30. Chapter 30
Chapter thirty
Adrenaline poured fast and thick into my blood at the vibration of the voice over me. I wanted to scream, but the air wouldn’t reach my lungs. Instead, panic gripped me and wrapped its cold hand around my throat.
“Who—What do you want?” I tried to sit up against the dark. My voice faltered as it drifted into the air.
“Playing dumb is not going to win you any favours, peach.” His voice crackled into the air.
Through a sob I didn’t know I had trapped in my throat, I blurted, “Kaed?”
Was I angry or relieved it was him and not a stranger?
“How did you even find me?” I stammered.
Kaed stepped closer. And he looked terrifying. He was dressed entirely in black and his outfit bulked out his shoulders to menacing proportions.
His tone had been restrained when he’d spoken. But he looked like that restraint might snap at any moment.
“How did you find me?” I repeated, steadier despite the male before me with roiling shadows in his blood.
“It’s my turn to ask questions. Where were you going?” The edge to his words was sharp enough to make me bleed.
I swallowed.
He was nearly vibrating with the power he held within him. The pressure building in his magic, I could almost touch it as it gathered under his skin.
“I’m sure you have a wonderful excuse for why you’re climbing sheer cliffs alone. At night. Leaving without telling anyone.”
“I didn’t!” I shot.
His brow raised at me. Explain. Quickly.
“I left a note …”
“I got your note.” The words were clipped.
My eyes tried to match his darkness. “I just needed … space.”
I felt like an idiot. But there had been no fighting the need that had driven me here. I’d have torn the rooms apart in the Alabaster Palace if I hadn’t left.
“I didn’t think anyone would care that I was gone. You were—” I was babbling. Why was he here? How did he find me here exactly? My note had been vague. Even I hadn’t known where I was going.
“I was what?” Biting frost tipped his words. Had he been drunk or had I imagined it? This was so far removed from the way he’d beguiled my senses.
“I needed space.” I jutted my jaw at him.
“You said that.” His voice was low, lethal. “Why?”
“You know why.” I folded my arms as I glared. I was still kneeling in the grass, and I felt ridiculous.
Something flickered in his blue eyes that were bright in the darkness.
Maybe he truly didn’t feel the need, the urge, I did. All of that climbing and exertion had been a waste of time now that I was back kneeling in front of him, bickering over inane things.
My core coiled, and something warm writhed deep inside me as I forced myself to hold his stare from beneath him.
I was acutely aware that my blouse was still somewhat wet and clinging to me.
But I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of my repentance.
I wouldn’t. Instead, I glowered at him as my knees sank into the bed of clover under me.
Silence stretched until Kaed’s eyes shifted and he flared. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done? What you have caused? You were not to leave the city!” His voice hollowed out the air around me.
“I was coming back!” I stood to be level with him. Kneeling felt too submissive. If he was going to roar at me, he could do it to my face. But on my knees, I’d been farther from him and his godsdamned chiselled chest.
I really hadn’t rid myself of that clenching ache between my legs …
“I don’t care if you were coming back! You broke our agreement.” Something flashed across his face, but it was gone before I could pin it down. “I should have locked you in a damn cell and saved myself the headache of you.” A snarl shattered from him.
“You’re an ass! Do you know that? I was coming back.” I was right up to his chest now. My feet carried on the anger that was bubbling inside me.
“You can think of me any way you want. But you’re coming back with me. Now.” His tone left no room for argument, but my body didn’t seem to care.
I groaned. “I know I’m going back! That’s what I’m saying.
I wasn’t trying to escape! Can you listen to me?
” I huffed. “You just left me there, in the hallway! And after that dream, you—You just left me feeling entirely wound up …” I tried to stop the words, but they’d forced their way into the space between us.
He blinked. Once. Then Twice. His face went still as ice.
He didn’t know about my dream.
Rutting gods.
And then his brow furrowed until the blue of his eyes was nearly swallowed by the darkness that clouded his features.
“And what would you have done if someone else found you?”
Denora’s lessons flooded my mind. I’d have managed. I was certain. Maybe …
I blinked. My thoughts raced back to that night on the docks, and my blood turned to frigid water.
“N-no one did.” I faltered.
“I was watching. I wouldn’t have let anyone do anything.”
What?
“How long were you watching?” I had been dozing, my clothes drying off.
He hesitated.
“Watching me?” I shoved him, but he didn’t budge. He was harder than the rocks I had just climbed.
Kaed flattened his lips into a hard line and dropped his gaze to me. “You shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be here. And we are leaving before they find out.” He practically barked the words.
Confusion kindled in my eyes. “Before who finds out? What do you mean?”
He pinched his nose bridge and restrained a growl.
