Chapter 24 #2
It is too complex a thing, to arrange all that I know about the East Wind like fixings of a brew.
For he is forceful and he is hesitant. He is renowned and unknowable.
He is wounded, terribly so, yet healing, too.
He will not always reach first, but he will capture my hand should I do so instead.
He is rigid in his beliefs, but they have softened over time, perhaps even altered shape.
He is all-powerful, yet he has not one friend.
The truth, I’ve found, is not so complex.
“You are many things, Eurus,” I say. “Just when I believe I’ve started to understand you, I learn there is yet another facet to uncover.
” It is something that cannot be described, only experienced and known.
The East Wind, whom I fear I have given my heart to. He hasn’t the slightest clue.
“You are many things as well, bird.” As though handling glass, Eurus cups my face with tender pressure and delicate fingertips. “Kind and gentle, compassionate and generous, practical and bright, and,” he adds with a quirked mouth, “beautiful, but especially when angry.”
I laugh, and he laughs, and the levity, though brief, brings a much-desired optimism to our temporary shelter. How I long to close the distance, but desire cannot be born from a single individual. It must be shared.
“Bird.” His eyes crimp with affection. “Min.” Thumb pressed to my chin, he draws it downward, gaze fixated on my mouth. “How long do I have before my strength gives out?”
“A day, maybe two?” Might a different antidote slow the poison?
But that would mean leaving him to search for ingredients, and I would almost certainly lose my sense of direction, or stumble across another contender, or both.
Our greatest chance of survival is sticking together, working toward a common plan: killing the other competitors before they kill us.
He shivers, his eyelids fluttering shut. “I’m cold.”
“I know.” And the worst has yet to come.
While I help Eurus settle next to the fire, the low tolling of the bell ripples out over the night-encased forest.
“What does that sound mean?” I ask him as I remove his wet boots and socks and set them near the licking flames. The fabric of my clothes has begun to stiffen with dryness.
“It means that one of the participants has fallen,” he mumbles drowsily.
That was the seventh instance of the bell.
If we are lucky, it will have claimed one of the Fates.
I wonder if Arin is still alive. Part of me hopes that he is not.
I certainly do not want to be responsible for his death.
We must outplay, out compete, and outlast the four remaining competitors.
The Council of Gods will not make it easy.
Whoever walks through that door must earn it.
The hours wane. The night deepens. I stack the logs and build the fire high, great, smoky plumes belching toward the cave ceiling.
As Eurus continues to quake from the poison moving through his bloodstream, I stare at his shivering form.
My mouth goes dry, and a crackling awareness consumes me.
Only when skin touches skin might there be relief from the cold.
And so I strip. Buttons undone, nightgown removed and tossed aside, so that my exposed flesh shivers in the brisk air.
When I stand in nothing but my undergarments, I crouch at the East Wind’s side, fingertips hovering over his shoulder.
I do not know why I hesitate. It is worth a try. Anything is worth a try.
“Eurus.” Instead of his shoulder, I brush his cheek. It is icy and bloodless. “We need to remove your wet clothes.”
Rolling onto his back with a groan, he blinks up at me, brow scrunched as his eyes struggle to focus. “Bird?”
I clear my throat awkwardly before removing his cloak.
The strange fabric, something like leather but softer, is almost completely dry, as if it has repelled the water.
Beneath it, he wears charcoal trousers and a plain, long-sleeved shirt.
I undo four buttons before he stiffens in realization.
“What are you doing?” he growls in alarm.
“Undressing you.” The steadiness of my voice pleases me. My heart, however, is a different story. “Your cloak is dry. You can put it back on after your clothes are removed.”
He grabs my wrist. I shake him off. He is not thinking clearly. That is fine. I’ve enough faculties to think for the both of us.
As I bare his chest, the breath leaves my lungs so violently I feel faint. The sheer enormity of his torso is a canvas of skin dusted in black hair, marred by a significant scar dripping down the entirety of his left side like a spill of shiny white paint.
I am not a particularly violent person, but I’m certain I could kill Eurus’ father in this moment. The sight of Eurus’ chest sickens me, for there is scarring, and then there is this: a hot melting of skin that has bubbled and blistered and cooled.
“Boiling oil.”
My gaze leaps to his. “Excuse me?”
