Chapter Thirty-Seven
THIRTY-SEVEN
I don’t think there are adequate words for this feeling. Sated, but still craving more. As if someone lit a match beneath my skin but left flickering embers burning along the way.
Wolf’s gaze rests on mine, bare chest slowing. “You have no idea how long I’ve thought about doing that with you.”
An ache—the same one he just appeased—kindles inside me again.
My voice comes out low and breathy. “How long?”
“Indecently long,” he admits, trailing one callused finger up the curve of my waist, then along the scar climbing up my ribs from the High Queen’s assassins. His lips almost find mine, hovering just a shiver away. That finger ventures down my stomach, my hips, my…
My breath catches as his touch dips lower and need gathers in my core all over again. This is madness. How can I possibly take him again? And yet it’s all I can think about with his finger teasing me, coaxing the promises of what follows his touch.
“Too long,” Wolf whispers, and brings his mouth to mine.
The kiss is indescribably slow and sweet, gathering up all the little pieces of me that we shattered just moments ago. All the parts of me that won’t ever be the same, not now that I know him. And even if it might be easier, I don’t want to go back to the me I was before I met Wolf.
I choose this fight.
I choose us.
My lips part under his, urging him to take the kiss deeper, to keep us in this moment where nothing else matters for just a little while longer. And for a second, I think I have him—his mouth draws back toward mine, those green eyes ravenous.
“Long enough that if we don’t stop right”—Wolf groans as my hand strokes down between us—“now, then you’re not getting back out of this bed.” His green eyes are flames on me. “And just in case all of this”—Old Ones, that smirk—“made you forget, we have a battle to win.”
“Cocky.”
His lips brush my cheek. “You can be the judge of that.”
There’s absolutely nothing I can say that won’t inflate his ego. Instead, I roll my eyes just as thunder cracks in the dawn spilling through the haze outside the window. My skin prickles, a tendril of fear curling up my back.
Wolf pulls me in tighter to his side. My fingers trail over the sharp angles of his body, all hard muscle and warm skin and so many scars.
Rain lashes down against the window, breaking the quiet.
“You survived,” he whispers. And I almost can’t tell whether he says the words for him or for me. “You made it.”
“Again,” I tease, brushing my lips over the sharp edge of his jaw.
“Your surprise isn’t much of a compliment.
” Shaking my head brings my nose brushing against the stubble of his neck, and I press a soft kiss there, thinking.
“Honestly, I’m surprised none of you tried to kill me, just to tie up loose ends. ”
Wolf’s hand tenses at the curve of my waist. The breath he draws in is tight but steady, and his eyes flicker from me to the narrow window. “There’s been enough blood spilled.”
His words dredge up the reek of copper and iron. The way the rope burned through into my palms, and how Oona’s skin gave way beneath my blade.
I squeeze my eyes shut. Try to push the memories away.
“Maeve?” Wolf’s voice is soft.
“How do I make it stop?” My words are barely whispers.
His thumb slows its lazy path along my cheek. “What do you mean?”
Old Ones, I can smell the blood. Puddles of it, pooling in the rain. Sticking to my hands, hardening under my nails even where I’ve scrubbed it off. I still feel it.
I think I’ll smell it even in my dreams.
“What do you think it costs?” My voice sounds higher in my ears—forced. Wolf’s brow furrows, and I try desperately to force steel into my words. To hide the parts of me he can’t possibly understand, the parts that are still soft enough to bleed. “Surviving, I mean.”
“It costs everything.” He doesn’t hesitate. His eyes are unflinching, searching mine. “Everything we have. Everything we are.”
“Is it worth it?” My voice cracks. There’s no hiding myself anymore.
Wolf traces soft circles along my hip. “I asked myself that too, once,” he admits, eyes shadowing. He brings his hand up to brush beneath my chin. “Look at me, Maeve. Please.”
That last word breaks me, and I will my gaze back to his. He’s so close, and the heat of his hard chest envelopes me. “What was your answer?” I ask softly.
Pain flares in his green eyes. So fast I almost miss it as his gaze flashes down to my lips, then finds my eyes again.
“Any price is worth it if it means they haven’t beaten me.
If it means we live to fight another day.
For me, that’s enough. That’s everything.
” His rough voice is gravel. “You’re the only one who can say if it’s enough for you.
But I can’t walk away from this, Maeve. That option doesn’t exist for me. ”
Confusion lasts a single heartbeat before I understand. Wolf’s family is dead.
