17. More than a Kiss
SEVENTEEN
more than a kiss
Keira
“I—I’m so sorry, Lila,” I whisper, but my words carry through the empty infirmary.
Aelix glances up at us from his chair where he makes notes on the state of the patient in front of him: Clawd.
The bandages across the man’s face hide his bloody and swollen features, and it makes it oddly easier to visit my tormenter. His ribs are bound in that same mesh, matching the crisp white color of the sheet that’s tucked tightly in against his big body. Everything in the wide-open room feels empty and void. Even my apology, for that matter.
“They said he might not wake up. I’ll never forgive Arcane,” Lila confesses, her gaze adamant and unblinking as she stares down at her mate.
The moonlight shines in from the square windows that line the wall. It casts across the dozens of empty beds around us. Her slender fingers trail over the thin white blanket and she comes closer to his side, lowering herself down until she’s lightly seated at the very edge of his cot. She takes his pale hand in hers, but the cast covering his arm seems awkward and bulky between them.
A glass on bedside table wobbles slightly and it seems I’m the only one who notices the quick swoop of a black scaled tail that disappears behind a stack of books. I eye the books wearily for a moment and just as I suspected, a lizard sized dragon scrambles down the table leg and comes closer on pitter patter feet. It crawls quickly up the window sill and watches from a short distance way in the shadow of a black vase of red roses.
Arcane’s silver eyes peer at me through the leaves of the bouquet. The creatures little head tilts at me, waiting to see if I’ll mention his existence to the others.
My lips remain sealed. And oh how I wish his did too but the flick of a long tongue slides across his narrowed snout and I shiver in side at the weirdness of the small beast.
“He more than deserved it. Arcane was protecting your friend,” Aelix tells her with a hard stare at his sister.
“Don’t you of all people stand up for Arcane! He’s violent and a liability, and he shouldn’t be rewarded the way this academy rewards his type.”
I glance to the watchful lizard and then to Aelix. Both offer no response. None of us mention that Clawd is exactly the type she’s describing. For a moment, I wonder if I’ll ever confess what her mate’s done to me. After the Hell Well, I thought I might. I thought it might protect her in the future to know what he’s capable of.
Now, I’m not so sure. Would she hear my words of warning?
In the grand scheme of my strange little life, does it matter?
“I’ll give you a moment alone.” I step away from the little bed, and only Aelix notices my retreating steps. Before I turn from them, his watchful eyes search my features, and he slowly stands like he might run after me. But the door swings closed behind me. And I’m alone in the silence of the night. The infirmary wing is on the opposite end of the academy dorms, and I take my time walking in the quiet emptiness of the halls.
The day drains from my body with every step I take. Flashing moments repeat in my mind with harsh reminders of how much I’ve screwed up the lives of the Deces family entirely.
And yet, through all that’s happened today, I can’t help but wonder one thing: what would have happened if Arcane had kissed me?
It’s a stupid, adolescent thought, and yet my mind highlights the way his hands felt against my skin. The way my body buzzed from his nearness. The way my heart leapt to life under the words of his vow: He’ll never touch you again, I promise.
I swallow hard and roll my eyes at how hard my heart just fluttered.
“I cannot fall for the broken brother,” I whisper to myself as I climb the stairs one slow and tired step at a time.
“But you already have ,” a voice whispers like the wind, chilling me to the bone with the very sound of their words.
My fingers dig into the cold metal railing, and I freeze in the middle of the staircase. My attention scans the small space, but only shifting shadows accompany me.
“Hello?” I call out carefully.
From the darkness up above, a small creature falls from one stair to the next. It tumbles closer and closer and closer. My heart drills with every inch it gains until it’s just in front of me.
And then everything calms with a shaking breath of laughter slipping from my lungs. A little gray mouse crawls down the stairs, scurrying by me and backing me up against the wall as far as I can go. It squeaks at me on rushing little paws. The creature rounds the corner. And then it’s gone.
“It was just a mouse,” I whisper to myself because every single creature in this academy is a creepy-crawly-something and a mouse is the very least of my worries here.
“And love is just a game,” the voice hisses at me from the dark.
