Chapter 21
Chapter
Twenty-One
Adric stood at the long table in his private chambers, going through the day’s reports with Kali at his elbow, the way he had done at the end of every day for an age.
The late afternoon painted the stone floor in pale orange, casting a warmth about the room that seemed part of the fire that burned in the great hearth.
As usual, Kali read each report in her clipped soldier’s cadence, and he was listening with one ear and turning the events of the last few hours over in his mind—Cora’s mouth on his, her hand on the cracked leather of the book, their delicious kiss before she crossed back to the Real.
The best part of the day, as far as he was concerned, and also a part he was choosing not to share with his advisor.
“The southern lords have requested an audience next week,” Kali said. “Trade matters. Routine. I have scheduled them for Tuesday.”
“Tuesday is acceptable.”
“And there are rumblings from the outer settlements. Discontent about the executions.”
That pulled his attention back. “What kind of rumblings?”
“Mostly low-level. A few of the houses that lost kin in the courtyard have been gathering. Voicing things in private that they would not voice in the hall. Nothing yet that requires a response. I will continue to monitor.”
“You will, indeed.” He frowned at the parchment in his hand without really reading it. It was troubling that his court was still rippling from the executions. He had thought they would settle. Six men had died, justly, and there should be no rebellion in the air over a king’s lawful judgment.
And yet…
“Keep me current,” he ordered. “If those rumblings start to take shape, I want it known before it takes a face.”
“Yes, my king.” She cleared her throat. “Speaking of rumblings, the outer settlements are reporting ground-shake," Kali continued.
“When?”
“Earlier today. Brief—seconds only. Undoubtedly, the realm settling as the barriers shift.”
“Of course,” he said. “But continue to monitor.”
She inclined her head. “Of course, my lord.”
A discreet knock sounded at the chamber door.
“Enter.”
A young servant boy slipped in with a silver tray topped by a carafe of dark wine and a single goblet.
He set it on the side table, bowed nearly to the floor, and was gone in an instant, as all well-trained servants should be.
Adric considered the carafe for a moment.
He had thought, when he had requested it, that Kali would be gone by now, and he would drink the wine alone at the window while the realm wound down into evening.
And in those moments, as he sipped his wine, he had intended to quietly miss his betrothed.
Now, though, with Kali still at his elbow, his evening was taking a less enticing direction.
He waved a hand. “Continue.”
Kali’s eyes flicked to the carafe. Then back to her ledger. “The stable master reports two injured wyverns. A dragon attack, he believes, from when they were last released to hunt.”
Adric frowned, thinking of the loyal creatures, so much like smaller versions of dragons themselves. They were used primarily by the staff as mounts for routine patrolling, and they were an essential part of the running of the castle.
“Send Solenne,” he said, referring to the castle’s best healer, who had, in fact, tended to Chase. “She has a way with the wyverns.”
“I will.”
“What else?”
“That is the end of the urgent matters. There are six others that can wait if—”
It came on him with no warning at all—a warm flood under his skin. A pulse low in his belly. And a far-too-familiar tightening in his cock brought about by a heat that did not flow through his blood, but coursed through him as wild and powerful as the shock from a lightning bolt.
For a moment, he did not understand what it was, and he stood there with the parchment in his hand and the scent of wine in the air and a confusion that was almost embarrassing—a king ambushed in his own chambers by a sensation he could not name.
Then he realized.
Somewhere in the Real, Chase was inside the woman they both loved, and the bond was open, spilling sensation over him like a thunderstorm.
He put the parchment down with a shaky hand as satisfaction moved through him, underscored by heat and the soft rumble of a delighted chuckle in his chest. After all, hadn’t he told both Cora and his brother that he would not object to being on the receiving end of the bond?
He’d meant it. And here it was, delivered to him at his own table in his own chambers as if the universe were granting him a gift.
The pleasure of it climbed through him a beat later. Clean and hot through his body that had not wanted anything in a long while the way it wanted this decadent pleasure. Cora. Chase. Both of them threaded through him and through each other in a wonderfully sensual knot.
It was exquisite, and the thing he wanted most was to close his eyes and savor it.
Instead, he had Kali at his elbow.
“My king?” He heard the concern in her voice and forced himself to stay calm. To show no reaction to the heat that rolled through him. Once upon a time, he would have had Kali naked and spread across his table if such a thing had happened.
Now, the very thought twisted in his stomach. He wanted her gone. Wanted to revel in the sensations coursing through him.
Wanted? Hell, he needed it.
“My king?” she repeated.
This time, he forced himself to look at her. “We will continue with these matters tomorrow.”
She did not move at once. He could feel her looking at him, this woman who had been reading him for an age.
Then she rose and circled the table to stand in front of him, her fingers already working on the ties that bound her breasts in the thin shirt she wore when not wearing her armor.
“No.”
She gaped at him, and he realized that was the first time she’d so blatantly offered herself since the day he’d ended their longstanding arrangement.
