Chapter Nineteen Hit Me as Hard as You Can, Second Encore #2
That pulled a noise out of him. “Sybil.”
I didn’t let him speak. My hopelessness was like armor, and if he tried to take it from me, he’d rob me of my final strength.
“Don’t you see? Even if Maude convinces the nobles to strip Benji of his crown, they will choose another just like him—a pious pretender who capitulates to their wants and whims and beliefs, and the shadow of Aisling will continue to loom over the hamlets. The story will not change.”
Hand on my chest, barely breathing, I said, “But if the stone objects go, and I go with them, then perhaps the lie might end. If I am gone, nobles and kings and craftsmen might finally look for faith within themselves and not within the empty cathedral of my eyes. Perhaps then things might finally get better.”
He knew what it meant, and still he did not say it. Martyr. No. Rory did not accept my resignation; I saw it in his face, his body, his inhuman eyes.
Chest heaving, shoulders a rigid line, Rory caught my hand.
Brought it to his mouth and kissed it, the action so instinctual it caught us both by surprise.
“You’re beautiful, Sybil Delling,” he said, brimstone in his voice.
“You’re strong and smart and clever.” He grasped the nape of my neck and held me like he needed to.
“But I like it best when you’re wrong. And you are wrong to think the Stonewater Kingdom would be a better place without you in it. So entirely wrong.”
I held his gaze, neither of us able or willing to raise the pale flag of surrender. I did not concede, and neither did he, a taut, familiar vigor passing between Rodrick Myndacious and me. “You still want me to hit you, Rory?”
His gaze traveled down my body and landed on my bare feet. “Should I remove my armor? My boots? For the sake of fairness.”
“As if you cared about fighting fair.” I grasped the hammer in my dominant right hand. “It’s a fine instrument.”
Rory stripped his gauntlets, his gloves. Rain pinged against armor, and when he drew his sword, cutting through that rain, the sound was a beckoning ring. “Do your worst, Diviner. Hit me.”
We began to circle each other. “As hard as I can.”
The dance began.
We were like the storm that had not yet come—lightning, and the following thunder. I swung the hammer, and he struck, his sword answering my blow, so violently defensive it might have been offense. A resounding bang answered; the impact sent tremors up my arm.
Rory backpedaled, lithe as a lure through water as he drew me forward.
I sprang after him, blood pumping in my ears.
We parried, his footwork cleaner than mine.
Rory wasn’t unbridled—but fighting me was different from when he’d sparred with Benji.
Then, he’d held himself back. Now, he was egging me on.
Trying to let me loose. Fluid and fast, he dodged me, then struck out, careful of the edge of his blade, smacking my thigh with the broad side of his sword. “Move those feet.”
I’d have told him to fuck off had I the capacity to do anything but wheeze.
I hadn’t moved my body without tether, without ox-eye, without a locked door, in what felt like an age.
I’d been in a grave and this—turning and hitting and slamming my way through a yard—was like digging through dirt back to fresh air.
My hammer nicked against his rerebrace. And I couldn’t help it. I almost smiled.
“That’s it.” There was red in Rory’s cheeks again. A pulse, jumping in his neck. “Just like that.”
I struck again. My hammer hit his left pauldron, causing him to stagger. We crashed together, and I felt myself push him with all my strength, not knowing if I wanted to flatten him upon the ground or against my own body.
I withdrew, then swung at him again, the clang of my hammer hitting his breastplate cataclysmic. I let out a triumphant sound, raised my arms in victory—
Another bout of pain shot through my abdomen. I gasped. Dropped the hammer.
Rory froze.
And it was enough.
I lunged forward. Caught him around the waist. Slung us both into the ground.
We hit the hard face of the plateau with so much force I heard stone crack.
Breath shot from both our lungs, coming out as lurid, wanting gasps, and the ghost of my former self took over.
I clambered over Rory. Dragged my chemise up my legs and threw them astride his hips, pressing my pelvis down over his.
And Rory, whose body seemed to understand the rhythm mine struck, reached up, took me by the hips, and pressed me down even harder.
I let out a rough noise, grinding against the cold iron of his armor, watching in perverse delight as Rory’s lips parted.
His hands flexed around my bottom, fingers pressing possessively into flesh.
Nothing hurt. Everything did. I put my hand over his chest. Pressed him back until his back was flush against the ground. “Do you acquiesce, knave?”
Rory held my eyes, reached out, and tapped three times against the wet stones beneath us, signaling his surrender and a new, unspoken challenge.
