DAMN IT ALL TO HELL
Aremis stood above me with the gaping hole in his chest as remnants of my shadowfire funneled through it.
“Why?” He coughed, spitting up blood. “I got her out, for you! I saved her, for you!”
My heart seized at his words, just as his body crumbled into ash, lost to the wind.
The Asher.
The Asher.
The Asher.
I had a sinking feeling that no matter how much I avoided it, somehow, I’d live up to the name.
I awoke drenched in a cold sweat, with a searing pain in my head that lasted only a moment, but it was enough to send my limbs trembling.
Shadows spun around me, stirred by the images in my head.
Their physical manifestation bothered me more than the nightmare, because I hadn’t summoned them.
They’d freed themselves, and now, they were jolting like spears of darkness, piercing the air at an unseen threat.
Next to me, Auren slept peacefully, the smooth planes of her face illuminated by the faint glow of the fireplace. My shadows whipped above her, sending fleeting images dancing across her skin in the firelight.
It couldn’t be far past midnight, given that the fire hadn’t yet burned down to embers.
I traced her brow with a shaky fingertip, gently pushing a lock of hair behind her ear. The shadows turned their attention to her and settled into a strange rhythmic trance before absorbing back into my body.
Her eyelids fluttered, a soft hum filling the space between us. When she opened her eyes, they immediately found mine.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, instantly concerned.
How did she always know when something was on my mind? I thought I’d been good at hiding it. Gods, I’d spent years practicing making my face unreadable in the presence of others, only for her to recognize every tell with a single glance.
I loved that about her.
The thought had my lips tilting with a smile. “You tell me, since you’re so good at figuring me out.”
She blinked away her sleep and shimmied up against her pillow as she assessed me. “You had a nightmare.”
I pushed more of her hair back from her face. “Yes.”
“It was about your power.”
My hand stalled, then continued. “Yes.”
“Tell me,” she said, catching my hand mid-air and folding hers into it.
I sighed as she threaded our fingers together. Her hand looked so small in mine. I could shatter every bone in it with a simple squeeze.
Was I capable of that? Yes. But I would never do it.
Not to her.
I closed my eyes, wiping the image from my mind, and the intrusive thoughts that came with it.
That didn’t stop my power, or my own existence, from feeling any less dangerous.
“Just another warped memory, courtesy of Ramil’s poison,” I finally said. “It’s always the same: my memories of war, or those that I care about getting taken from me in the worst way.”
“He preyed on your fears . . .”
I nodded, almost ashamed to admit that I had any fears at all. I was supposed to be the High Lord of Calledan—the one who invoked fear in others so they didn’t see my own.
Auren hadn’t feared me when she first found out who I was, though. Nor did she have any fear when she witnessed my shadowfire in the meadow in Elandrew. But when I killed those three guards in the dungeon cell . . .
I met her stare. There was no hint of fear now, but I would never forget the look she had given me in that cell. I’d beaten myself up over it ever since, because fear was something I never wanted to see on her perfect face, especially when it was from something of my own doing.
“I don’t fear much, Auren. But I am terrified of losing you.”
“Niall,” she whispered, squeezing my hand in her grip, “you won’t lose me.”
I let her words settle in my mind before I voiced the one thing I constantly asked myself. “Why is it that the gods would bless me with everything I could ever want, yet give me a power that is so dangerous, I could risk losing it all with one mistake?”
Her expression softened. “Because that is how greed is kept in check. If power is given with no restraint, and with nothing to lose, the one who wields it can become reckless.”
She made perfect sense. But she also didn’t know the extent of what I saw in my nightmares. How it was always me—my power—that was responsible for so much death and destruction. How it was her, and my Trium, who suffered the most.
I decided to look at it from a different perspective. “So, you’re saying my power is a blessing? To keep my ego from getting too big?”
“Exactly.” She grinned, briefly. Her face quickly fell into a frown again when I didn’t return the sentiment. “What else is wrong?”
I opened my hand and pressed my palm to hers, until our fingers were spread out flat against one another, giving me something to avert my eyes to as I voiced my other concern. “Knowing what you know about me . . . you’re still willing to . . . marry me?”
“Willing? Niall, I am more than willing. I want to marry you. I said yes because I can’t imagine my life without you.
And no matter how many different ways you might convince yourself that you aren’t deserving of love, that will never stop me from wanting to be with you.
Every dark, abandoned corner in the recesses of your mind, everything you might fault yourself for, I don’t.
My deepest desire is to be yours. Always. ”
Damn every insecurity and fear of mine. Damn it all to hell.
I reached for her face and crushed my mouth to hers in a searing kiss. Her fingers threaded through my hair, and she kissed me back just as deeply. Then she hummed against my mouth, and the sound sent a wave of arousal straight between my thighs like a perfectly aimed arrow.
I sat up, breaking the kiss as I shifted until I was fully above her. “I love you, Auren. You have no idea how much.”
Without giving her time to reply, I claimed her mouth again, pressing my body into hers and feeling her hips grind against mine in a tantalizing motion as she opened her legs for me.
I didn’t need any further invitation. I pushed the fabric of her nightdress up over her thighs, baring her to me, then, I dragged my cock up her center, feeling the heat and the wetness that was waiting.
I’d never get tired of this—the feeling right before I entered her and lost myself to oblivion.
It was a precipice I’d never be able to walk away from.
She was my undoing. My greatest desire. The love that I would give my life for.
And being inside her, pleasuring her . . .
My thoughts faded, narrowing to this one singular moment as I steadied myself and entered her. I slung my hips in slow, deep movements, filling her to the brim with each entry, devouring every sweet sound she made as she breathed them into my ear.
This wasn’t going to be one of those times where I drew things out—I wouldn’t last long. And from the way she was lifting her hips to meet mine, she didn’t want me to.
I gripped her face, her hair, slid my tongue between her lips, parting them so I could taste her, so I could be as deep in her as I could in every way possible.
And when she shuddered beneath me, the walls of her core squeezing with each heartbeat, I came too, so hard and fast that chills spread down my body.
I groaned with satisfaction, still pulsing deep inside her as I nipped at her bottom lip. Shadows skittered through the air, blowing off my shoulders in waves, timed perfectly to the throbbing of my cock.
She expelled a wave of light with her exhale, and her body relaxed into the sheets.
When I pulled away to look at her, her eyes were glazed, lips swollen and pink.
This was a sight I never wanted to forget.
Because the smile she wore was one that she saved for me.
One that held a particular sentiment to it.
It was the smile of a woman who loved me the way I loved her—more than life itself.
And I re-committed it to memory each time it graced her face.
It was the only memory I wanted to have left in the end.
It was the last thing I ever wanted to see in this life.
Her smile.