Chapter 17
Seventeen
Hanna
“Well, what are you going to do now, little queen? Forsake your power and run away?”
“We need to move.” I pushed the goddess away. Or tried to. She felt closer than usual. Less like a separate voice and more like an echo of my own thoughts.
Kaelan managed to stand, still leaning on Thorne. “She’s right. We need to move.”
“Kaelan—” Dare started.
“Now.” Kaelan’s voice was stronger, but I could see the effort it took.
We moved. Dare took point, checking the corridor. Thorne supported Kaelan. I followed last, my shadows still restless around me.
We made it three blocks before Kaelan spoke again. “This wasn’t just an ambush. It was a message.”
“What message?” Dare asked.
“That he can reach me. That he can hurt me whenever he wants, and there’s nothing I can do to stop him.”
The words hung in the cold air.
“Hanna stopped him,” Thorne said. “And he wouldn’t have gotten this close if he didn’t have to. That’s a good sign. If he can reach you, we can reach him.”
“This time.” Kaelan met my eyes. “But what about next time? What about when we’re in the middle of a battle? What happens when—”
He stopped himself. But I knew what he was thinking.
What happens when the cost of stopping Edric is letting the goddess take me over? His gaze kept flickering to me as if he knew something had gone wrong, and he hadn’t yet decided how to address it. And Kaelan always knew how to issue commands, so if he was silent, he was truly at a loss.
And Thorne…I wasn’t sure if Thorne was just in agony right now or if he hated me for being so careless in the prison, because he didn’t look at me. He didn’t look at any of us, just moved purposefully, his sword drawn, grim and cold.
We reached the safe house in silence.
Azora took one look at us and knew something had gone wrong. “Alys and Coril?”
“Gone,” Thorne said. “Moved or hidden.”
Azora’s eyes found mine. “Edric?”
“Edric tried to force Kaelan’s mind open.” I kept my voice level. “I blocked him with shadows. It worked.”
“At what cost?” Azora asked.
The question sat between us.
“I don’t know yet,” I admitted.
Jaia swore. “We need Alys.”
“Well, we don’t have Alys,” Thorne’s voice was hard. “Edric has her. And Coril. Has everyone we came here to rescue. But maybe that was for the best, because Hanna might well have brought the roof collapsing in on my little sister.”
Silence fell.
“I wouldn’t,” I said tightly.
“No, you’re right. You wouldn’t. But you weren’t in control, were you? The goddess was.”
I felt the Shadow Weaver pressing against my thoughts.
“You need me. They all need me. Stop fighting and just let me help.”
“I knew that Alys and Coril weren’t in the wing that I collapsed,” I argued.
“I’m sure you cared so much in that moment,” Thorne muttered.
Kaelan looked at me across the table. His face was still gray, exhaustion and pain written in every line. “You can’t help me. Not like that.”
“I understand her power better now.” Frustration welled up in me. “Did you see how powerful I was today? With practice, I could be the weapon that wins this war.”
Kaelan’s jaw went tight, his eyes narrowing, and I knew I was losing him. “You’re my wife. Not a weapon.”
“I can be both.”
“No.” There was that arrogant royal command of his again. “I’m not going to be the reason you lose yourself.”
“And I’m not going to be the reason you fall to Edric.” My voice came out sharper than I intended. “I’m supposed to just let him walk into your mind and destroy you from the inside?”
“If the alternative is losing you—”
“That’s not your choice to make!”
“It is.” He spoke with absolute conviction.
The words echoed in the small room.
We stared at each other. Both of us afraid. Both of us trying to protect the other by deciding for them.
“This is what he wants,” Dare warned us. “ He wants us tearing ourselves apart over impossible choices. Protecting Thorne’s family or protecting Kaelan, protecting Hanna or the soldiers we once served with. Someone is going to be sacrificed.”
He was right.
“He has the position of advantage,” I admitted. “He doesn’t give a damn about any one. Everyone is just a piece on a game board to him. But we have…” Love. Desperate stakes. Same thing. “We need to get Alys back.”
“How?” Thorne’s frustration bled through. “We don’t even know where Edric’s keeping them now.”
“What happened to Vareth?” Dare asked, clearly thinking we could use his pet prison commander again.
