some at the same time. And I visited the brothel in the Kingdom Village.” He sighed. “Being chosen has its advantages.”
I shoved his boots off the edge.
He chuckled, knowing exactly how he irritated me.
“Will you be going South with me? There have been many Hollow attacks.”
“No, the council informed me of attacks in the East, so I will go and do as I must.” My duty as King. One I shared with Volcan who was as close to me as a brother. He had been the reason I had not died after the beating I received for stealing bread so many years ago.
I came out from under the flood of memories as if emerging from water. I gasped, clasping my chest.
Cassiel curled forward, head hanging, and hands dangling on his knees. Tears spilled from his eyes, dripping down his face in rivulets.
What had he seen?
Sensation at my breastbone had shifted—no, it spread down to my belly. A weight dropped. The trembling bloom became a living thing, vines radiating and threading through my veins.
I groaned. Loss at my breastbone. As if it should have been there from the beginning, since the moment I lost Piper. As if our bond blossomed. Cassiel’s chill no longer soothed the absence; it left it empty. Instead of remaining a festering wound, it had scabbed over with his presence there.
Lines from withering faded, snaking back toward his chest.
This was different from the wraithling bond. I could feel his proximity. It was a warmth in my belly and a fullness at my breastbone. I rested my palm on his shoulder. The presence from my breastbone to my belly pulsated, confirming my thoughts.
I slid my hand down his arm.
He jolted and turned his head. His brow furrowed.
“I have seen what I have done to you,” he croaked, face collapsed with grief.
He reached for my face, caging me with his eyes.
If I received bits of his past, he must have as well.
A hot flush burned my cheeks. “I cannot speak in your mind,” he breathed.
He made a sound like a wounded animal, grasping over his heart.
His eyes seemed much too wide, the whites of them giving him a stricken look.
“Amara,” he whispered. “I am sorry.”
Grief furrowed the lines on his face.
“I know,” I whispered, truly believing him. I pressed my palm to his cheek. He shuddered, leaning into my touch.
“I . . .” he croaked, seizing onto me as if I would disappear. His hands held a certain desperation that turned my stomach.
He captured my face between both hands, mouth flush to mine.
I met his kiss, grasping his face with as much force as he took mine.
His fangs cut my lip, but he did not stop, soothing the cut with his tongue as he continued his pillage of my mouth.
Without removing his mouth from mine, he pushed to his knees.
He tore open his shirt whilst I reached for the buttons of his trousers.
Reaching for my waist, he pulled me up as he leaned over to keep our lips together.
He shoved down his pants. I reached to set my hands on his shoulders as he grasped under my bottom and hoisted me against him. My legs fell apart.
Cassiel’s hips pushed my dress up to my waist. He walked us backward until my back was flush against a stone wall. He pinned me there with his hips and lifted his head to stare into my face.
With a careful, deliberate thrust, he slid inside me. I gasped; the stretch was sudden and intense.
My lips fell open with a cry. His face remained shadowed, but what I could see of him was tensed with ecstasy. He seated himself until his knot shoved inside.
“Cassiel,” I moaned.
He shuddered, stuffing his face into my throat. His lips grazed it, then he struck. My channel fluttered around him. With such ease, he erased every thought in my mind. I turned into a bundle of need, arching and clawing at his bare shoulders.
He drank, spawning urges to life between my legs. He kept still as I writhed. Lifting his head, he licked the spot and kissed up my chin.
“There is nothing in this realm that would rip me from an eternity at your side.”
The whispered words pulled me taut. He struck again, and I cried out, climaxing. I sank my nails into his skin, scoring lines.
Cassiel set a hard, pounding pace. His grip on my hips angled me away, and he thrust, drawing out my release. When I landed, he stared down at me. His fangs reflected moonlight, allowing me to see tenderness soften his face.
He watched me as if I were fascinating.