“My father,” Eurus grinds out, “poured boiling oil over me. He wanted to see how high my pain tolerance was and gave me a potion that suppressed my body’s ability to heal.
This is the aftermath, what I must carry even though he is gone from this world.
” He studies the scarring in disgust. “It is ugly.”
“No, it is beautiful.”
He shakes his head, saying nothing.
My throat tightens the longer I stare at his hurt. I shouldn’t. It will cross a line, a great, bold line shaded between us. But my body is already in motion as I lean down and gently brush a kiss across the scar.
A soft, pained sound squeezes past his throat. His eyes flick to mine. They are darkest caverns, deep fathoms.
There is an ache in me. It is like thirst or hunger—only through consumption will it be quenched.
What do I wish? To press my mouth onto his skin and warm it with slow breaths.
To move higher, toward his neck, and lower, toward his abdomen.
As I begin untying the East Wind’s trousers, he bats at my hands with a strangled, “What are you doing?”
“I’ve already told you. You’re losing warmth to your wet clothes. Sharing body heat will help us survive the night.” Again, I reach for the ties. Again, he shoves my fingers aside.
I huff out my frustration. “Eurus.”
“Bird.”
“Either you remove your trousers, or I do it for you. Choose.”
In the firelight, his eyes appear glazed. When my tongue darts out to wet my lips, he tracks the motion.
“Turn around,” he whispers.
I do, though it feels akin to exposing my back to an apex predator as Eurus sheds his wet clothes. My pulse crests to a shrill hum in my ears. “Are you under the cloak?” I ask.
“Yes.”
All right. Well. That is good. Quite good, I think. “Um.” I clear my throat, reminding myself that I have lain with men before. Well, one man. Of course, this is not that, exactly. This is for survival. “I’m going to s-slip under the cloak with you. I’ll wrap myself around your back.”
“Can you even reach all the way around?” He sounds as breathless as I do.
“No hurt in trying, right?” My laughter snags, splintering into fragments.
There is a long pause. When he speaks, it is with unusual brittleness. “What if I curled around your back instead? That might make things easier.” The click of his swallow sounds. Or maybe that is the snap of the fire, which is alive, as we are, and burns and burns and burns.
Slowly, I turn to face him. The black of his eyes and hair is in striking contrast to the pale of his complexion. After a moment, I nod my compliance. “Let’s try that.”
Lying curled on his side, wings folded across his back, the East Wind lifts the cloak in offering, watching me all the while. The sight of his calf ensnares me. It is carved from muscle, covered in sparse hair.
I do not allow myself to question my decision as I slide beneath the fabric and carefully seal myself along his front.
The unexpected coolness of his skin causes me to flinch.
I exhale and sink closer, my spine stamped against his chest, the muscle of his bicep cushioning my head.
Our legs overlap. He doesn’t attempt to untangle them.
I struggle to breathe with some semblance of normalcy.
“All right?” I whisper.
The East Wind clamps his other hand over my hip in a distinctly possessive gesture. “Yes,” he rumbles.
Incredibly, the space beneath the cloak warms to a point where I begin to sweat and Eurus’ shivering abates. I am both relieved and fraught with nerves. Rest, I think. It will do us both good. But I am awake, I am aware, I am so, so alive.
My breasts grow heavy, their points tingling against the fabric of my breastband. When I shift against him, the unmistakable shape of his arousal prods me in the lower back.
I stiffen, feeling Eurus’ slow breaths growing increasingly erratic. Our legs slot deeper, my feet curled into his large, warm calves.
A terse breath whistles out of me, for the hand on my hip has begun to move, an easy drift up to my shoulder, the callused pads of his fingers an abrasive drag against my skin.
I bite back a moan as the East Wind presses closer.
What of propriety, decorum? Eurus is a god.
I am mortal. But he is alone, as I am. He has suffered, as I have.
Regardless of what has come before, we now have only each other.
It means something that he trusts me enough to allow my touch at all.
“Bird?” he whispers after a time.
His fingertips continue to glide up my ribs. I squeeze my legs together, as if that might stymie the dull pulsations developing in the secret place between. “Yes?”
“You know the torture I endured in the tower?”
I nod, wondering if it is possible to catch fire from touch alone.
“This is worse.”