Chapter 45
The Dread Dagger’s infliction on Maeve’s leg healed agonizingly slowly. With nothing but time on her hands, her mind was so unoccupied, all it could do was slowly draw up memories. Memories she’d long forgotten. Some of Antony, some of Reeve, Maxius when he was just a baby, and some of Mal.
She wondered, in the endless time she had, if Reeve had never rejected her, if she had never come to be at Mal’s side, would she have freed Shadow? Would she have unleashed that evil upon Mal?
It was pointless to think such things. Because she couldn’t imagine a life without Maxius. She wouldn’t imagine such a thing. Prophecies and ancient laws of Magic be dammed. She wouldn’t take any more life from her son. She would see that his future was brighter than hers.
After all, wasn’t that the duty of a parent? To plant seeds they may never get to cherish as flowers of their own?
She learned, as she had nothing but time in her mind, that Shadow’s childhood was a barren garden. There were no flowers. No sunlight. If she’d had parents, Shadow herself didn’t remember them.
The earliest memories she had were of steel chains wrapped around her adolescent body. Torture and pain. Torture for answers to questions a little girl named Judyth couldn’t possibly have known.
From the time of her first memories, until she was in her early twenties, Judyth knew nothing but enslavement. She received no warmth, not even from her fellow prisoners of Shadow Magic. She was cursed, they said. Her pale skin, her bright-white lashes, and eyes were a bad omen.
When she arrived at Vaukore, to study and understand her Shadow Magic, the presence of those Dread Magicals around her grew.
Maeve had never given much weight to her observations that Judyth soared ahead of her classmates, even those with Dread Magic.
She mastered Shadow Magic in a way that had professors glancing nervously.
The Dread King is expecting you.
They picked her. The strongest.
Judyth became the then Dread King’s favorite weapon. Her submission, beaten into her from birth, held strong as he used her ability to absorb another’s Magic, to possess minds for his own reign.
Until the king’s hold on her faltered, and trust filled the gap where chains once were. A grave mistake on his part. Judyth never forgot Nevian. She made certain that as she took the king’s Dread Magic for herself, her hatred was known.
She’d go on to take the lives and Magic of all the royal Dread line.
Just as she was doing with Mal.
Attacks on Earth began, which meant that Reeve was intervening at all hours of the day and night, when Dreaded Dead slipped through realms, targeting only the Magicals that remained on Earth, the ones who had refused to come to The Dread Lands.
He wasn’t just killing Dreaded Dead. He was now taking the lives of her former comrades.
Magical Militia, Bellator. Mal’s soldiers.
Blood coated his armor and smeared across one cheek as he stood with a tight set jaw and tense shoulders in her darkened chamber. Maeve hadn’t been sleeping. She never slept when he was gone.
She set aside her notes and writing on Judyth—no—on Shadow, and stood for him.
Adrenaline coursed through him. Maeve could feel it, like it always did after he fought. Like a cat, shifting its weight backwards, ready to pounce. Or the opening of a serpent’s jaws as venom fills its fangs. Like the thick static in the air before thunder.
She walked towards him with hardly any limp in the pre-dawn morning, nearly fully healed. Her robe whispered softly against the floor behind her.
“You alright?” she asked.
He didn’t exactly answer. “I’ve never had to fight like this. Even in the Shadow War, it was the Dreaded Dead who took my sword. Rarely, other men and women.” He loosed a laugh. “I am ashamed that it makes me feel. . . unstoppable.”
Maeve reached him, his tattooed hands finding her face at once.
He looked over her, scrutinizing her with precision.
The feral beast he had every ability to let gain control was in his eyes and the hard line of his mouth.
It was in his loud and heavy breaths. He tilted her head to the side, his eyes shifting to her throat. To her pulse point.
His eyes blew wide, darkness casting out the swirling violet fire.
He lowered his mouth to it and licked, slowly, raking his tongue across her quickening pulse.
His nose brushed beneath her jaw, the ghost of his warm breath at the soft skin where her neck met her shoulder. His voice was needy, like a stifled groan. “I want you.”
Without adjusting her head, his other hand trailed down her front, landing low on her stomach.
A quick breath snapped out of her nose as his fingers danced along the band of her pajamas.
She could feel the pressure building through him, still not satisfied despite expelling and exerting himself in battle.
“Gods, I want you,” he murmured again, nuzzling further into her neck.
She slid her hands up his neck, ignoring the blood staining his front, and wrapped her fingers through his hair.
“Why do you wait?” she whispered. “What do you stall for?”
Reeve’s breaths grew hungrier as he placed his forehead on her shoulder, his hold on her tightening. A small, anguished sound reverberated from him. “I don’t even know anymore.”
His control snapped. The cat pounced. The serpent’s jaw snapped down, and thunder boomed.
Reeve’s mouth slammed into hers, already open and ready to feast. The power undulating from him was intoxicating, wrapped in the feeling that, as he said, he was unstoppable.
That this unstoppable, feral god growled with desire for her.
To be one with her in all the places their skin could meet.
Electrifying flames rose in her chest, and she kissed him back, lifting onto the tips of her toes.
His plated armor vanished, leaving him shirtless with loose-fitting pants that hung low on his hips.
His hands dropped from her head as he bent, his lips and tongue dominating over hers, and gripped the back of her thighs.
He hoisted her up as her legs spread and wrapped around him.
She winced slightly from the soreness still lingering in the top of her thigh, but Reeve was too occupied with moving them to her bed to notice.
The lack of poise, the feral sound rumbling in his chest, and the way his hands slid to her ass had her melting into him. He licked and pulled at her bottom lip, his teeth breaking the skin, and then licking the wound. Again and again. Pain and then apology. Pain and then pleasure.
Her altitude changed as he dropped to the bed, his hands moving to her hips as gravity forced her down onto his hardened length.
She rocked her hips instantly, and Reeve’s grip tightened.
She broke their kiss, panting, and pressed her hand to his muscled chest and pushed him back.
His eyes were like molten lava, swirling in rich golden flecks of violet light.
Her force wasn’t necessary, as Reeve obliged and lay back onto the bedding.
With fire still thrumming deep in her stomach, she remained straddling him, but bent down and licked across his front, her tongue sliding from the waistband of his pants, up his center, across each of his chiseled abdominal muscles.
The noise he made brought a smile instantly to her lips.
“It is dangerous to tease me,” he said huskily.
“I have no intention of being a tease,” she replied darkly.
He flipped her faster than she could blink, switching their positions.
He shook his head with a wicked grin. His lips were nearly back on hers when Magic flew through both of them: an alert they shared.
The Magic was Dread, belonging to two, but neither of the signatures was Mal’s.
It was close, on their side of the barrier, but it did not seek to hurt.
The desperate Magic that had suddenly appeared was known to her. Unmistakable. Familiar.
Reeve’s eyes were wide as they stared at one another in shock. Maeve’s hands clasped over her mouth, and after a few more breaths, her body kicked into gear. They each fled the bed, Maeve running for the door, prepared to fly down the palace to their intruder.
Reeve silently snagged her wrist and pulled her close.
He Obscured them just outside the palace.
She took off from him at once, running towards the arches where large tiers of smooth crystal steps sank into the Black Deep.
Drystan stood atop the stairs already, his bow drawn and his calm attack directed at their uninvited guest.
Eryx bolted into her periphery as she bounded past Drystan.
Water splashed around the unexpected visitor, the current lapping against the stone steps. But even in the shadowed early morning, that silver blonde hair was unmistakable.
Abraxas kneeled, bloody and bruised.