Chapter 10
I’m sitting at my window an hour later, studying the hourglass outside and probing at my injury, when the door flies open.
My head jerks around. Amriel bursts into the room, his pale hair flying, his brows pulled low over burning eyes. “What’re you doing back already? Don’t tell me you used the—”
He pulls up short. Stares at my ravaged leg. Stares at my leg some more.
Heat paints my cheeks, and I push my skirts down to shield my skin from view.
My injury isn’t as severe as I first suspected, and I’ve mostly cleaned it up with water from the bathtub, but still, it stings.
Just…not as much as the fact that the fae king has now seen more of my body than any other man in existence.
“You’re bleeding,” he growls.
Accusation laces his tone, making me bristle.
Ishanna’s blood, he can’t be serious, can he?
Does he truly think I’m at fault? Because he just tore my life to pieces.
If not for him, I’d be back in Aethrolia right now.
I’d have spent my day as a dedicant, instead of running for my life in a creepy, magical labyrinth.
I hobble to my feet, my body angled to hide the ruined half of my skirts.
“Of course I’m bleeding. That’s what happens when you get kidnapped, tossed into a cursed forest that only goes in circles, and chased by a rabid goblin.
” I hurl the words with force, each one like a dart aimed at Amriel’s vital organs. If he even has any.
Doubtful. If I could dig beneath that golden skin, I bet I’d find nothing. Just a cold, empty hollow where a soul used to be.
His jaw grinds, his entire body tensing. “My Shadow did that?”
A scoff rises in my throat. “Of course. What else would it have been?”
“Any number of things, really,” he snaps, but his words lack their usual bite. If I didn’t know better, I’d say blood has rushed to his ears, staining their pointed tips crimson. “Let me see your wound,” he demands.
“What? No. Absolutely not.”
He takes a threatening step, then stops, as if rethinking that decision. “I need to see how bad it is. How much time you’ll need to heal.”
I reflexively back away, one hand splayed to keep him at a distance. “Just leave me alone. It’s not that deep. I can take care of it myself, unless one of your fancy magic-machines is for healing people.”
He jerks his head in the negative. “We don’t have healing magic. It’s one of the things we haven’t been able to engineer yet. Now let me see your wound.”
A hiss jets from between my teeth. “No.”
That angers him enough that he comes storming toward me. “Yes.”
I scurry away, but my weak attempt at escape is no match for his ground-eating strides.
He reaches me in moments, maneuvering me toward the bed, setting me on the edge.
When he kneels, I push at my skirts with balled fists, trying to keep my hems on the floor.
But Amriel cages my wrists with ease, sweeping them aside with one hand, peeling back my shredded dress with the other.
His gaze paints a hot line up my leg before coming to rest on the claw marks scored into my thigh.
I twist against his grip, but he doesn’t let go. He doesn’t even seem to notice, fixated as he is on my injury.
“It’ll scar,” he says. “But it’ll heal.”
“I know,” I hiss. “I told you that already, so will you let go of me? Why do you even care, anyway?”
“I don’t,” he snaps, but instead of lowering my skirts, he leans in to scrutinize my leg. His free hand grazes my calf, his fingers sliding upward, landing somewhere in the vicinity of my torn flesh.
Only…I can’t tell where that is anymore, because the pain has faded, swept away by the avalanche of sensation coursing through me.
A whimper works its way up my throat. No one has ever touched me in a place this private, this hidden.
Nor has molten heat ever swelled in my core this way.
The feeling inside me is so foreign that it can only be the mate bond, sizzling to life.
Its power calls to me, spinning a seductive lullaby, but… no. No, this is wrong. This is sin.
I try to pull back, but my body refuses to listen. I settle for clenching my jaw and thinking of home—of the vows I’ll someday take, the prayers I’ll someday say, the magic I’ll finally earn. Until Amriel’s fingers flex, scattering the thoughts like smoke.
Ishanna, then. I list her titles desperately. Keeper of virtue. Goddess of the crescent moon. Guardian of Aethrolia…
But I soon run out of honorifics. Logic fizzles and dies, leaving me with nothing to shield me from the feel of Amriel’s palm pressed to my thigh.
A moan trips up my throat, but I curl my tongue around it, holding it at bay. I want to shrink from him. I want to nuzzle closer. I want to push my leg into the heel of his hand until his touch slips higher, because this feeling, goddess, this feeling…
Once, when I was a girl, I went to the seaside. I remember standing in the sand, sinking deeper as the waves rushed past, each surge pulling more ground out from underneath me.