Of course he won’t ever let himself walk away.
And Cash was the one who turned them in. Who betrayed him, and who I’ve just made sure can take his father’s throne so that we have a chance at saving what’s left of Eireann’s magic.
He must hold the throne by now, right?
I can’t imagine why else the Whisperers would have risked exposure with this attack except to help him become king, a new bride at his side.
Saraid will do the job well.
Wolf strokes a thumb along the scar down my ribs. “You killed a king tonight. Consider our bargain fulfilled. If you want to walk away, this is your chance. But…” Wolf hesitates, and I feel the calluses of his palm against my hip. “I asked you once what you would do if you knew the truth.”
“That’s definitely not how you asked, but go on.”
Wolf’s mouth finds mine, nipping at my lower lip again, stealing every retort I could throw at him. “Stay, Maeve,” he whispers. “Stay, and fight with me for our home.”
I swallow, and those green eyes shine. “And if I say yes?”
A wicked smile toys at the edges of his lips.
“Then we get to cause some chaos,” he promises.
“We do whatever it takes to save the magic left in the Wells and bring the Martyr…” Wolf punctuates the words with a kiss.
“And all the mages…” His lips move down my neck, teasing a path from below my ear.
“And magic back to the people of this isle.”
Wolf braces his weight on his forearms, shifting so his body covers mine again. Being this close to him chases away every doubt, every fear, leaving nothing but relief in its wake. He lowers his mouth, hovering barely above mine, testing me.
Teasing me.
His teeth find the soft edges of my ear. “Did you have any trouble getting to the king?”
“Some.” The word comes out breathy. “But Cash…”
Wolf tenses.
Shit.
Wolf’s eyes bore into mine. “Cash?”
His entire frame shifts, drawing back to put distance between all the places where our bodies connect. “What was he doing with you? I thought Talon—”
Guilt twists in my stomach. Not because I did anything wrong, but because I know the words he’s probing for will only hurt him more.
I close my eyes and whisper, “The gardai took me right after you left the ball. I went to find Talon, but they got to me first. And after I got down the tower, after the attack had started… there were so many gardai everywhere. Cash was my chance to get us in and out without anyone suspecting a thing, and he did.”
Hurt slivers through his gaze, and every one of his shields slams back up.
After everything it’s taken for Wolf and me to lower all the walls between us, seeing them go back up in an instant feels like a blow.
“It was the only way,” I say softly, and wince when Wolf flinches at my words. The memories that haunt him seem to weigh even heavier than usual on his shoulders.
Wolf pulls back, putting the width of the bed between us.
“That’s almost exactly what he said to me, once.
” His voice lowers, rough with wrestling pain as he reaches for his leathers and yanks them on.
His black shirt follows, hiding the evidence of everything that’s been done to him, and my stomach clenches.
I slide out of his bed quietly, picking up my scattered clothes from the floor. The ones I stole from his drawer. The ones that smell just like him.
Leather and smoke and sweet sage swim around me as I yank the too-big shirt back over my head, fumbling with the laces at the collar. The leathers, damn them, stick to my sweat-slick skin, and I curse, pulling them over my hips.
My eyes burn when I look at him again. “I don’t understand, Wolf. You heard him. He wanted to help us. He planted the magic just like we asked. And you all clearly trust him enough to think he’d be a better king than his father.”
“That doesn’t mean I trust him with you!”
Wolf’s shout rings in the gold-tinged air, and the hurt in his eyes—it steals my breath.
“You don’t understand what it was like.” He pulls a hand across his face.
“Did you ever wonder why nobles don’t die on the Black Quay with everyone else?
” His words falter, but he sees the way I flinch and keeps pushing.
“There’s nothing left to put up there after the Lady of Shadows finishes with us.
” The pain in his eyes turns ravaged. Tortured.
“Imagine watching that happen, Maeve. Then imagine those same instruments being turned on you.”
Tears in my eyes spill over.
Horror turns my blood to ice. I reach out for him, not thinking, just wanting to touch him.
“Wolf.” My voice is a shattered wisp of itself.
His eyes are near wild with pain, and he wrenches back from my touch. The green there burns too bright, the rims too red, and one hand goes to the scar along his jaw. The other comes out, a buffer between him and me.
“No,” he rasps out.
It takes me a second to understand.
When I do, my heart shatters all over again.
He can’t bear to be touched now.
Not with the memories of what he’s endured so close to the surface.