This time, I know I’ve heard that voice before.
In the well.
“Who are you?” I ask him, and I have to force myself to lift my chin a little higher.
“Just a lost soul. Waiting for death,” he tells me, and I can hear the amusement on his tongue.
“Go haunt someone else,” I tell him and try my best to just keep walking.
But it doesn’t work.
“I thought you wanted answers.”
It’s the one thing this demented little spirit could ever say to make me question my sanity. Because I halt there at the edge of the fifth-floor corridor and stare back at the nothingness below. It’s the possibility of getting a real answer for the first time since I woke up in this place that puts me in the palm of this dead boy’s hands.
“Why am I Fated to the Deces brothers? Why do I belong to them?” I ask my questions one after the other, and yet I still have more that I haven’t even uttered yet.
Laughter like a glass shattering chills over my skin.
And then he speaks again.
“You don’t.”
His eerie words linger, and I’m forced to engage with him even more.
“What do you mean, ‘I don’t’?”
I see the white outline of his rotting face flash before my eyes, and I fall back onto the platform of the fifth-floor hall. My palms sting, and I stare up at those dark, deadly eyes. Unlike before, he isn’t a solid being. His translucent body is a ghostly image of what it once was.
“You don’t,” he tells me with a sick, twisting smile. “You don’t belong to them. To either of them, actually.”
He rushes me then. The blur of his pale skin slows behind him as he flies forward with so much speed, I’m crawling backward across the glossy black floor on my hands and knees to escape. The chill of his body cutting through mine steals my breath away with a cry leaving my lungs. Every nerve within me scurries beneath the skin, and I lie there flat on my back as I watch him sail through the long hall. He sinks into the wall at the end of the corridor, the brick absorbing the faint apparition of the skinny boy’s body.
And then I’m alone again.
It takes time for me to shove myself up off the floor. My steps are little more than a shuffle when I get to room 556. Even my wrist feels weak as it turns the cold black door knob. The weight of my body presses to the smooth surface, and I close it shut behind me. I lean there to assist me in kicking my boots off. They tumble away from me. The material of my pants is tight around my hips as I shimmy them down and eye the soft bed with so much need.
I just want sleep. I want to forget this academy and everyone in it for a few short, blissful hours.
The waist of the pants twists around my legs, and I fall face-first and ass up onto the fluffy bed.
I deeply consider just accepting my fumbling Fate and curling up for sleep exactly as I am.
Until the hinges squeal. Laughter crawls through the door. And then awkward silence cuts in.
And I just want to die.
I flip over so fast, the length of my hair tangles around my face. I have to casually pull it all back into place as I greet the two men standing at the door with a tense smile.
“Hi,” I manage to whisper like I didn’t just moon the only two men I actually care about in this place.
Aelix’s eyebrows are high above his pretty eyes.
Arcane’s smile is wide across his obnoxious face.
“Hello,” Arcane tests on a voice like smooth velvet, and I can tell by the glint in his silver gaze that he’s plotting more than he’s saying.
The breath in my lungs is hard to fully take in and even harder to carefully release. I’m too aware of myself, and I have to steady my hands as I push my pants off and begin heading toward the closet in search of something to sleep in.
“Uh,” Aelix starts, but his brother is quicker.
“Are you disappointed?” At the sound of his steady words, I turn with the closet door held open before me, but I can’t release the challenge in his darkening eyes.
Arcane leans against the brick wall next to me, folding his arms over his bare chest and leaving little room between us as he stares me down.
“Leave her alone,” Aelix comments from over his shoulder. He flops down on his back, pulling his arms behind his head while he watches his brother skeptically.
“What?” I ask, despite Aelix’s warning.
“Are you not a little disappointed Aelix didn’t kiss you?”
At that, my mouth pops open to defend something, but honestly I don’t even know what. What am I to defend? My honor? I’m afraid the Fates never gave me any.
“I—I’m curious. If Correll says a kiss is all it takes to fully seal a bond between mates, then I believe her.”
