Chapter 37
Deep in the tunnels, back towards the dungeons, a thunderous roar shakes the soil above and below us. The tunnels are small, built this way on purpose because Eldrion is so large, and yet he is following us anyway.
Briony is still lingering when Roan grabs her arm. “Henrik told me to take care of you if anything ever happened to him, so that’s what I’m going to do.” Then in one swift movement, he hoists her onto his shoulder and runs.
I wait a moment, trying to catch my breath, and then, deliberately, I choose the tunnel beside the one Briony took. In its entrance, I stop, rip a piece of my skirt and leave it lying on the ground. Then I run. He will catch up with me, but I run anyway. I run until I can feel the weight of the low tide pressing down upon the top of the tunnels. Then stop, and wait.
When he appears, his entire body is taut, tense, coiled, ready to unleash his fury on me.
All this time, I have wondered what his magic looks like. What it is that makes him so very powerful. It seems I’m finally about to find out.
“Wait.” His voice surprises me. It lands like hot oil on my skin and makes me flinch. “What did you see?” he asks.
His face is cast in shadow, making his ice-blue eyes shine even brighter in the darkness. I shake my head and flex my fingers at my sides. “You know what I saw. You made me see it. That’s what you do, isn’t it? Cast visions? Make people see things that aren’t there?”
Eldrion’s expression is unreadable. I search his body, his mind, his soul. But all that comes back to me is a blankness. A misty, dark, blankness. It fizzes like static and fills my mind with pinpricks of pain. Why can’t I read him? Is he blocking me? All this time, he’s been able to block me?
He tilts his head, studying my face, and then he sighs heavily. “I do not cast visions, Alana. I receive visions.” He steps closer. I want to move away, but my body won’t cooperate. He towers over me. He could extinguish me right now, in a heartbeat, if he wanted to. The way he extinguished Kayan.
As a surge of rage rushes to my throat, I realise what I have to do.
I have to keep him here as long as it takes for the others to escape. Because if they are free, at least Kayan’s death won’t have been in vain.
“You receive visions?” I scoff. “Like a prophet?”
Eldrion’s features remain set into a stony glare. “Like a seer,” he growls. “I am a seer, Alana. And what you saw was not some conjuring. It was real. All of it.”
Again, the images flood my brain. Fire, ice, crumbling walls, blood, and fury, and death, and.. .
“Us,” I breathe.
“What did you say?” Eldrion is so close to me now that I can almost feel his heart beating beneath his skin. Shirtless, his wings tucked into the cramped space of the tunnel, frame filling the entire space, he glistens with sweat. He takes my chin in his hand. “What did you say, Alana?”
I stare up at him, and my voices comes out as a breathy whisper. “I saw you. You were watching a vision of us. Me and you. We were...” I trail off. Something is happening to my body. Anger, guilt and shame are met by treacherous, swirling, ropes of lust that tie my organs in knots as I look at him. “We were fucking, and you were touching yourself. You came while you watched us come. I thought it was make-believe. A fantasy.” I am breathing faster. My skin fizzes with tension.
Eldrion’s eyes skim my features, linger on my lips, then drop down to the swell of my breasts. The cords of muscle in his naked shoulders twitch. “It was not a fantasy,” he breathes. And then he grabs hold of me. One hand on my waist, the other at my throat, he slams me back against the inner wall of the tunnel. I grab his fingers. He loosens his grip, moving his hand to snake up into my hair.
And then his lips crash onto mine.
He kisses me with the force of a gale or a thunderstorm. Engulfing my entire body with the power of his passion. His tongue meets mine. His hands roam my body.
Feverishly, I pull my dress up as he tugs my underwear to the side. I bite his lower lip, drawing blood, and he jerks my head back roughly, glowering at me. I meet his eyes defiantly and watch as he slowly licks the blood from his lip, gives my hair another tug, then kisses me again. Softer this time. Searching.
As he enters me, he pulls my dress down and devours my breasts with his mouth. I grab the back of his head and hold his lips on my nipple as he swirls, and sucks, and bites.
He thrusts harder, groans my name, and the sound it makes drives me into oblivion.
This time, it’s not visions of fire and ash and ice that blind me. It is visions of sweat, and skin. Red flesh, chains, pain that turns into pleasure. Eldrion holds my hands above my head. My wings flutter, keeping me upright while he comes inside me, then – holy stars – curls the tip of his wing around my body and uses it to push me over the edge of my orgasm.
I climax in waves, silently screaming as my muscles freeze, harden, then slowly melt around him.
He pants into my neck. His body is shaking.
“Did you see this?” I ask, pulling back, staring at him.
He stares back at me. Still inside me, he growls, “No, I did not.”
With a gentle push, I make him back away. I’m surprised when he obeys the gesture, pulling his pants up and watching me rearrange my dress.
“Alana . . .”
I shake my head. My cheeks are flushed, my hair loose, my entire body alive with something that feels both so wrong and so right at the same time. But I know what I have to do.
Slowly, I back away from him. “That shouldn’t have happened,” I mutter. “I love Finn.”
“The jester is not all you think he is, Alana. Come back with me. I will show you.”
“Why should I trust you?” I scrape my fingers through my hair. “I cannot trust you.”
Rage simmers in Eldrion’s eyes, but I do not see it replicated in his aura. Still, all I see is a mist. A haziness I cannot catch hold of.
I flex my fingers at my sides. He hasn’t noticed. He’s just staring at me. His hand goes to his belt, where he holds a knife. The knife he used to slit Kayan’s throat.
“Tell me where you buried Kayan’s body.” The words come suddenly and unexpectedly. Perhaps I’m giving him one last chance to show me there’s a glimmer of anything other than pure villainy nestled beneath his skin.
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
“I can’t tell you.”
I tilt my head up, bite my lower lip. “Then fuck you, my lord.” With a roar, I splay my fingers and jump back. The tunnel starts to shake. I close my eyes. I feel the water that lives above us, the damp of the sand at low tide that surrounds the citadel. I call to it. I think of Kayan, and picture his body falling, and I hear his scream.
It builds inside me, grows, and grows, and claws against my insides because it is desperate to be free.
And with it, his magic grows, too.
I feel it so strongly that when I open my eyes, I am floating above the ground – and my wings are no longer just purple. They are flecked with blue.
The light casts an eerie glow on the walls of the tunnel. Eldrion watches them, transfixed, then seems to realise what is happening and attempts to rush towards me.
I pull my arms in towards my body with a yell. The walls split, and water sweeps Eldrion from his feet. He beats his wings, but can’t right himself. I stay above it all, watching. Then I let Kayan’s scream break free from my chest.
The walls of the tunnel collapse. The ceiling collapses. Water and earth pile down on top of Eldrion and the last thing I hear as I turn and flee is his muffled cries.
As I move, the tunnels continue to collapse behind me. I keep flying, keep flying, until the ground is dry and I’m able to lower myself to my feet. As my bare soles touch the damp earth, I brace my hands on the sides of the tunnel and try to find my breath.
After several long minutes, standing, shaking, still feeling the wetness between my legs from where he fucked me, I drag myself forward. I walk for what feels like hours, but could only be minutes, until I see light up ahead.
Muted daylight.
When I reach it, I look up. It is filtering down through a nest of twigs and leaves. Next to me is a ladder made of rope.
I grab hold of it and climb.