Chapter 38 #3
“I can’t speak of it,” he gritted out. “I want to… I…”
“Are we leaving with the laurels? With Demetri?” We fly together. We fly together. We fly together. The buttons were boulders in my pocket, rivals to the one in my stomach.
He pressed a hand to my clavicle, pushing me back down onto the bed as he lifted the needle.
“I will try—”
“I won’t go.” I gripped his wrist, fingers unable to meet around its bulk. “Not without Demetri, not without Esioul.”
“That’s absurd. You—” He tried to shake me off, but I held firm.“I won’t abandon him, Lycandor. I won’t turn away…not again.” We plummet together.
“Smell it, my certainty, my truth. No matter the toll,” I insisted, digging my fingers harder. “Even if acolytes pile like reels of yarn, we must take him with us.”
He unplucked my hand, lowering it onto the bed. “Are you certain he’d do the same for you?”
“Yes,” I said, without a beat of hesitation.
He reclaimed my hand he’d only just rested on the sheets and brought it back under his shirt. “I will do everything I can to ensure they, he, comes with us, but I warn you—it may not be enough.” Thump. Thump. Thump.
I nodded. For some unnamable reason, I kept my hand there as he sewed the last of the cut.
“Done.”
I skimmed my hand down his stomach, removing it from under his shirt so he could stand and rinse his in the bowl.
I bent my knees, readying to dismount, but he gripped the peak of them, holding me still.
“If you wish it, I can heal them.” His helm flicked over my body, to the stitches.
“They’ll close faster; it’ll numb the pain and make them immune to infection. ”
I gulped with the realisation that it wasn’t my hand in need of his blessing this day…
“I could spit on a cloth…”
I attempted a grin, pained as it was. “You just want an excuse to lap at my breast, Druid.”
He inched closer, my forehead a thumb from his helm.
In it, my twisted reflection stared back, half wild in the firelight.
“If that was my true intention, I would choose another place to devour first—though, it’s a close second.
” Can chainmail look smug? Because he’d managed it as he rose from the stool, the shadow of him eclipsing the firelight.
“Do it.” I could have said no. I should have said no. The buttons seemed to rattle with it; no, no, no.
He paused, before nodding, just once. “Close your eyes, then. No peeking.”
My heart was ready to leap from the chest he’d only just closed. “I won’t.”
A wet smack, like he was sampling wine, permeated the mail.
“Seamstress, really…lime peel?” He tutted.
“You little liar.” He lowered to his knees, elbows indenting the mattress by my neck and waist. “I need you to understand it is of the utmost importance to me that you do not look. Do you vow it? I need you to mean it this time.”
I huffed, resisting the urge to pout. “I vow it.”
Closing my eyes, Lycandor chased me into the dark, his outline branding the back of my lids.
I willed my heart to calm. It was his blessing; he was healing me, nothing more.
If we were to travel by boat, the journey would be uncomfortable, and potentially long.
I needed to be strong. The damp fabric clinging to my skin seemed to wrap tighter, the bedding’s weave like mountains under my hand.
I clawed at the ends of my hair, gathered at my neck, and flung them over my shoulder.
Metal clattered to the floor. Just a lick, just a lick… I’d weathered one before.
“No peeking,” came his tremor.
Dipping, the mattress shifted as two hands pinned either side of my waist. His breath, hot and wet, hovered over the mark at my hip.
No, no, no.
I knew he could smell it, that thing that coiled low in my stomach, refusing to loosen.
The same thing that had me panting, though I lay deathly still.
I’d endured an offering, a penancing, Falstaff’s wicked scalpel, but I would not survive his teasing.My stomach flexed at the first dab of wetness, the tip of his tongue at the base of the cut at my hip, its seam raised with thread.
In one languorous swipe, he dragged his tongue upwards, a trail of spit in its wake that burned cool in the chamber’s brisk air.
I shuddered, unable to fully suppress it.
“Stop smiling,” I warned, voice far too husked for my liking.
“I’m not smiling,” he said, definitely still smiling.
Already the wound tingled with numbness, any lingering pain gone in an instant.
My breathing grew harder.
“Seamstress?”
“I’m fine. Do the other. I won’t look. I’m fine.” I was fine. I was.
The huff of breath preluded a swallow; a lush, honeyed sound that had my own mouth pooling.
The flat pad of him moulded to the underside of my breast, and I silently begged for chains, anything to stop me from arching into his touch.
He paused, a drop of his saliva splashing onto my ribs.
Mercifully, he moved, dragging his tongue upwards before I could entangle my fingers in his hair and force him to do so.
He was slower than before, and it seemed an age before he’d reached the height of my nipple.
It peaked as the edges of his tongue brushed past its centre, and I heard it then—the pained strangle from deep in his throat that matched my own.