I did, anyway. When she mentioned it in class today, I was more than ready to force Aelix to kiss me just to see if he’d shift or I’d get a fancy little tattoo or just anything, really. And now, I’m tired of trying to live in their world.
I don’t belong here.
And maybe the Hell Well spirit was right; maybe I don’t belong to either one of the Deces brothers.
“He’ll never kiss you,” Arcane says and my fingers fumble over the soft cotton shorts on the top shelf.
“What makes you so sure he hasn’t already?” I taunt, pulling down the clothes and forcing myself not to look at the cruel amusement in his eyes.
“Because he won’t. He won’t kiss you.” He takes a single step forward and then his smooth chest is brushing up against my shoulder, stealing every ounce of my attention and alighting every nerve in my body with a single careless move. I turn slightly toward him. A big hand slips over my hip, and my skin blazes to life beneath his featherlight touch. His breath skims my ear. “Because he knows you’re mine ,” he whispers with a cruel claim.
My lashes flutter, and I feel the heat of someone else just behind me then.
Aelix lingers at my back, and I have to shift in his brother’s arms to see that he’s reaching for the door.
“Kiss her,” Arcane orders.
The tension in my throat is painful when I swallow. I look from Arcane’s sparking challenge to Aelix’s searching stare.
“You’re so fucked up,” Aelix hisses just as he fully settles his palm on the metal knob.
But he still hasn’t opened the door.
And he hasn’t left my side either.
“You want to know as badly as I do. As badly as she does. Admit it. Admit that you want her.”
What is happening right now?
Arcane’s fingers slip back and forth across the tender flesh of my hip, and the heat of his body pressed perfectly against my back burns through me. It’s his brother’s quiet voice that fills my head though. It’s his words that repeat like an echo of sadness over and over again when he says . . .
“I do want her. I want her so fucking bad, it hurts.”
“Why’s it hurt?” Arcane asks without hesitation and with a slicing smile cutting across his face.
“Because I already know.”
I take a single step closer to him, not able to stop myself from seeing the shine of empathy in his gaze as he looks down on me like it’s me he feels sorry for. Arcane’s hands skim my hips from behind, and he holds me in place with such a gentle dominance that it almost seems like he wants me to pull away from him.
And yet, he doesn’t.
His twin doesn’t take his eyes off of me either. I’m suspended there within their gazes. Aelix’s fingers brush along my jaw, and a painful ache blooms to life within my chest. His head dips low. He’s so close I can see the flecks of pure white in his gaze from the scar that lashes through his left eye. The moonlight in his pretty eyes never leaves my face even as my lashes flutter closed. Seconds float lazily by as my heart tries to pound away the time. It’s an endless moment. Then the softest kiss presses to my lips. My palm slides over rough knuckles. I lose myself in the light flick of his tongue against mine, the press of his chest along mine, the heat of his brother’s body against mine.
The coolness of the room slips in between us as he takes a single step back. I blink several times but there’s a fluttering in my stomach that I didn’t expect. His lips still hover over mine as he holds my gaze with the smallest smile pulling at his sexy lips.
“You taste as good as you look, darling. You taste . . . untouchable .” And then, with a small shake of his head, he opens the door.
And he walks out.
A click of the door is all he leaves me with. A long moment follows him. The pounding of my heart hurts. Sudden rage shakes through my limbs, and I turn on the broken brother.
“You’re such a self-centered dragon-hole! Why did you do that to him? Why d—”
“I didn’t do it for him. I did it for you.”
My eye twitches.
“What!?”
He smiles so hard, I can’t stop myself. My palm snaps across his face, and it only widens that demented look of amusement.
“I did it so you’d know.”
“So I’d know?! Are you fuc—”
My hand lifts to strike him again, but he catches my wrist midswing. And then he slams his lips to mine. The fingers of my other hand spread wide to lash out at him, but the surge of energy buzzing through me halts the intent instantly. My lips part, and his tongue slides over mine with a claiming growl rumbling through his chest. I melt in his arms. I melt into the feel of the most euphoric energy seeping all the way down to my core. My fingers curl into soft hair, pulling hard to try to taste him even more.
“Arcane,” I whisper like a vow, and it’s then that I understand his tormenting words.
