Chapter 41 Jai
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
JAI
That moment when I told her what the king had done, the way she’d jerked away, her face draining of color, those golden freckles stark against her pale skin…
Fuck, Rae… He killed her. I’ve already failed her once. I’m going to kill that motherfucker.
Through the red haze of anger, a headache is pounding through my head. The images Phaethon showed me, combined with the sharp shards of memories returning, are painting a strange picture.
King Marsyas…
If I have these three souls in me… what about my own soul? That’s not a riddle. More like a fucking disaster.
I really came from another world. I wouldn’t be the first. An alien being. Doomed.
Phaethon curses in my mind, speaking words I almost understand. Their meaning hovers right at the edge of my grasp.
The shadows whip around me as the memory of the king cutting her throat replays. The muscles in my ruined back bunch. Fresh blood runs down.
She reaches through the writhing shadows to touch my face. “Jai.”
“It’s okay, makhair,” I tell her.
It will be okay.
Somehow.
What else am I not remembering? What else is hidden?
She isn’t the only one who doesn’t want to face facts. I don’t want to, either. A specific fact: that I spent a hundred years serving my mate’s murderer.
“I’m going to fucking kill the king,” I promise myself, hauling her harder against my chest. “Rip him apart.”
It’s on me. I failed her, and I don’t think I deserve anything good. Yet she’s here. The only good thing I ever had. In this life, at least. Are my nightmares flashes from the other world? What the fuck happened to me?
She appeared and changed everything, my plans for revenge and destruction, the plans to save the world. What do I care about the world when I can have her? But…
Marsyas. You are Marsyas. You came here… for a reason. What was it?
I’m fucked. I have too many gaps in my memory for comfort.
Looks like I’ll have to do something I don’t want to do. Something I refused to do even today, when for the first time the howling ceased inside my head.
I have to sit down and talk to Phaethon.
“Talk to me,” she whispers. “What’s on your mind?”
That I failed her and yet she still cares for me, and she’s fumbling in the dark as much as I am. That she hasn’t given up on me yet and I feel the realization soar through me.
Hope isn’t dead.
But in this prison on this island with all the magic and marks hemming us in, what difference does it make?
I’ll take it, though.
As the shadows withdraw, releasing me, and she gazes up at me, a hand on my face, I know I’ll take it. Take her, even for one night.
One last flare of light before the world goes dark.
Having her is an ephemeral thing. I’ve never known happiness that would last. Right now, though, she’s pressed to my side and time has slowed down, turning to gold toffee.
She has an arm wrapped around my neck and I have mine around her back.
I gaze down at her, memorizing every delicate line of her face, every pale strand of her hair, every inch of pale skin. She’s my girl, my mate, cast in different colors, a different creature.
Same soul, though.
Same beauty and sweetness.
Same fierce determination.
She was always a bright star. The star by which I navigated when I got lost, and I was lost often in those first days when I met her. I’ll always follow her. That hasn’t changed.
I bow my head over hers, closing my eyes. I’m dying to ask her what she’s thinking. What she has remembered. If she feels the bond between us, throbbing like a wound.
If she wants it.
If she can forgive what I am, what I’ve done.
If a man like me can ever be worthy of a woman like her.
I never thought it possible, and now less than ever, but the fucking wonder of finding her again, of having her back, has shaken the foundations of my life, shaken my thoughts loose.
I can’t fucking think beyond being with her, having time with her.
Holding her, convincing myself she’s real and not a ghost.
The Gods know this palace is full of ghosts. On most days, I feel like a ghost myself.
But she is real. Solid. Warm.
Beautiful.
Mine…
Then she scrambles off my lap, leaving me to blink confused. I reach for her instinctively, but she steps away from me, a frown on her face.
“Don’t go,” I whisper, shaken, hauling myself to my feet, ignoring the agony in my torn back. My mind is roaring at me that she changed her mind, Phaethon growling incomprehensible words at the back of my head. Of course she should run away, from me, from this accursed palace. “Fuck…”
“You shouldn’t have gotten up,” she says sternly.
… What?
“Let me check those bandages on your back,” she says. “You’ve hurt yourself worse.”
I frown back at her. “I had to find you,” I whisper.
