43. Chapter 43
Chapter forty-three
My clothes clung to me, and my hair was heavy on my shoulders as the rain continued. But I didn’t care. Kaed pulled me along through the abandoned streets of the city, our shoes splashing on the shining pavement. Everyone else was tucked up inside, away from the heavy spring rains.
Had that really happened? He’d just offered me something no one else ever had. No one. Kaed was a prince of the Crown and had just offered me, a nobody, their help in finding my family. If there was any way to find my family, surely the Crown could find them.
But that wasn’t what my mind kept circling back to.
It was the memory of Kaed’s tongue twining with mine.
We were in a part of the city I didn’t recognise. I didn’t know a lot of places in Viverna, truth be told. I had gone places with Denora or Audrie, even Gavrin.
And Eryk.
But I had never actually seen the city with Kaed.
Having him around me, touching me, tasting me. It was intense. We could have been lost in any street or standing under the Crown Oaks themselves, and I might not have noticed.
He’d never stayed long around me. Just to pick me up and put me places. Chastise me or berate me. Or occasionally save my life.
“You were avoiding me.” My gaze flicked up to him. “Why? What did I do?” I folded my arms.
Kaed raised an eyebrow at me. “You didn’t do anything.”
“Well, what then?”
“Peach,” Kaed blew out a heavy breath, his hand raking through his hair as he pushed the wet strands from his eyes.
“I said I was protecting you …” A heavy raindrop tumbled to his lips.
“I’ve been protecting you from me. I’ve been fighting it.
I just thought I was stronger.” Thunder took root in his chest as his voice lowered to a hum.
I was afraid to ask. But I had to know. “Why have you been fighting it?”
There were any number of reasons. I was no one from nowhere. I didn’t have prospects or a fortune. I didn’t even have magic. I had no family left, save for an expecting human sister whom I couldn’t even claim by blood. His title alone was enough to set us apart by worlds.
“Because I was afraid.” He turned to me as we approached a manicured lawn that was soft from the rain.
“Afraid?” I couldn’t imagine him being afraid of anything.
“That once I tasted you, I wouldn’t be able to stop. And I didn’t want to taste something I could never have again. I didn’t want to force you. I didn’t want you to think you had to please me to save yourself.”
Oh.
I had given myself to Eryk to save Kaed.
Somehow, that was different. Somehow, that was a reasonable price.
“You’ve tasted me now …” I was free to go if I chose it. That’s what he’d said. I didn’t know if that was what I wanted. “Do you think you can let me go now? Did you taste enough? Maybe I wasn’t what you thought.” He was a lord. A prince.
In response, he backed me up against the wall of a building.
Heat rushed to my throat and my lashes fluttered at the instant intrusion into my space.
It was like having a beast finally let you know you had been cornered.
It ignited something in me. Something primal.
Something like coals awakening to set a blaze inside of me.
My palms flattened against the … glass? There was smooth glass behind me. Warm lights poured out onto the lawn and painted Kaed’s face in a golden balm.
His hips met mine. Fireworks sparked through my skin where his body pressed into me, testing, finding where it fit.
“What do you think?” he said, low and delicious in my ear, his hand punishing as it gripped my hip.
A broken tumble of air was my only answer. It wasn’t an answer. But I couldn’t think. I was desperate to taste his lips again.
But I couldn’t just give that to him. He already had enough power over me, over my body. The traitorous little clenches that gripped me, even now as I fought them, betrayed me.
How was I supposed to endure this with him pinned to me?
My hand fell to a round knob behind me.
With a quick turn, I pushed, and I slipped inside the glass door of the greenhouse and backed away from Kaed, a smile playing with my lips.
The look in his eyes as he followed me was predatory.
I liked it.
The tropical heat inside was stifling. My blood warmed, and my skin pricked with beads of sweat.
The building was an ornate glasshouse with a rounded roof. Ironwork arms were painted white and curved like vines as they held up the structure.
Nestled behind ferns and palms sat dozens of exotic plants I would never be able to name despite the hours of botanical books I’d been reading.
Amongst the foliage, a spiral staircase curved up to a high walkway overlooking the entire enclosure.
Palm trees with heavy fronds burst onto the paths and over the ironwork.
Ferns provided a soft green blanket for the flower beds.
There was a stillness as the greenery breathed and slept in the cosy quiet.
Kaed’s footsteps clanked behind me, echoing on the metal irrigation grates that lined the floors as he stalked closer.
Butterfly wings beat in my stomach. More like bat wings. Fierce. Frantic.
But I resisted the urge to panic, to flit away with their beats.
“Peeeach.” His voice echoed through the glass building, and I bit down on my lip to stifle a cry. I had tried to run from him before. But this felt different. Like a game we were both playing.
“Going to catch me?” I let my tongue play with the words as I drew each out from behind the draped greenery.
I slipped behind a dense curtain of trailing ivy, watching him scent me between the chorus of blooms and frondescence.
“You can run if you want to, peach. It doesn’t matter. I’m faster.” His eyes darkened as he approached me. Blood rushed to my legs as I tried to dart away, my stomach went cold and hollowed out and my pulse hammered in my ears.