What I felt with Aelix was wonderful. It was nice. It was something I could easily find comfort in for the rest of my life.
But this . . . Arcane . . . He’s everything. His kiss is like a fire burning through every single inch of my body when all I’ve ever felt before was cold. If I think back on every moment we’ve spent together, I felt him then too.
I just didn’t know it until now.
When he finally pulls away on a jagged breath and my lashes finally open, I find a blinding light burning through my arms. A mark that I’ve never seen before etches lines all across my flesh. And those bright white lines mirror the fiery trail of light that’s burning to get through from the ink that covers Arcane’s arms. Thin lines like red-hot lava shine through the black. My fingers trail across them, and he flinches, the silver in his eyes watching my every move like a predator about to strike.
“Aelix said you had your mating mark burnt from your body with mage magic,” I confess, and it’s like the ache in my heart knows the answer before I’ve ever asked the question: “Why?”
The shine of twisted amusement in his eyes dulls a little, cracking to show his true emotions just slightly, if only for a moment.
“Because I’m a dead man walking, Keira.” He swallows hard but keeps going. “I’ll die. Soon. And I’ll leave behind my love with a fate far worse than watching me perish.”
My brows pull together with confusion, but he’s quick to explain.
“Fated mates never really part. The veil of the afterlife is thin for us. You’ll always see me. Even after I die. And that —that sounds like a torturous romance to live out for the rest of eternity, my pretty Haunting.”
The way he could see me in the in-between makes more sense now than it did then, and he’s right: it does sound like a lifetime of pain to watch a hollow version of the man I love stand just out of reach. One important fact lingers in my thoughts though:
“You knew.”
His smile dimples lines around his perfect lips, and I hate how beautiful he remains even during the most bitter sadness.
“You knew we were Fated the moment we met, and yet, you let me believe I was just a random ghost?”
“I—I didn’t know. I suspected. After I finally saw you, all of you, in the in-between, I thought you might be, but I didn’t know then . . .” He trails off suspiciously.
“When did you know I was your mate?” I ask, and my hands are already pressing hard into my hips to assert my confidence in this situation. Even if my body wants to melt into his playful touch the moment he tries to take my hand into his.
“I knew . . . I knew everytime you touched me that you were mine, beautiful. With the brush of your hand, you’d blaze pain all through my mating mark. It would fight to be free of the magic that suppressed it years ago. It was fucking agony. And I lived it every fucking day just to be near you.”
And with that, my heart shatters beneath his confession. My lips part, but no words come out. Why would he put himself through all that?
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Part of me hoped that with my and Aelix’s freaky twin connection you might really be meant for both of us. And I could let him finally be happy. I could just ignore it. Forever.”
“What? Why?”
“Because! I’m—I’m a great fucking dragon defender. The best. But I’m a shitty Fated mate, Keira. And you deserve better. You deserve someone to grow old with. You deserve Aelix.”
I hate the hurt in his voice. I hate that he’s so incredibly amazing and so incredibly broken at the same time.
Why did he kiss me then? Why prove I belong to him if he’s so heroically worried about protecting my feelings when he dies?
Why?
Hooded eyes trail over every inch of me: my lips, my blouse, my underwear, my thighs . . .
I hold his gaze and slide up into the bed, pushing back slowly one foot at a time like I might be able to change his mind with more than just words.
His steady stare watches me until I’m in the center of the blankets, and I don’t know why I want him so badly in this moment. Maybe it’s because he’s my mate, or maybe because I want to prove a point, but I want him with the deepest parts of my body.
All of him.
Instead, he carefully crawls in behind me, brings his hand to my hip, and holds me at a sweet but considerable distance.
Good night, Haunting , he whispers through my thoughts, sending a shiver all across my nerves with the bond we share.
With a heavy pull of my brows, I stare at the darkness of the room for so long, his breath along the back of my hair turns heavy and even. My hand slides over his, and I replay every single thing that led me here, lying in his arms.
The way he kissed me, the growl of his tone, the possessiveness of his words.
So why did he push me away?
And why does his rejection feel like I’m dying all over again?