19. Chapter 19
ERYNDOR
The door closed behind us.
Three feet apart. Armor humming against my chest. The room was small and warm and she was right there.
I closed the distance between us in one stride. Crowding her until the rest of the room simply ceased to exist, stopping so close that a single shift of my weight would mean our mouths brushing.
Her breath was shallow. Her lips parted. I could count the lashes framing eyes that were wide and recklessly honest.
"Still working?" The words scraped out of my throat.
"Still working," she breathed.
I raised my hand. Slow. Giving her time to pull back. She didn't.
My fingertips brushed the frantic leap of her pulse at the base of her throat.
Heat surged through the Marks—brief, sharp—then settled. The armor held.
Her skin. Under my palm. After days of nothing. After endless nights of cold stone floors and ten feet of distance and wanting her until my chest cracked open with it.
"Oh gods." The words left her on a ragged exhale.
My thumb traced the high line of her cheekbone. Gentle. Aching. I needed to memorize the texture of her skin, the way it warmed under my touch. She let out a soft whimper.
"There you are," I murmured, watching her eyes flutter shut. "I've been waiting for that sound."
Her breath hitched and I tipped her chin up, refusing to let her look away. "Now tell me—you’re okay?"
"More than okay." She stepped in, eliminating the last fraction of space between us.
Our armor collided with a dull, heavy thud—a wall of cold steel pressed tight against my own.
It was uncomfortable and unyielding, yet it was the only thing letting me feel the heat of her body radiating right through it. "Keep going,” she purred.
My other hand found her waist. Gripped the curve of it and pulled her closer.
She tilted her face up. I leaned down, brushing my lips over hers.
The Marks hummed louder. A vibration in my teeth, my bones, the base of my skull. But they held.
"Amaria." Her name in my mouth. The only word that mattered.
"Yes."
We stood there. Frozen. Neither of us willing to be the first to hope.
Touch her, the soulbinder snarled. Touch her now before this ends. Take her.
I gripped her by the throat and a vicious growl ripped out of me. Her pulse under my palm. Warm. Real. Here. She released a deep moan, melting completely into my hold.
I crushed my mouth to hers. Finally.
The prophecy whispered at the edges of my mind. Death. Binding. The Veil made whole through our ending.
I deepened it. If this was all we got—if every touch was borrowed time—then I would make it count. I would give her something worth dying for.
I meant to be gentle. Meant to savor it. We'd waited so long—I should make it last, make it matter, make it worthy of the torture we'd endured.
I lasted approximately three seconds.
My hands slid into her hair. The razors nicked my knuckles. I fisted it and pulled anyway. She gasped against my mouth and the breathless noise shot straight through me like lightning. I swallowed it. Wanted more. Wanted every shattered exhale she was capable of making.
I devoured her. Like I could compress a lifetime of starvation into a single moment. Like if I stopped, even for a second, someone would rip her away from me again.
Mine, the Soulbinder and I sang together.
Her hands gripped the sides of my armor. Yanked me closer.
"More." The word came out against my lips. Demand and plea wrapped together. "Eryndor, more."
I growled into her mouth and walked her backward until her back hit the wall. Pinned her there with my hips. My thigh pressed between hers and she let out a frantic gasp—a desperate whimper that nearly buckled my knees.
"I've thought about this." My mouth moved to her jaw. Her throat. The place where her pulse hammered against her skin. "Every night. Standing ten feet away. Watching you sleep."
"Eryndor—"
"I've thought about what I'd do when I finally got my hands on you." My teeth grazed her earlobe. She shuddered. "Do you want to know?"
"Yes."
That word. It was enough to make my soulbinder purr in contentment.
It wasn't just agreement. It was the complete, utter collapse of her defenses.
Amaria fought the world, fought the magic, fought her own mind—but right here, pinned to a wall in the dark, she was stripping off her armor and asking me to carry the weight for a while.
It was the most terrifying, sacred thing I had ever held.
"Everything." The word came out like a feral rasp.
"I want to do everything. I want to learn every inch of you with my mouth. My hands, my cock. And my soulbinder.” She moaned again at that, thrashing her head back and forth.
“I want to find every place that makes you gasp.
" I pressed my hips harder against her, making sure she felt exactly how desperate she'd made me.
"I want to be inside you so deep you forget where you end and I begin.