“Edric killed him on his way out.” I heard my own voice, still too flat, too calm. “To keep us from learning where the prisoners are, I imagine.”
“Then we start with Ekardo,” Azora said resolutely. “I’ve got a lead on his location. Surely he’d like to help Alys—”
“Getting Ekardo is just one more delay in getting my sisters back,” Thorne said.
“Be strategic, Thorne.” Jaia’s gaze met his evenly. “Do you think I’m not terrified they’ll find Vizia? They must be looking for her, just as they sought your sisters.”
“They don’t have her,” Thorne reminded her.
“They don’t have her yet.”
I couldn’t stand to listen to them tear each other apart. Part of me knew they’d fought alongside each other for years, loved each other like siblings, and would be fine. And part of me wondered if everything could fall apart.
“But we need to move.” The goddess was urgent in my mind. “All we need is a whisper of where the sisters are, and you and I can rescue them together. We don’t even need them. We can fix everything!”
“I’m going to step outside. I need air.”
I left before anyone could object, slipping into the cold and dark courtyard.
Rain had begun to fall, sluicing down the rooftops and trickling through the leaves of the trees.
The clouds blocked out the moonlight, which had been ideal for our attack but was less desirable now when the world already felt too dark.
I stood under the battered eaves, the smell of damp stone rising from the wall behind me and reminding me of the rotted prison, and tried to feel something. Anything.
Horror at the devastation around me in that prison.
Fear of what I was becoming.
Relief that Kaelan was safe.
But I felt nothing.
“You’re becoming stronger,” the Shadow Weaver whispered. “Becoming what you need to be. That man’s death doesn’t matter. Edric’s games don’t matter. Your power matters. That’s what will save your men.”
“That’s not true,” I said aloud.
“Isn’t it? You saved Kaelan today. Without me, he’d be broken right now. Edric would have torn his mind apart.”
“And what did it cost me?”
“Nothing you weren’t already losing.”
The words crashed into me with a jolt of ice through my veins.
I wanted to believe that the lack of reaction I was feeling was just shock, just exhaustion, just anything other than the goddess slowly erasing the parts of me that made me human.
Behind me, I heard footsteps.
Thorne.
He didn’t speak. He stood beside me in the darkness as I had stood with him the previous night. As if nothing had changed between us.
“I don’t know what to do, Thorne.” My voice came out quiet. “If things had gone wrong…if I’d hurt your sisters…I hurt so many people.”
“The only person who has hurt my sisters is Edric and his thugs. Some of them probably died when you collapsed that tower.”
“But some of them weren’t…some of them might have been the soldiers you were saying are innocent.”
“Did I say that?” His voice was stern. His hand cupped my chin, raising my gaze to his. “No one doing Edric’s bidding is exactly innocent, are they?”
“I’m just…” I struggled over my words. “I’m not sure if I should feel more. Or if the goddess doesn’t care, and so I don’t care…”
“If you don’t care, why are you out here suffering alone?”
Tears rose in my eyes, surprising me. I think they surprised Thorne, too, from the way his eyes widened before his thumb brushed gently over my cheek. “You don’t deserve to be alone, Hanna. No matter what you’ve done, no matter what you ever do, I’ll always be there.”
I pictured Coril and Alys crushed in the rubble like some of the bodies today, and I wondered how that could possibly be true. Had I really known they were safe? Or had the Shadow Weaver been so intent on saving Kaelan—and flaunting her power—that we had barely spared them a thought? I wasn’t sure.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” I admitted softly. “That’s what bothers me.”
“Then it sounds to me as if you care.”
“Do you still love me?” It sounded childish, cheap, to say it so baldly. But that was the question.
He didn’t answer at first. He stepped in, and this time, he did touch my face, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. “If you think anything could change the way I love you, I don’t think you understand my love.”
I closed my eyes. Let his words settle onto my skin like sunshine. When he kissed me, it was not hungry, not even particularly urgent. He kissed me as if nothing had ever gone wrong between us, as if the world hadn’t shifted tonight beneath our feet.
His lips were gentle, coaxing, and I opened for him without resistance. He cupped my face with both hands, anchoring me. When he broke the kiss, he didn’t move away. “Hanna,” he murmured, my name raw at the edges.
