Chapter Sixteen
Ayala
WE SPEND OUR TIME IN the moonlight on the bank by the waterfall and fall asleep with the violet moon reflected from the pool into dappled glow around us.
I’ve shifted. I’ve had the pleasure of Cian’s tongue, hands, and cock. I’m exhausted, but in a delicious way. Yet every time he takes me—or though it’s unseemly by our kind’s standards, I take him—I only want him more. There’s a craven need inside me. It’s insatiable.
Five times, maybe six, one of them in doe and stag form while I splayed over a boulder so his greater weight against my back didn’t break me. But I prefer our human guises. The sensations are more complicated, the explosion drawn out and indescribable except by poetry.
After we bathe in the shallows, he scoops me into him so we lie like two spoons. “Tell me your secrets, love. Tell me everything about your life,” he whispers against my wet hair. “I want to know everything about you.”
And so I do. I tell him of how, when I was a fawn, my parents, a mere hunter and a gatherer in the farmlands, took me to a doctor to see why I hadn’t yet shifted.
I tell how they made our home a haven, even though it was nothing but crumbling stone and wood.
I tell how they wished to shelter me from the world already growing cruel.
I tell him how I was mocked, but also how I found solace after my parents died during the last plague with the baker who took me in.
“And I had a talent for it. I can wield magick in creating delicious pastries with spices grown in rich soil and rocky terrain. I mix them and make something better than it should be.”
“Odd talent to have,” he says, stroking his fingers down my arm, “but I’m glad you had something.” His lips find my skin again before he lies back. “And dreams. What were yours?”
I try to think. Have I ever held any? “An under-baker has small dreams, you know. A little advancement. A little opportunity for creative expression. But I never pictured my future, not really. Before I was tested and found wanting in strength and magick, I was too young to hold any ambitions. Each day was just a miracle in and of itself. You know what childhood is like.”
He nods. “But after?”
“After I was tested,” I say, weighing my words because I want them to be truthful, “and after I knew what I was and wasn’t, what I never could be, I didn’t dream except just before I poisoned you.
Then, I dreamed that I could make wonderful pastries and bring myself a measure of success and renown.
Though really,” I continue as realization hits, “I think I just wanted to ensure myself some stability.”
“I’m so sorry,” he whispers, holding me closer. “I don’t know how you’ve withstood it.”
“Honestly? It wasn’t hard. I had no expectations, and without expectations, the lack of big dreams for my future couldn’t burrow in me. I’ve never missed what I never expected to have.”
Kisses. Everywhere. He spreads them on my head, on my arms, as if he’s trying to protect me and love me through the pain. What he doesn’t understand is that there isn’t any. As I said, one can’t miss what one never had.
“And what of you?” I ask. “I had your painted image when I was a young girl. You were so much older. Not a prince, but we called you one because everyone knew you’d be our future king.”
He groans before laughing. “Publicity. I was still a young buck, my antlers not yet in, when the Aurory declared me the future king. My father took me from our home and hid me in an ancient granary, there to be raised by his most trusted friends. King Charlin killed them all just before I went to court and challenged him before the assembled nobles, which shocked them, since most thought me already dead. I killed him, did my best by Cerf-Biche, met you, and the rest will be our history.”
According to rumor, Cian took down Charlin within three minutes and wasted no time in slaying him. I’ve always thought he must possess a blood-thirsty nature to so carelessly part a man from his life without giving him a chance to cede. But I understand now, or think I do.
I turn in his arms. “Did he kill your parents, too?”
Cian nods, breaking my heart. In the violet moonlight, he’s sadness personified. “I’m as alone as you are, love, excepting Hunter, who was more or less raised with me. The granary was located on MacAvern land. His father was a close friend to mine.”
“I’m glad you weren’t alone.”
“As you were, and all because we place so much importance on strength.” His fingers move to my forehead, trying to stroke away my past, and maybe his. “But you’re strong inside, so much stronger than I’ve ever felt. Maybe terrible pasts create strength inside, where it’s most important.”
“Is that the cord between us? Inner strength?”
He laughs. “Let’s hope I haven’t given up that to you as well. I think we’ll both need our resources for what comes next.”
My fingers dance across his hairless chest, smoothing the skin and enjoying his boulder-like muscles.