I want to take you apart piece by piece so you don't have to hold yourself together anymore. "
I wanted to claim her so thoroughly that when we finally walked into the Veil, she would know—would feel it in the marrow of her bones—that she was not alone. That I chose this. Chose her. Chose our ending, as long as I got to have this middle.
Against my chest, the dark metal of the armor began to grow incredibly, violently warm. A thrum of heat flashed against my chest. A warning.
I ignored it.
I grabbed the waistband of her leathers. My fingers were shaking—I'd held swords steady through a hundred battles, but I was suddenly struggling with a simple buckle because she was here, she was real, and I could finally touch her.
I got the clasp open and pushed the heavy leather down to her knees.
"More," she demanded, frantically fisting my hair.
"I know." I wanted her incoherent. Wanted her completely, utterly lost to me.
But her hands were already at my waist. Working the laces of my pants. I sucked in a sharp breath when her bare knuckles brushed my stomach.
"These." She tugged. "Off."
"Yours first."
I dropped to my knees. Unlaced her boots. Pulled them off one at a time while she braced against the wall, breathing hard. With the boots finally gone, I gripped the leather trapping her calves, yanked the pants the rest of the way off, and tossed them aside.
My hands slid all the way up her bare legs.
I looked up. Held her gaze as I pressed my mouth directly to her hip bone.
She gasped, her fingers tangling tight in my hair.
"Eryndor—"
I stood. Lifted her. Her legs wrapped around my waist—bare now, warm, gods—and the armor pressed between us, a barrier I'd never been more grateful for and more desperate to destroy.
Chest to chest. The metal humming. Her thighs gripping my hips and her hands in my hair and her mouth finding mine again.
More, the soulbinder demanded. More more more—
The armor grew hot.
The Marks blazed.
Heat. Building. I don’t give a fuck, I thought savagely.
I dragged her mouth back to mine. Deeper. Harder. Grinding my hips into the damp fabric between her legs, thrusting upward like I could outrun what was coming through sheer force of want.
I spun and carried her toward the bed, her mouth was on my neck and her teeth were scraping my skin and I was going to die if I didn't get closer.
I tossed her onto the furs.
I was on her in a heartbeat, driving my knees into the mattress to pin her in place. I braced my arms on either side of her head and slotted my hips between her thighs. The weight of me pressing her into the bed—the absolute, devastating rightness of it—sent feral need roiling through my body.
This is what it's supposed to be, the soulbinder and I purred. This is where we belong.
One layer of fabric between us. Her flimsy underthings.
I could feel her heat through the cloth. Could feel her hips tilting up, seeking, wanting.
Claim her, the soulbinder roared. Now.
I reached between us. Found the edge of the fabric and hooked my fingers under it.
A small sound escaped her. Her eyes held mine. Waiting. Trusting.
I yanked them down.
The Marks seared.
A mangled tear opened up in the center of my chest piece. Two voices screaming at once, tangling together in the sudden smoke. The smell of burning metal. Burning flesh.
I threw myself backward.
Hit the floor. Rolled. Put ten feet between us in a single desperate lunge while the Marks shrieked and the bond howled and everything we'd almost had went up in flames.
I was on my hands and knees, gasping. The skin over my Mark was blistered and raw. I should have stopped. I'd felt the warnings, felt the metal heating, and I had ignored them because I was starving. My greed had nearly killed us both.
The prophecy requires death, the soulbinder murmured. Perhaps this is the only way you get to touch her—by agreeing to the ending.
Across the room, Amaria was curled on the bed. Shaking. Her hand pressed over her chest.
"Eryndor." Her voice was a wreck. "Eryndor, I—"
"I know." I couldn't look at her. If I looked at her, I would crawl back. I would risk the burn. I would let my father take everything just for one more second of holding her like she was mine to keep.
Then, quietly: "I hate him."
I laughed. It came out broken.
"I know. I promise, we will bury him together."
The Marks throbbed. Angry. Denied.
It felt like having a limb severed. The bond had tasted connection, had felt the circuit almost close, and the sudden severance left a ringing silence in my blood that was worse than the burn.
The air in the room still smelled like ozone and sulfur—the scent of raw, uncontained power.
I looked down at the furs. The front of the cuirass I’d worn was... wrecked. The enchantment hadn't just failed; it had incinerated. The center of the breastplate had been blown open, the metal curled outward in jagged, smoking petals of blackened steel.
My skin seared with a phantom heat that wouldn't fade. Every instinct I had screamed at me to cross the room. To finish it. To let the King drain us dry if it meant I could have one more second of her skin against mine.