Chapter 55 #3
Your counterpart, your savior, or your end, depending on the choice you make.
Dark eyes narrowed, the gleaming tips of his fangs making an appearance.
“I could have ended your life ten times over during this conversation, Heiress.” He stepped toward her, his shadow swallowing hers.
“No part of me could harm you.” Another step closer, as he ate up the last of the remaining space between them.
His voice was a low growl. “Not then. Not now. Not ever.”
Warmth pooled in her stomach, trailed down to her core.
Her heart stuttered as she suddenly realized how close they were; she would just have to tilt her head, raise up on her tippy toes, and their lips would touch—not in a dream, but for real.
Would his lips be as soft? Taste as delicious?
That spiced pear, dark amber, that fresh scent …
woodsy … fir maybe. His gaze dipped from her eyes, low, to her lips.
He ran a tongue across his full lower lip, and Audra had to stifle a moan at the sight.
Was he thinking the same thing? Feeling this too?
Mist, he smelled so good.
And she must smell horrid, she realized suddenly. With a jolt, she cleared her throat and stepped sideways.
The last thing they needed was to further entangle this web of theirs—a shared prophecy was complicated enough without relenting to her baser needs. It would only confuse her more, complicate things more, which right now didn’t even seem possible.
He straightened, looked away. She felt every bit of the cold suddenly. Her fingers and toes ached with it. When his gaze had just been on her, she’d felt flushed with heat.
He worried at a scrape on his armor.
She blurted the first thing that came to mind. “You said that with such confidence.”
“Said what?”
“That you could end my life ten times over.”
He raised an eyebrow, a humorous, teasing mood replacing the heated tension that had just stretched between them.
“You doubt me, Heiress?”
“I’m just saying, you might not feel so confident if you had just witnessed what I’d done to six ordained priestesses and a murder tree.”
“A murder tree?” He whistled again. “This does sound like quite the tale.”
A small smile. A peace offering. “I’ll regale you with it one day, if you’re lucky.”
His smile returned. “Please, let me be lucky for once then,” he said, his eyes back on her lips.
Fuck, she wanted to taste him, kiss him. But how, when she was stained with blood from the lives she’d just taken? When her fingers still trembled from a ceremonial knife having been pressed to her throat?
“Where does all this leave us then?” she asked in a whisper.
His gaze lingered a moment more on her lips before fluttering back up to meet hers.
“It leaves us with a bit of light treason,” Zhaire said, a wry, dangerous grin dancing along his lips. “I’ll take you home. Hide you. I’ll lie to my father until I can unmake my own plan.”
“And you’ll teach me?” Audra reached into her pocket and pulled out a small, pale object: the finger bone of the dead Heiress. She’d taken to carrying it around with her, some kind of morbid version of a child’s comfort stuffie. “You’ll teach me to control this?”
Zhaire didn’t flinch. Didn’t blink at the fact that she stood before him, covered in blood, pulling bones from her pockets.
In fact, he looked at the bone as if it were the makings of a crown. “Heiress,” he murmured, stepping closer, “I will teach you how to raise entire legions.”
They stepped up to the Veilway. The portal pulsed with power that thrummed through Audra, as the sharp scent of ozone and magic tickled her nose.
“I’m nervous,” she confessed before tucking her lip between her teeth.
They were as two magnets, drawn to each other by forces neither of them truly understood or comprehended.
They had been since she’d first seen him there, in the shadow of the twisted tree on the beach.
She’d tried to ignore it, tried to fight it, but she longed to be near him, with him, embraced by him.
As though their minds were one, he wrapped one long arm around her, pulled her snugly against him.
The cold press of his armor, the firmness of his grip, the pressure of his palm, flat on her lower back, pulling her toward him, to him, into him, it steadied her.
It was as though she’d been an errant compass, her arrow spinning, constantly, searching for north—and finally, here in his arms, it settled. She could breathe again.
His voice dropped low, rumbled in his chest. “Hold on tight to me, Heiress. I’ve just gotten you back, I don’t want to lose you now.”
Her fingers flexed, gripping him tightly. She swallowed. “Don’t let me go.”
His gaze searched hers. Her breath hitched in her throat. His eyes were dark as the most secret parts of the ocean, an incomprehensible depth filled with wonders so alluring she could drown in them.
“Not ever,” he promised with a growl.
In tandem, they held their breath as they stepped into the portal.
Together, the heiress and the demon left behind the land of the living and descended into the underworld.
TO BE CONTINUED