Just about. “The council members who are watching and waiting for me to misstep. In case you have forgotten, I’m under their absurd city arrest. While it doesn’t physically bind me to the place, they will no doubt be increasingly difficult to negotiate with tomorrow. ”
“Oh …” I said in a pathetic whisper.
I didn’t know what else to say. I’d forgotten somehow that his leaving the city was now against the council’s ruling.
“That’s what I was doing today while you were absconding on your little adventure. Negotiating trade agreements when you’re a political prisoner is … difficult, to say the least.”
“What do you mean?”
“Never mind. Let’s just say not all the members of the council are as endeared to me as Celeste.”
“I can’t imagine why,” I quipped.
But I wondered at what he’d said.
Was he being threatened? I couldn’t imagine who would have the gall to really threaten Kaed. He was physically imposing, and the magic he carried rippled over him whether he concealed it or not.
None of the council members looked even close to being able to challenge him. Maybe they had more magic than he had? Magic wasn’t something one regularly exuded on their person. I think Kaed was the exception to that.
He was the only one I could feel the magic from.
It was like a pulse or a thread that emanated from him in waves, crashing and tumbling into me.
I could tell when he wanted to use his magic or when he was holding it back.
I could feel it on the tip of his fingers.
I didn’t know when I’d begun to understand it, sense what it meant, but it was getting stronger the more time I spent around him.
Like now, I could feel his need to use his shadows to wrap around me.
Eyes still pinned to me, he whistled into the night. Kaed held out his hand, and his black stallion appeared at his command. “Come,” he said as though he could command me like his horse.
I folded my arms. It felt defiant, not logical. “I can make my own way back.”
Kaed’s eyes darkened. “I don’t think you understand. I’m not asking.”
He didn’t need magic to be faster than I was. He was fae, and he was ancient and lethal. A strong arm banded around me before I could turn and run. And I was thrown over his shoulder before I could even process his words.
“Put me down!” My legs hung uselessly in front of him as I thumped on his back, but he didn’t seem to notice or care. “What is your problem! I wasn’t trying to escape. I wasn’t leaving. I was frustrated!” I thumped him again.
He looked over his shoulder as I struggled, pinned.
I grunted and wriggled, his hand gripping around my thighs to hold me steady.
“Deal with your issues! I wasn’t running.”
“I know I have problems. But you will not be one of them. I will ensure that this time. I am done giving you chances. I am done treating you like you’re not my prisoner.
I will tie you to my side every waking hour.
I will tie you to my bed at night if I have to.
You will never be out of my sight if I can’t trust you.
” He paused mid-stride. “And … maybe I can help you with your frustration if you’re incapable of staying put otherwise. ”
I stopped wriggling in his grip, but my body and my insides had turned to liquid fire at his words.
I couldn’t see his face, but I knew there would be a wicked gleam in his eyes, his mouth tugged into a devastating smirk.
I swallowed. “You’re not serious?” I willed the words out of me against a thorn of worry pressing into my throat.
“About which part?” He caressed the night with his words.
No. No. My core would never unknot after this night. “How can you see this as betrayal!” I flailed instead of answering him.
Kaed grunted. “You deliberately waited until you could leave without anyone stopping you.”
“I was coming back!” I rattled into the dark before he thrust me into the saddle.
“Maybe.” He shrugged as he put his foot in the stirrup and mounted.
I was not prepared for just how close he felt once he was seated.
His legs were aligned with mine, touching in too many places.
My back was pressed to his chest, and I could feel his breathing.
Heavy and steady. The opposite of mine; a moth’s wings fluttering at a flame.
My backside was pressed right up against him and my core ignited at that.
And all the thoughts of this morning rushed to my mind.
His lips. His skin. His scent. That hardness my fingers had ached to unlace and free.
And they were all pressed up to me now as he whispered into my ear.
“I’m going to move you onto my legs. So Vega can carry us both comfortably.
” His words were strangled as he measured them out.
His tone had changed entirely. As if now that he had me in his arms like this and knew he’d won, he could bury the anger in his voice.
Through a heady haze, I realised he was asking. He was waiting. His hands hovered at my waist.
I nodded.
His hand clasped around my middle. Silver rings glinted as his long fingers nearly touched in the centre of me as he took hold.
And then he gripped. The pressure was firm. Restrained, but it commanded me to move.
He didn’t bruise me, but something in the way he touched me hinted that he could.
Lifting my weight up, he slid his legs under me, wrapping one arm around my middle. With a tug, I was pressed to him so I was flat against his chest. And my rear now sat directly on top of him.
As we departed, I tensed, but the cadence of Vega’s strides moved me on top of him anyway.
I thought the heat in me might burst into flames the entire ride home; I burned so fiercely from the contact.
I wished the night would swallow me entirely.
But it didn’t.
And it was a long ride back.