Chapter 12
Hope
The main courtrade quarters in Thyria were everything but what Hope had expected. She had imagined they would be some sort of underground bunkers made of metal and black, a static version of the navias.
However, what surrounded Ciaran and her after they moured was an interior greenhouse with many exotic flowers, bushes, and trees she had never seen.
It wasn’t a standard greenhouse either. It was not warmer than outside, but cooler.
The glass panels were darkened, letting the beings inside see if it was daytime or nighttime outside, yet the feeling inside was probably of a permanent flow between dusk and night.
The pale sun was but a mere dim light through the window panels surrounding them, and Hope could only imagine how the stars would mark the sky at night, like small white dots in the blackness above.
The smell of the flowers reminded her of the salty sea and citric fragrances, with a tinge of rare rocks she had never smelled before.
There were multiple species, mostly navy, black and white, covering the spaces between the multiple intricate white stone paths.
The trunks of the trees were pitch black with white dots, or pure white with small black specks.
The leaves shone so much they appeared to be made of different metals.
“This is beautiful,” Hope said, spinning around to admire the dimensions of this space. It was huge, and through the window panels she couldn’t see any other buildings or demarcation points that would help define their exact location. Was this truly in Corentre?
Ciaran kneeled down on the white stone path they had landed on, admiring the closest black flower with white wavy stripes, taking it with his biological hand.
Hope couldn’t take her eyes away from him as he stood up, approaching the night-infused flower for Hope to smell.
The aromatic scent of a mix of mint and citronella made her close her eyes and smile at the same time.
“You are the most beautiful of everything that has ever existed,” he said, placing the flower behind Hope’s ear while she blushed in the darkness, trying to contain her smile from becoming a grin.
A metallic fingertip traced the shape of her lower lip, sending heated nerves to every single part of her body.
What his touch did to her was unheard of—forbidden.
Except it was forbidden no more. He had given up the panom magic he had inherited from his father’s blood for them to be together. Together.
After his centuries of waiting for his fate to be fulfilled, after her whole life blindfolded by the destiny awaiting her, they were finally allowed to love, to kiss, to—
She didn’t open her eyes as he leaned into the space below her ear, whispering against the skin of her throat, “I have desired no one but you, Hope, and I desire you very, very much.”
The air seemed to leave her lungs, sucked by all the nature and darkness around her.
By the Darkness Commander leaning on her body, by how the firm grip of his hands on her waist was clearly awaiting her response, the way his shadows trailed up her ankles and knees, slowly up her thighs, to where her core was heatedly beating of its own accord.
Speechless with unmeasured need and shy insecurity she was not used to, Hope tilted her head to the side to give him better access to her throat.
The consequences of her move were immediate.
Ciaran took the opening and slowly licked from her earlobe to her clavicle, as he held her extremely distracted self tightly against his chest and pushed both their bodies until her back was against the black trunk of the closest tree.
Perhaps it was the contained feeling between nature and this man, the welcomed protectiveness of the surrounding tree, but Hope finally found her speech and some sort of ability to think and put a few words together while Ciaran’s tongue licked her body away, now trailing from her shoulder towards the breast his metallic hand was exposing by unbuttoning her shirt.
“You are the only one I have ever desired, my shadow warrior. The only one I have ever wanted to make—”
Just when his lips were reaching her peaked nipple, he separated from her skin barely enough to repeat her last words. “To make?”
She inhaled sharply, internally begging he would resume the course of his lips as her nipple ached to make contact with the warmth of his tongue. “The only one I have ever wanted to make love to me.”
To her demise, he didn’t resume his licking, but instead he stood tall in front of her, his metallic fingers pinching her demanding nipple and sending accelerated, electrified blood cells across her whole being. Her pounding, wet core had never ached so badly, so hard.
She pulled his shirt out of his pants, and her hand caressed every defined abdominal muscle until she reached his pectoral and held on to it for dear life as his biological hand unbuttoned her trousers and trailed down her pulsating core until his middle finger touched the begging bundle of nerves.
She let out a deep, breathless moan as he spoke while his biological hand played with her clit and his metallic hand pinched her nipple.
“But I want to do many more things to you than that, my beauty. I want to make love to you, and I want to ruin you. I want to savor every single inch of you. I want you breathless for minutes after fucking you so hard you almost lose consciousness. I want you completely undone, begging me for more. I want you moaning for hours, screaming my name so loud even the stars and the red moon hear you. I want to explore every single part of your pleasure. I want to make your fantasies realities and make you wish for things you had never even thought about. I want to do all that while telling you that you are the love of my life and how much I love you. I want to fuck and make love to you and only you, every day and every night, for the rest of our lives.”
Her whole body was shaking, yet her knees somehow still held her upright.