Kaed closed the gap between us before the next beat of my heart sounded.
His fingers pulled back the veil of ivy. “Not going to run?” he taunted.
I stood up on the tips of my toes and let my mouth come close to his. “I think you’d enjoy that too much,” I whispered.
Kaed’s breath was heavy as he regarded me.
I didn’t know what I was doing. And I didn’t really care. This was the freest I had felt, possibly ever. And it was a confounding feeling to find that with the male who had been the one to take me in the first place.
My head jerked back from him as a door creaked open somewhere behind us.
Both of us were on alert in an instant, but it was Kaed who put his finger to his lips.
“Worried we’ll get caught in here?” A vixen’s grin slashed across my face.
I felt giddy as a thrill chimed through me. I pulled in a lung full of air as if I were going to scream, but I didn’t make a sound.
Kaed’s hand clamped down on my mouth and stifled any noise.
I hadn’t really wanted to scream. But I enjoyed seeing his instincts to protect me come out.
My eyes smiled up at him through heavy lashes, but he didn’t remove his hand.
“I didn’t think you hated my company that much that you’d try to get me caught again.”
“Maybe I don’t,” I said, sliding his hand from my mouth.
There was a rumble like the storm had followed us in, and I felt that crackle in my blood as Kaed’s magic flared under his skin.
Another noise sounded somewhere behind the palms and trees and echoed through the glass structure.
“Maybe … I just wanted to see what you’d do,” I purred.
I looked up to Kaed, whose eyes were searching for the lie in what I was saying. The trick. But there was none.
I was enjoying this.
“Protecting you from yourself might be a more demanding job than protecting you from me. But I think I’m up for the challenge.” His voice vibrated through me as he dropped it to a seductive murmur.
Gods, those lips when he said things like that. They made me want to throw myself on him and taste every bit of him.
His hands rested on me. And I let mine explore the expanse of him. Testing. Teasing. Playing.
Maybe I would scream. What would he do then? The wicked thought took over, and I took another breath.
His hand shot back to cover my mouth, and something delicious coiled inside me at the contact.
“Are you trying to invite trouble, peach?”
“Maybe … Or maybe I just wanted to see if you’d do that again.” My lips parted as I sucked his finger deep into my mouth. My eyes never leaving his.
A feral sort of noise issued from Kaed.
I was in so much trouble. In every sense of the word.
He pulled his finger from my mouth slowly and traced the line of my lips.
I felt I had stumbled into a private world. Opened a door to a realm I didn’t know the rules of. Didn’t understand everything in it. But somehow, it felt like I should be here. In Kaed’s arms. Under the intense stare of those endless ocean eyes.
The longer I stayed in this world, the harder it was to remember where I came from, though. Or where I had once thought I needed to go. And he’d now offered to help me find what I’d set out for in the first place. It was that. That tiny but monumental gesture had opened this part of me to him.
A woman in a white petticoat and rust-coloured apron rounded the corner and gave a little gasp as she took in the sight of us cloistered in the greenery. I thought she’d drop the clay pot she was carrying, but she clutched it as if she might hide behind it.
She’d come upon us just as Kaed’s hand slid from my mouth and found a resting place on the front of my neck. He deftly moved to cradling my neck instead of preparing to grip it.
Thankfully, the woman moved on through the glass house; she must have been hoping to disappear into the foliage as she skittered off.
“We should go.” He smiled at me.
I sighed as I saw more people in rust-coloured aprons begin to mill about the housed jungle. Each of them had pots or boxes of tiny flowers.
“What are they doing?” I wondered aloud as we navigated our way back to the entrance.
They were busying themselves with arrangements and floral structures.
Boughs and wreaths. There wasn’t an idle hand in the building as they brought more and more varieties of flora into the already densely packed garden house.
“Preparation.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “For what?”
He smiled, and I almost forgot what I’d asked.
“For the Seeds and Starlight Celebration.” He paused to check my expression, which was clearly expectant.
“It celebrates the balance between nature and magic and allows fae to give back to the earth. It’s quite a beautiful sight,” he said, his tone pensive.
“Magical offerings are sent out into the world like offered stars. Wherever they land, a piece of magic grows.”
There was an unexpected softness to his words, like they were part of a dream he didn’t want to disturb. Delicate memories hanging by silver threads.
I was still getting used to magic and what it could do. Defence and attack strategies seemed useful and practical. But this sounded beautiful. A balance.
“I’d like to see that,” I said wistfully.
Kaed chuffed a laugh into the humid air. “Sadly, I’m not likely to be invited.”
“Your father?”
“You could say that. But Varris usually oversees this event.”
Another person with a crate of what looked like floral lanterns walked past us.
“We should go before someone sees us and tries to get me arrested again for something.” He sounded almost bemused by the idea as he turned to leave.
I bit my lip to hide a laugh. “They’ll set up a cage with your name on it if you’re not careful.”
He laughed at that. But there was something dark in his sound as he said, “I’ve had worse accommodations.”
And I knew he wasn’t making fun. There were so many parts to Kaed I didn’t know. But I had discovered a part of him I wasn’t sure I would ever be able to relinquish after tonight.