And I couldn’t stop myself. I surged forward, kissing him with bruising force.
Rory answered in kind, pulling me against him, our breath ragged like we’d been underwater, our lips warring as they pressed together.
My fingers dragged tunnels through his hair.
Rory caught my bare thigh, pushing the wet silk of my chemise all the way up to my hip.
When he found nothing beneath it, he made a profane noise in his throat. “Tell me yes first.”
I pressed my teeth over his bottom lip. “Yes.”
He looked at my mouth like he wanted to do unspeakable things to it, reached down, and slid his hand between us. I knew what he would find: the evidence of my desire. “Rory.”
He seemed lost for words, his expression a muddled translation. There was pain and pleasure, wonderment and want. Hunger—but none like I’d ever seen on anyone’s face but his when he looked at me.
Rory dragged his thumb over swollen, tingling nerves.
I jolted, anchoring my hand to his shoulder, our faces drawing closer, our lips brushing. I shut my eyes, boring down on Rory’s hand with new fervor, searching for oblivion—but I couldn’t find it. There was too much pain in my abdomen.
Rory must have felt it, that sudden, intrusive strain in my body, because when he pulled back to search my face, his breathing was less ragged, his focus sharper.
“I’m sorry,” I managed. “I don’t think I can…”
He nudged my chin up with his nose. Ran the edges of his crooked bottom teeth over my throat. “You don’t have to come.” He cupped my pubis, then withdrew his hand, swallowing my whining protests with a kiss. “It doesn’t have to be like how it’s been. It can be something new.”
He put the hand he’d plied me with to his mouth. Just like he had when I’d Divined for him, he put his thumb between canine teeth. Held my gaze. Bit down.
Blood, a beautiful crimson, bloomed. The familiar scent of spring water perforated the cold, the rain. My mouth began to water. I sighed, and Rory gripped my hip with one hand and my cheek with the other. “You seemed to like the taste of it back in the Seacht.”
He held my gaze as he slipped his thumb between teeth and pressed it over my tongue.
A desperate noise crawled up my throat. I nipped at Rory’s finger. Lapped at it. His blood coated my mouth, tasting of spring water, and it felt perverse. Glutinous. Iniquitous and wrong, so far bad it ended up good.
“I’m sorry,” I said again, shame a cold compress against the heat in my body. “I don’t want to be like an Omen.”
“You’re nothing like them. You never will be.” He pinched his finger, more blood blooming over the surface and trailing the labyrinthine mark of his thumbprint. “Let me help you.”
Hesitant one moment and ravenous the next, I ran my tongue over the blood. Warmth bloomed in my abdomen, and for a moment I thought I was coming undone, but it was simply the utter ecstasy that came with a lack of pain.
I made a low, contented sound, and Rory swore, watching me. When the blood was gone, swallowed down my throat like an offering, the pain in my abdomen was almost silent.
It wasn’t oblivion.
But I was full of relief, panting, heart pounding, as if it had been.
Rory wrapped his arms around me, pinning me against his breastplate, where his own heartbeats drummed. “Even like this,” I said, “I can smell the spring water in you.” I pressed my teeth into his neck hard enough to make him moan. “You make it smell good, Myndacious.”
Rory let out a hot breath, knotting my hair in his fist and pulling my head back, exposing my own neck to his mouth.
He kissed the hollow of my throat, then drew his nose all the way up to my jaw, taking a long, steady breath.
“You smell as you always did. Pompous, pious… the only smell I ever liked.” He sucked the skin beneath my ear. “Especially on my bedsheets.”
I smiled, and the sight caught Rory so off guard his own smile bloomed, his eyes softening around the corners.
Slowly, then all at once, adoration unveiled over his face, tender and unguarded—he was the most beautiful man in Traum, sculpted anew and yet just the same.
The effect was a spear, truer than the one that had struck me at the wedding, piercing me directly in the heart.
I kissed him, our lips whispering together like a breeze over flower petals.
“You will destroy the oar tomorrow,” Rory murmured into my mouth.
“We’ll go to the Chiming Wood and the Cliffs of Bellidine after, and we’ll find a way to destroy the chime and coin, too.
Benedict Castor the Third will meet his end, but you need not find yours.
” Quiet as it was, his beseeching was desperate.
“Remain. Remain with me, and you will see.” He stroked my hair.
Held me so tightly I couldn’t breathe. “Things can be better than they’ve been. ”