Chapter 15
HARK
She never failed to quicken the pace of his pulse and force his hands to flex.
‘You look like the beginning of spring,’ he murmured as Arla sashayed into his embrace. She smelled like honey and fire and jasmine, and he knew that under the gauzy, flowing, sage-green fabric her skin was as soft as velvet.
‘I didn’t know we were spouting poetry over dinner this evening, but if we are, at least give me time to fucking hang myself,’ Kase said, stabbing the duck on the table so viciously Hark was surprised she didn’t shock it back to life.
Arla chuckled against his neck and … gods that sound! It was like falling stars.
Fuck, the poetry really did need to stop.
‘How angry will you all be if I steal Hark away?’ Arla said, though she was clearly going to do it anyway.
‘Have him! We might get a chance to talk about something other than how much he loves the colour of your hair,’ Seb said, swallowing whiskey like it was water.
Jack laughed, leaning back to rest an arm across the back of Kase’s chair. ‘He’s all yours, Dragonhart.’
Hark thought he felt her tense slightly, but she was soft in his arms again in less than a heartbeat.
‘Jaz?’ she asked.
His friend looked at Arla so intensely it was enough to make him want to disappear, but Jaz dismissed the steely look Hark sent him and nodded once. ‘Have fun.’
He followed her through the winding corridors and she …
she looked as though the very earth had bent to her will and gifted her its beauty.
She led him into the oval room, where he had first found her awake at Flambriar and practically fallen to his knees and begged the gods not to let him lose her.
She settled into the settee, her lithe body almost swallowed up by the plump cushions and blankets the colour of snow.
‘I’m not going back for dinner, am I?’ he asked, failing to hide the smirk that pulled the corners of his lips.
She smiled softly, a smile that was still so rare it stole his breath each time she deigned to grace him with it. A smile he could have had for two years already if he had only told her how he felt.
‘I won’t keep you long, but I doubt dinner will be as carefree as before.’
He knew what was coming. She didn’t need to say any more…
‘Arla—’
‘Let me speak.’ There it was. The authority she had always wielded. The ability to dig deep and pull forth the voice of a person who had been born to lead. A voice that had been forged by the fates.
He didn’t think she would ever understand.
‘I know you don’t want to rule them, Hark, I do.
And it’s not something I want to get into again – at least not tonight – but something needs to happen.
Something needs to change. The people are worried again.
I had a woman come to me today and tell me that the lot of them are convinced that Elrod is going to find them and hurt them and use their blood to create something evil—’
‘He can’t. Thara said he couldn’t—’
Her eyes flashed, and he could have sworn he saw embers burning within them.
‘I know that and you know that, but they don’t believe it.
Hark, they see you up in the mountains every day for the gods’ sake!
They don’t believe they’re safe because they see you giving them a reason to believe they’re not.
Every. Fucking. Day. I had to lie to them, you know.
I had to stand there in the middle of a kingdom you built and tell them you aren’t scouting for enemies but rather spies that we have planted in other courts.
We don’t even have the numbers here to have spies. ’
There was a desperation to her voice, a near hysteria he hadn’t seen from her before.
There was a crack in her careful control.
He should be grateful, really, that she cared so much for a kingdom he had created and hidden from her.
He should be grateful that she was allowing him to see this loss of composure.
He pushed away the thought that it was only because she was a dragonhart that the fates and the gods had made her care this much.
Still, he loved her. Would lay down his life for her. So why couldn’t he give her this? He sighed, dragging a hand through his hair in the way he knew she had come to like.
‘I’ll stand in front of them and promise that we will keep them safe, Arla, but it won’t be enough. They need to hear it from more than just me and you.’
‘Thara,’ she whispered.
‘Thara.’
Silence opened up between them, a chasm he hated more than anything. How had he managed to fuck everything up so quickly after he finally had her?
He’d patch it up. He had to. Because fighting with her … well, it wasn’t an option. Not at all. He could only do this with her at his side, and if she wasn’t, he didn’t want any of it. He’d let the gods burn it all before it came between him and Arla.
‘I know how badly you want this to go well,’ he said, reaching for her. ‘I know you feel all of this pressure because they gave you a new name, but this isn’t all on you, Arla. We’re in this together and you don’t have to take all of this on by yourself, not anymore.’
He’d seen it. Seen her trying to manage the kingdom, trying to make everything just perfect, since she’d been declared dragonhart, and though she was trying to hide how she was struggling to settle in here, Hark had seen straight through it all.
Seen her floundering beneath it all because she didn’t want it all to fail.
‘I prefer our old fights. The ones where Cyrus would have to split us up,’ she said, a wry grin twisting onto her lips.
He had found himself looking back on his time at Castle Grey with a surprising fondness. Despite the constant, agonising stress of what his crew was up to and how he was trying to build a new kingdom whilst being stationed in an enemy one, everything had been simpler.
He missed fighting with her too.
‘Come and fight me over here, assassin.’
She was upon him before he had finished blinking.
He didn’t think he would ever get used to the feel of her body being so close to his. How she was suddenly straddling him, a blade pulled from the gods knew where resting against his throat.
‘Aren’t you wicked?’ he purred and tried to bite down on a smile as he watched her eyes narrow and she leant forwards.
Her lips were a breath away, the scent of her all-consuming, those tangles of blonde curls already claiming him for her own.
The skirt of her dress parted at the slit she had cut to access her blade and revealed a beautifully soft leg.
‘Eyes up, Stappen,’ she murmured, the soft flesh of her lips brushing his as she spoke.
It was the beginning of the end.
The blade disappeared from his throat and fell clattering to the floor. He tugged her closer, until there was not an inch between them. Their lips met and fire erupted.
He kissed her as if his very life depended on it, and she kissed him back as if it would save the world.
It wasn’t the careful featherlight touches they had come to learn, this was urgent.
Desperate. A cacophony of teeth and tongues and wandering fingers.
She tugged at his shirt, tearing through the buttons as if they were a personal insult intended solely for her.
‘You owe me a new shirt,’ he said against her lips, tugging her even closer.
He felt the smile break across her lips as she pressed them against him. ‘The only thing I like more than you in a black shirt is you without any shirt at all.’
Gods, she was ruination personified.
It was like daring to touch lightning.
He stood up, clutching her close to him as her legs snaked around his waist. He carried her through the winding hallways, ignoring the darting stares of maids that caught sight of them.
He made it to his own rooms, crashing through the door and laying her across the midnight sheets of the bed. Every part of him screamed her name, her scent, her taste. He could lie with her forever, tangled beneath the stars and let everything else burn around them.
The world fell away, and then there was only him and the blonde whirlwind that had stolen his heart.