Could a tongue feel a pulse? For mine was throbbing beneath it.
He made quick work of the rest, and with one last, playful lick, the heat of him left me.
“Thankfully, I’m done, because I believe you are but a moment away from wrestling me down onto the sheets with you. Keep those eyes closed.”
I snapped my lids shut and reached out blindly to smack him. I missed, repeatedly.
“I won’t apologise,” I declared. “I’m sure if you were pinned under me and I lapped at your chest, even you, oh devout druid, would struggle to leash your reaction.”
I jerked as something harder and more solid than his tongue—his nose, I realised—trailed along my collarbone, up and up to the crease where my neck met shoulder.
He reached the shell of my ear, breath fanning into its curve, kindling to the flames roaring within me.
I bucked then, shamelessly, breasts pressing into the plains of his chest. He was careful not to put any of his weight upon me, despite the bulk of his thighs caging my hips.
Sharp teeth nipped at my lobe, and Blood God damn me, I mewled.
“You needn’t be on top of me, lapping at my chest, for me to struggle to leash my reaction,” he whispered, the small sound obscene in its clarity.
“If you weren’t injured, and I hadn’t another druid to penance, the Blood God Himself wouldn’t be able to stop whatever in the hottest fucking pits this is. ”
Skimming over my ear, his mouth trailed the length of my cheek. Breaths lacing together, he paused when his lips lingered over my own, almost, but not quite, touching.
“Lycandor. Let me look.” Our lips grazed as I spoke, two butterfly wings preparing to fly.
A hand cupped the side of my face and I gasped, his thumb hooking into the corner of my mouth, his fingers curling into my hair. I bit down on it, keeping him there.
“I cannot let you see my face. You are too dangerous to know it.”
The heat cooled slightly, and I lessened my bite. “Dangerous?”
“Yes, dangerous.” His hand found my neck, his touch featherlight until it wasn’t, hands moulding over its curve.
“What are you—” he pressed harder, stifling my words.
His other hand clamped over my eyes, eyes I had started to open. His hold deepened and I gasped for air, kicking my legs.
“You are dangerous, Seamstress, because I believe your blessing is not that of mercy, but wrath.”
His weight dropped, straddling my thighs to stifle my thrashing. Allowed only the shallowest of breaths, I pounded my fists to his ribs and clawed at his shoulders, uncaring if my nails ribboned his flesh. But he held firm, choking me harder and harder.
“It is a truth, is it not? That when in times of great distress, it blooms.”
He squeezed then, sending pressure lacing through my temple, so intense I thought I might pop.
“Mercy and I are old friends, remember? I would know it anywhere. Mercy is not what lurks under your skin; it is a different beast entirely. A sky does not fall, a tree does not incinerate, a man does not die with his bowels prostrated before him from the kindness of mercy. Rather, the might of wrath.”
Limbs hollowing, my hands fell limp, abandoning their assault of the druid at my throat to fall uselessly at my sides.
A swirling sensation took root in my gut, coiling outwards until I was so light with it, I thought I may float away.
His grip ebbed, but scarcely had I taken a breath before he was on me again.
The tip of his nose invaded my ear, his mouth all but kissing the side of my neck, which strained under the throttle of him.
“Perhaps the real mercy would be to end you now. Perhaps your blessing will bloom again, and who can foretell what it will spur you to do? Wrath begets wrath, and we have yet to see its full fury.” He allowed me another shallow breath before rekindling his hold.
My eyes, open against the expanse of his palm, drifted shut, lured by the overwhelming urge to sleep and leave this place.
“I could do it, you know,” he whispered against me.
“It would be so easy. Already, your bones protest my touch. With this hand”—he squeezed tighter, the pressure behind my eyes insurmountable to that in my chest—“I could snuff you out like a taper. It would not hurt, not for long.” Another squeeze.
“Shall I do it, Ashara? Shall I enact what the High Druid will eventually decree, anyhow? Shall I spare Thromarra from the threat of the unknown?”
Another breath, and this time, I used it. “I know what you’re doing,” I rasped. With a shaking hand, I slithered under his hem, aiming for his heart. A heart ready to leap from its ribs.
He unlatched me almost instantly, eyes and throat both. His temple dropped against mine, soft hair falling against my forehead and cheeks, the smell of jasmine and smoke clinging to their strands.
“Too clever, too smart,” he said into my mouth.
Through heaving breaths, I almost brought my lips to his, the urge almost unbearable.
“Wrath?” I asked, still gulping down air, and his breaths with it.
“Wrath,” he confirmed, the tip of his nose skimming the bridge of mine. “A wrath that awakens in the face of injustice. Injustice of the highest sort.”
Injustice.
“Lycandor…let me look—”
The iron door shuddered.