She stopped, but her hand did not lower. “My king.” Her voice cracked slightly. “You—”
“No.”
She put her hands down.
“No more,” he said, and watched as a shadow seemed to slide across her eyes. “You already know that.”
“Of course,” she said. “I only thought that you—you looked as if you wanted it,” she said with a lift to her chin.
He said nothing. He was her king, and he owed her no reason.
The wild heat rolled through him again, a fresh wave of his brother’s wanting that was now indistinguishably his, too. A heat so alive he had to struggle to keep it from reflecting on his face, though from the way Kali’s eyes narrowed, he feared that he had failed in that task.
“You are dismissed,” he said, his voice rough.
She stood there for a beat, her eyes taking him in. Then she inclined her head, turned, and walked out of his chambers.
The door fell closed, and he stepped over to flip the lock, something he rarely did as the servants came and went to serve him.
But now, he would broach no interruptions.
He moved to the bed and stretched out, and the moment his back hit the silk, the bond rolled over him in a wave so deep he made a sound he was glad no one was in the chamber to hear.
His brother in his blood.
Cora at the other end with his brother.
The two of them tangled together in the Real, and the bond between him and Chase running thick and hot with the proof of it.
Adric closed his eyes and let himself revel in the sweet decadence of it.
He did not see them—the bond did not work in pictures.
What it gave him was pure, delicious sensation.
The claiming drive of his brother’s hips, coiling through him as if it had always been Adric’s hips.
The catch of Cora’s breath, not heard, only felt.
A tightening behind his chest every time she made a sound that only Chase got to hear.
The heat of her skin as Chase ran his fingers over her bare body.
He was so damn hard already, and he undid his trousers, then slid his hand under the material to curl around his cock, then felt himself smiling at the irony, for he had not done this in his own bed in ages.
Kali had been satisfying that urge almost since The Breaking.
And, truth be told, the strangeness of satisfying his need by his own hand was almost as exquisite as the bond itself.
Almost.
He closed his eyes and reveled in the delicious wickedness of it. Sharing this with his brother across two realms. Stealing it. Receiving it. Knowing that Chase felt the echo of Adric’s arousal across the bond. It went both ways, after all, and Adric had no intention of being careful.
He thought about that as he worked himself. About Chase. About what his brother was feeling at the other end of the invisible bond connecting them. The intimacy of Cora under him and a king in his blood, whether he wanted him there or not.
About whether Chase would be furious. Or whether—in the dark privacy of his own pleasure—Chase might actually let himself enjoy it.
He hoped for the latter but knew better. Still, it would be a kindness to help his brother along. To let Chase feel every wave of Adric’s pleasure. Every facet of his pounding pulse.
His hips moved as he stroked his cock, and waves of want and need and a feral sort of claiming crashed over him.
Somewhere in the Real, his brother was driving deep, deep, deeper still, and Adric was right there, his body answering every stroke with a wild, intense, growing heat that rose like a wave, hovering over him, threatening to crash.
And when that wave finally crested, he made no effort to be quiet about it.
And somewhere in the middle of it, he heard himself call her name even as he said a silent thank you to his brother.
Only after it had ebbed and left him in his chambers with his pulse still slowing, did Adric let himself name what he had just been given.
For an age, he had been alone in his own blood, and he had carried that aloneness so long he had ceased to know it was there, the way a man with a missing limb eventually stops dreaming of it.
He had organized his entire kingship around being alone, no longer tied to a brother who had no use for him. He had found solace in Kali’s arms, a thin bandage on a gushing wound. And all the while, he knew that what he was truly missing wasn’t sex, but the other half of himself.
It wasn’t the same, of course. Yet somehow, it was.
Somehow, the bond had awakened in him just as it had in Chase. And it was not lost on him that while Chase told himself that the bond was an intrusion he hated, Adric quite liked it.
More, he couldn’t help but be curious about how this intriguing new chapter in his life with his brother was going to play out.
If nothing else, it would be very, very interesting. Especially since Adric had felt enough to know that Chase didn’t hate it at all. What he hated was that he liked it.
He bit back an amused smile. His stalwart brother. Suffering for it, liking it. The very idea was delicious.
He crossed to the carafe and poured the wine, then stood at the window as those in his realm went on with their evening—the courtyards lit, the dragons calling from the stable, his subjects living their lives.
Any one of them would surely feel violated by such a connection as their king had experienced, just as his brother undoubtedly felt.
Adric could put his magicians and scholars on the question. Undoubtedly, they could find a way to break the bond.
But he would not assign them thus.
He was going to leave it as it was, and he was going to receive whatever came through it for as long as it kept coming, and he was going to do so knowing exactly what it cost his brother.
Somewhere in the Real, Chase was asleep with the woman they both loved curled against his chest.
Adric could carry that. He had carried worse for less.
What he could not continue to carry was the silence he had felt since The Breaking. A silence he had brought upon himself, and yet could no longer bear.
Tonight, that silence had been broken, and he would not be the one to mend it.