“What connects us... I worry it’s fool’s gold, like the pyrite found in the eastern streams. It glitters and seems like a treasure, but we don’t know each other enough to be certain it’s not a mirage, not really. And yet...”
He stretches his long, muscled limbs before cuddling me closer again. The rising sun picks out light strands amidst the darkness of his hair and dapples his lashes with gold. Real gold, better than any precious metal.
His hand splays along my hip and belly, a gesture both possessive and protective.
“This is the most real thing I’ve ever felt.
The rightness of us has carved space in my cells.
I told you the story of how Cernunnos set aside Cerfwynn for the good of the world, but there’s another one, too: one blessed couple, every five hundred years, is allowed to live out what should have been the gods’ happy life together.
I remembered it today as we frolicked in the pool. ”
“You think we’re that couple?”
He shrugs. “Why not? Crazier things have happened.” He pauses. “My mother used to say that when she saw my father for the first time, it wasn’t a lightning strike so much as a deep abiding.”
“Love.”
“Love,” he agrees. “Like what I feel for you.”
He accepts his emotions so easily. Stags usually don’t. It’s axiomatic that does build dreams, while stags snicker. But not him.
That’s how strong he really is. He’s strong enough to love without fighting it.
Rising on one elbow, I look down at him. He’s so handsome. No abdication can steal his beauty, and I’m awfully glad Hunter’s points didn’t rip into his face and form. Wise of them to fight in human guise.
“What now, mate?” I say, trying out our status for the first time with my tongue. It feels strange, like a stolen trinket in my pocket, a secret I shouldn’t share. And yet... we are. Even now, we’re probably no longer hidden in shadows. The earl will have climbed the Antler Throne by now.
“Now we return and face down the jeers. I’ll collect my belongings, you’ll collect yours, and we’ll head out immediately, first for Malvernon Keep, and then on to Tauro. I’m certain Hunter’s already sent runners asking King Tauren to extend hospitality.”
My fingers trace patterns down the sculpted muscles of his chest and abdomen. “Will we ever return?”
He stretches my hair behind my ear, though it promptly falls again.
“Not for a great while, I’m afraid. But tempers cool.
Eventually, we’ll make our way home, likely to Malvernon Keep, which I believe you’ll come to love, or even with my mother’s relatives.
The current Duke de Graal hates my intestines for pushing him into a pond a few years back, but I’m family.
” He pauses. “I’m afraid I won’t have any real title to offer you, though you’ll be called ‘Lady.’ My father was but a baronet. ”
“Sir Cian Malvernon?”
“Too far removed from royalty for you?”
“Well, I wouldn’t poison your cake, no.”
“Ah, the blows keep coming.” But he smiles.
I lean to kiss his lips before assuring him, “You’ll always be royalty to me.”
One thing leads to another, and soon his cock is widening my passage once more. This time, we move in a slow, languid dance, as if we’re both trying to put off the inevitable by stroking the flames slowly.
But everything ends. After we bathe in the pool, we slip on our worse-for-wear robes.
“Best not to poke the proverbial bear by having you show up in doe form,” he says, brushing another kiss against my forehead.
I’ve missed affection for so long. I’m extra greedy for each sign now.
“Are you afraid to be taken unaware as we travel by someone who knows you’ve lost strength?”
Though he really doesn’t seem any less strong to me. My body doesn’t respond less. I’m still a topsy-turvy mess of butterflies and iron core whenever his dark eyes meet mine. If it’s true that does melt for the strong, why am I still melting for him?
“Maybe,” he concedes. “My more primitive senses are heightened while I’m in stag form, but I’m also more recognizable.
And stags are always ready to fight each other while in beast form.
It’s our nature. Less so in human guise.
I think I could take on the random assassin, but I prefer not to do so with your safety in jeopardy. ”
So we stroll, hand in hand, back towards the palace. One deposed king, one doe who rose too high—the two of us against the big, wide world. But together. We’re together, which is more than I ever considered possible.
As the palace comes into view, the whole golden-stone facade reaching tall to the sun, I broach the subject that we’ve been skirting. “The earl—king now, I guess—said you didn’t lack strength, just will. Is that true?”
But instead of answering me, Cian pulls me close and kisses me soundly before setting a more punishing pace. “The outriders approach. Ready?”
I take a deep breath. No. But equally true, I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.