I clung to his shirt. My knees had gone a little soft. The relief was physical, bright and immediate, a bolt through my body, hollowing me out and filling me at the same time. I pressed back into him, needing to be closer.
He obliged, pulling me flush against him, into the raw, heated power of his body.
His hands moved from my jaw to my hips, drawing me into his gravity.
He kissed me again, harder this time, tongue teasing the seam of my mouth until I let him in.
I returned the favor, tasting, biting lightly at his lower lip.
He rucked up my dress until he could touch my bare skin, his fingers splaying out across my back, my ass. His mouth moved to my neck, finding the soft place beneath my ear, and he sucked there, slow and deliberate.
I gasped. My hands fumbled at his waist, finding the tuck of his shirt, dragging it up until I found bare skin. His body was lean, muscled, and so powerful that I always felt a little awe that it was mine. I mapped the line of his back, feeling him shudder when I dug my nails in.
I reached between us, cupped the bulge already straining against his pants. His breath hitched.
“The goddess is quiet when I’m with you,” I told him.
“But that isn’t why you need this.” He spoke so certainly, seeing through me, the way he always did.
“That isn’t why I need you,” I confessed.
His lips turned up slightly, no matter how grim our evening had been. “Sometimes it seems as if you don’t realize the depths of my adoration.”
“You do have a good face for gambling,” I reminded him, raising my hand to caress his cheek. He looked so unfeeling, his face always stoic, except for the way his eyes lit when he looked at me.
“Then perhaps I can make my feelings clear another way.” His lips dropped to my throat, his fingers tangling in my hair. His lips on my body sent pure molten heat throbbing through every inch of me.
He began grinding against my hand as I freed his cock, hot and pulsing in my palm. He was already leaking, slick and eager. I stroked him, slow at first, watching his face for every twitch and tremor. He let his head drop to my shoulder.
He repaid me in kind, slipping a hand beneath my skirt, over my thigh, between my legs.
When his fingers found me wet, he made a sound of satisfaction, a noise that made me clench around nothing.
He pressed the fabric aside, found my clit, and circled it with maddening restraint. I whimpered, bucking against his hand.
He slid a finger into me, then two, curling them in just the right way. He knew exactly how to undo me; we’d had enough practice. He pumped slowly, thumb never leaving my clit, and I lost my rhythm on his cock for a second, all focus scattering.
“God, Thorne,” I breathed. “I’m close already.”
He kissed my cheek, my jaw, my collarbone. “Don’t come yet. Let me fuck you first.”
I nodded, breathless.
“Turn around,” he said, but he was already moving me where he wished.
I braced my hands on the stone wall of the house. The stone was rough beneath my palms, the air cool on my thighs. He pressed up behind me, cock nudging at my entrance. He teased me, rubbing the head against my clit until I moaned, then pushed in, slow and steady.
The stretch was perfect, full and all-consuming. I let my head fall back, teeth catching my lower lip. He set a rhythm, steady at first, then faster as we both got desperate. The sound of him filling me was obscene and wet and sweet.
He reached around, found my breast, squeezed. The other hand anchored on my hip, holding me steady as he pounded into me. My orgasm built fast, white-hot and inevitable. I came with a cry, muscles clamping down on him, shaking so hard I thought I’d collapse.
He fucked me through it, chasing his own release. He came a moment later, shuddering, biting my shoulder to keep from shouting.
We stayed like that for a long moment, bodies pressed together, catching our breath. He nuzzled my neck, kissed the back of my ear. “Do you believe me?”
I laughed, breathless. “I think I do.”
He withdrew, careful, and pulled my skirt down, smoothing it with the kind of care that bordered on reverence.
He wrapped his arms around me and murmured into my ear, “There’s no mistake you could make that would ruin my love for you. What’s between us is as bright and inevitable as the stars, and far more enduring.”
Thorne’s words were quiet. He’d probably only ever whisper poetry to me like this, when he wasn’t even facing me, but my body was anchored against his. When there was no space left in me to doubt him.
Then he picked me up, holding me against his chest, and I let out a huff of surprised laughter at being swept off my feet. He carried me toward the house, toward the lights of a house we’d abandon soon.
But it didn’t matter. He was my home.