Her ragged breaths were muffled against his body as her nails dug into the skin on his chest, her mind in a sea of heat and lust as his skilled hands aimed with masterful precision, her moans more intense and loud by the second.
“You’re mine and mine only,” he whispered, pinching her other nipple as a trail of shadows circled her neck and wrists. “You’re at my mercy, aren’t you, bloodrose?”
She was getting closer to the inner, biggest precipice she had ever experienced. Her thoughts had been replaced by moans and barely human little sounds she had never made in her entire life.
“I am,” she swore, her legs shaking so hard it was a Cardinals-blessed miracle she had not fallen.
“You are what? Say it for me.” His breathing was also forced, and the bulk Hope felt between his legs could have been made of the hardest steel.
“I am yours and yours only. I’m at your mercy, my nightblade,” she promised, her words followed by a loud growl as his fingers praised her clit with an extremely pleasant rhythm.
“All I want is to take good care of the woman of my dreams,” he said, and she couldn’t reply anymore.
Her eyes rolled backwards as her mouth opened widely, no sound coming out as her body shook, shook, and shook, letting her body jump from the tallest precipice of pleasure, her commander of shadows the only safety net keeping her alive as she orgasmed somewhere out of their world.
Whenever Hope’s mind, soul, and still-shaking body returned to the courtrade quarters, she removed some loose dark strands from her face, shaking her head with an impossible-to-contain grin as she bit her bottom lip.
“Cardinals above, what was that, Ciaran?”
He chuckled, his eyes glinting brighter than ever. “That was nothing, believe me.”
“You called me bloodrose,” she said, hesitant. It had all been so intense, so carnal, that it was hard to remember what was real and what had been inside her head.
“You have Cardinal-red magic and an equally red panom mark, brighter than arterial blood. You’re the owner and Mandor of all petals in the flower you reign.
You have destructive, unfaltering thorns to protect yourself and those you love, a hypnotizing scent that makes me gravitate towards you, and you are the most bewitching creation of nature. ”
Her cheeks heated faster than before, blood warming her blushed cheeks as she digested every word that left the lips of this man. His eyes spoke of how true he believed what he said.
She couldn’t say out loud what her mind was shouting at her: flowers perish, flowers can be destroyed with the mere touch of a blade, flowers don’t live forever—flowers die.
The Core Cardinal had told Hope her future was to die up to five times, and she had already claimed and survived her death twice. Both thanks to Ciaran.
“You will die five times, Hope Nevada. You might rise from each death stronger than before, or you might not rise at all.”
What if she didn’t survive the rest? What sort of being could toy with death and not succumb permanently to it? What if she were, in fact, a flower who would bleed to death?
She swallowed her insecurities and fears. She couldn’t let herself imagine Ciaran holding her unmoving hand again.
He had held her limp body after her Fifth Ceremony, when the rush of Core panom magic through her veins had sent her away, and it had only been the trail of his magic that guided her back to life.
And more recently, during the Fifth Crusade, she had been thrown from the peak of the navia and Hope’s own daggers had stabbed her throat and lung, courtesy of the West Cardinal orchestrating Ciaran’s Healing ordeal.
He had Healed her until he brought her back to the realm of living beings.
He had lost his Healing magic when he gave up his panom blood for her.
She didn’t allow herself to think of a scenario in which Ciaran got to live for many more decades, perhaps even centuries, without her, mourning her.
It wouldn’t be fair to allow his suffering while her corpse couldn’t feel anything.
She bit the inside of her cheek, wishing she hadn’t remembered, precisely now, that three more deaths awaited her.
She wasn’t afraid of dying. She was afraid that allowing herself to die was selfish and not looking after the people she loved most, hence why she would do everything in her power to not let any enemies, not even the Cardinal Queen, destroy her.
“You called me nightblade,” Ciaran said, his eyes narrowed as he examined her closely, surely trying to decipher everything under her surface. Everything he had always seen.
Hope removed her finest dagger from the belt around her hip, lifting it vertically until the thinnest side of the metallic blade was directly between their faces.
“No, Ciaran, I called you my nightblade, because you’re forged like one—sharp, deliberate, silent until it matters.
Blades are all that have protected me throughout my whole life, the only thing I’ve always relied upon and trusted fully.
Until you came into my life, cutting through every obscurity, fighting by my side like my most loyal, devoted weapon.
With you, I believed that trusting others isn’t a weakness but the biggest strength, and you have protected me better than any physical blade ever could.
Llunal’s magic runs through your veins, full of darkness and shadows, of whispers of night, and from day one, your scent has reminded me of night and the woods I called home.
If I had to choose a blade to fight this war and the rest of my life, Ciaran, it would be you. ”