“I would have come to you. Don’t you trust me?”
I study her small, pretty face. She sounds angry but underneath that sharp tone, there is a softer, bitter undercurrent. She may be furious, but mostly she sounds worried.
“What’s wrong, my love?”
“You’re bleeding,” she says quietly, holding her hands, palms up, before her face, and it takes me a while to realize they’re painted red.
With my blood.
“It’s nothing I haven’t survived before,” I grunt. Her scent is still wound around my senses, tightening as she moves. The scent wafts off her long hair, her skin…
It gets me harder. I didn’t think it was fucking possible to get harder than I have been since she pressed herself to my side to help me out of the king’s rooms.
Catching those small, bloodied hands, I tug her toward me, bow my head to hers. Her lips part, soft and inviting.
I’m hers. Does she know how completely she owns me?
I kiss her and it’s the first drop of clarity I’ve had in an age. Fresh. Sweet. Hot. A hint of salt and a part of divine, a spark of excitement and arousal racing through me. Mine? Hers?
The bond turns it into one.
One body.
One desire.
Sliding my hands down to her waist, I lift her and carry her to one of the sofas, ignoring the agony in my back. Lay her down.
Rae, lying before me, cheeks flushed and eyes wide. It’s a dream I hadn’t dared dream in so long. I kneel on the mattress, settle over her.
The need to complete the bond, to secure it, drums through me.
I want to put my mark on her and drink her blood, I want her to put her mark on me and drink mine.
I want to become one with her forever, now and later, when our thoughts have ceased and our bodies have returned to dust, leaving only our souls to wander the worlds.
She lifts her hands to my face, her gray eyes unfathomable, yet full of emotion. “Jai?”
“Yes?”
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” she whispers. Miserable. Her small hands slide down my neck to my arms, nails digging into the muscles there. “You are the king’s general. You have killed my people. You can’t deny that.”
I shake my head. “I can’t.”
“Now you want me to run away, to save myself when I came here for revenge. I want to make this world a better place, but I also want…”
“Tell me. Tell me what you want.”
Her mouth trembles. Sad. Soft. “You. I’ve always ever wanted you.”
My blood thuds in my ears. “Tell me.”
“I can’t…” She turns her head to the side, biting her lower lip. Those pretty eyes shine too brightly. “Can’t refuse you. Can’t lose you.”
That admission… it pulls on my dead heart, reanimating it. Little by little, she’s coaxing it back to life.
This is such a fucking bad idea.
I look down at her and ponder her anger, so justified, and her grief, so sharp even after all this time. I wish I had the answers she seeks. I wish I could reassure her, swear to her that I would never hurt her. I wish I had all my memories.
I wish I could tell her I’m not a villain.
But then she reaches up before I find the words, startling me. Stroking my face, her eyes still full of tears, her mouth still trembling, and I can’t help myself.
I shouldn’t. We shouldn’t. It will complicate things, it’s not what she needs, what we both need. We should take our time to think and talk, untangle this web, and complete this puzzle.
I can’t stop, and yet… Yet I will if she doesn’t want it, I tell myself wretchedly, she only has to say no or push at me and I will stop. It doesn’t matter that I’m dying to have her. I’ve been dying for a long time. I will die the moment she stops wanting me, die a thousand deaths.
But she sobs my name and tugs my face down. Her mouth presses against mine and that’s it, I’m gone. Lost in her.
She wants to kiss me. She wants to taste me. After everything, she still wants me, and even if it’s just for tonight, even if it’s a bad idea, I’m a greedy asshole and I will take it, take what my body and soul have been hungry for.
She’s mine, and I’ll claim her.
She’s mine, and I love her.
My last thought is that I have to question Phaethon about Marsyas. About myself. About the moment we merged.
And I have to convince him to abandon this plan of opening the gates. Who knows? We might reach an understanding. It’s worth a try.
She’s worth a thousand tries and all the possibilities and choices in the Nine Worlds.
She’s worth everything. I may be a bastard, throwing the world away for one person, but when this person is her, I don’t have to explain myself.
Can’t explain.
Damn me to the hells, but without her, the Nine Worlds can fall to ruin for all I care.