This is like that all over again. Because I’m falling, sinking, dragged down into a hazy cloud of want.
I don’t know what, exactly, I crave so deeply, only that the same mindless hunger that gripped me in the forest overtakes me again.
Only this time, it’s hotter, sharper, more acute.
Enough that my head lolls on my shoulders, my spine loosening as my legs unclench on their own.
Maybe my entire body has gone rogue, because I stare at Amriel through heavy lashes, unable to do anything else.
“Stop moving,” he hisses. But he must have felt my posture slacken, because he glances up.
And immediately goes stiff, every line of his body snapping to attention.
I gaze down at widened, golden eyes. At black silk, draped around a body carved from raw power. At white hair tumbling over wide shoulders.
I could reach out, slide my hand through those strands. How would they feel? Like silk, probably. Like starlit satin, slipping between my fingers.
For some unknown reason, my tongue glides across my bottom lip. Amriel’s eyes follow the movement before returning to mine. We stare at one another, suspended in a timeless heartbeat.
“I told you not to touch me,” he finally says, his voice shaky.
“And I didn’t. You touched me. Again.”
It comes out in a low-pitched voice I’ve never heard before, in a voice that belongs to somebody else. Worse, it doesn’t sound like an accusation. More like an invitation.
Maybe Amriel takes it as one, because his grip flares, his fingers splaying tighter around my thigh, heedless of the blood still seeping from my wound.
The last of my hurt dissipates, borne away by the tidal wave that lifts me up and carries me toward him. Is this the mate bond at work? Because it’s like the Shadow never caught me. It’s like pain doesn’t exist, never has.
Amriel remains motionless. He doesn’t seem to be breathing, and my awareness narrows to the drape of stiff gray fabric across the inside of my thigh. His thumb presses into my flesh just inches away, but he could slide it aside so easily.
What would that feel like? My body begs to know. My legs splay half an inch wider, nudging against his grip, asking him a question.
Goddess. What am I doing? This is everything I’ve forsworn, but some primal force has woken in my blood and seized control. One that has no interest in right or wrong.
“You could, you know,” I say, again in that unfamiliar voice.
Amriel shudders—visibly, full-bodied. Then he breaks away, his answer coming in the form of downcast eyes, in his touch withdrawn.
Only he doesn’t do it quickly. His fingers trail down my leg, curling briefly around my ankle before forcing themselves open.
Then he just sits there, his head bowed, his hands clamped around his knees so tightly the fabric strains beneath his grip.
Silence reigns, broken only by the scrape of Amriel’s breathing, his quietly muttered, “Fuck.”
And still, I stare down.
I don’t know why. I hate him. I hate what he’s done to me, what he’s still doing. Yet in this moment, the picture of him etches itself on my mind.
Because the immortal king at my feet doesn’t look all that immortal right now. He looks like a man, raw and bruised and fighting with himself.
His hands curl into fists. He pushes up and away, turning a disoriented circle, as if he’s forgotten where the door is. When he finally finds it, he lunges for the exit. The distance between us widens, the spell that bound us breaking. The moment the haze clears, horror creeps in to take its place.
Oh, goddess. Did I just…proposition him? A man I met yesterday? Who I detest?
One hand flies to my mouth, the other to my pendant. I clutch it so tightly the points bite into my palm, but the metal doesn’t respond. No warmth. No offer of reassurance.
I grimace, even though Ishanna has every right to forsake me. Why wouldn’t she? I just surrendered to temptation. To lust.
Yet another sin to add to my growing collection.
Amriel reaches the door without slowing. The pendant falls from my grip, my feet propelling me upright. He can’t just touch me uninvited, then walk away and leave me to deal with the consequences.
Angry words boil out of me. “What’re you doing? Where’re you going?”
He pauses on the threshold, his back still turned. “To see my Shadow. He’ll be back soon. Down in the hall.”
I glance to the window, where blue shadows darken the sky. The sun will set within moments. “What do you need to see him for?”
“I’m going to deal with him,” Amriel says. His voice is a dead, dark thing, as if he’s speaking to me from across miles, across years.
I take an instinctive step closer. “But what does that mean? What’re you going to do, exactly?”
A dead laugh falls from his lips. “Hurt him, Princess. I’m going to hurt him very badly.”
Then he’s gone, sailing into the corridor without a backward glance.