Seravyn
Igasp as Ren draws me into the corridor. “Goddess, Ren—what are you doing?”
He presses a finger to my lips, then he drags me deeper into the shadows, through a half-open door and into a small, dark room off the great hall. Some forgotten antechamber, cold and silent, the roar of the feast dropping to a muffled hum behind the closing door.
And then it’s just us. My back against the stone wall. His body close. The dark swallowing us whole. Only our heavy breaths between us.
“Ren,” I whisper, my eyes wide and bright in the gloom. “If he finds us—”
“Don’t think about him. Not right now.” His voice is wrecked. His hands frame my face.
And the guilt rises up to choke me. Goddess, what I’ve put him through. Forced to watch me marry Aldric, the celebration where he was treated lower than any animal. Driving him to this point, and what will happen to him if he’s found out.
And still, selfishly I want to be nowhere else than in his arms.
My hard swallow pulses against his palm. “Morrishan’s mercy, I was holding strong,” I say, my voice breaking. “I was holding strong until now. Here with you, how can I go back to him.”
Then his mouth slants over mine and he’s kissing me. Fevered and desperate, stealing my words and silencing my fear in one frantic kiss. He swallows my pain, and I feel every bit of his desire bleeding through his lips.
He pulls back a measure, his breathing labored. “I cannot let him be the one,” he says, words hot against my swollen mouth. “Not him, Sera.” His thumb traces my trembling lip. “I can’t just stand in that hall and let him take you to that bed.”
Some pained sound leaves my throat. My hands come up to grip the front of his motley, and I’m not sure if I’m trying to push him away or pull him closer.
“I can’t do this,” he tells me, his forehead dropping to mine.
“I thought I could. Gods, I swore it to you, but I can’t think of his hands on you.
” His voice fractures on every word, low and torn, scraping out of him like it costs him blood to speak.
“Fuck, the things he’ll do to you in that bed.
The way he’ll hurt you and take you—” He breaks off, his jaw clenching.
“It should be gentle for you. Your first time should be tender and loving, and he’ll be neither. ”
The truth of it lands in my chest like a stone, because I know he’s right. I’ve seen what Aldric does to the women he uses. I watched him through a cracked door. Felt his teeth in my skin and his fingers bruising my wrists, and that was only a taste.
Tonight, he will make me his meal.
I palm Ren’s face, wanting to ease this worry in him. “I have something,” I whisper. “You don’t have to fear for me, I have a dwale.”
He goes still, his pale and dark eyes questioning.
“Isolde brewed it. For tonight.” My hands smooth over the front of his motley, trying to steady us both.
“It dulls the senses. Slows the mind. When I drink it, when he—” My throat tightens.
“When it happens, I won’t be fully aware.
Mentally, I’ll be somewhere far away, behind a veil.
I won’t even remember much, if anything at all.
That’s the mercy of it.” I make my voice as gentle as I can.
“I promise, I will be fine. This isn’t your worry to carry, Ren.
I have a way through it, you have to trust me. ”
He pulls back enough to look at me, and even in the dimness I can see the anguish carving his face, the wet shine at his lash line.
“This is how you plan to survive him,” he says hollowly. “Mind vacant, letting him have your body while he—” He shakes his head, a sharp, violent motion. “That’s not mercy, Sera. That’s death. Mercy doesn’t require you to leave your own body to survive it.”
I blink. “It’s the only way,” I say.
His hands tighten on my face. Something has shifted in his eyes. The grief is still there, but beneath it now burns something fierce, something resolved, and my breath stalls in my chest at the intensity of it.
“No, it’s not,” he says, voice a low rasp. “Let me help you.”
“But how? There’s nothing you can do.”
A fire brims in his gaze. “Let me make your body ready for him.”
The words knock the air from my lungs.
His thumb traces my trembling lower lip, slow and reverent, and his voice drops to something raw and aching.
“The gods know I want to carry you out of this palace right now and never look back, but I can’t.
Not tonight. But I can do this. I can make it so it doesn’t tear you apart.
I can ready your body to take him, so when he does—” His voice cracks.
“It won’t hurt so bad. So your first time isn’t only pain. ”
Heat floods my face, my chest, pooling low in my belly. “There still has to be blood,” I say, mortification washing through me. “On the sheets, I mean. Otherwise he’ll know, and he’ll be looking for that evidence that I hadn’t given myself to someone else.”
His jaw works. “I’m not going to take that from you,” he says, and I feel the war in him, the longing and the loathing braided into one.
“As much as it kills me that he’ll be the one, I’ll leave you intact, Sera.
” His hand slides from my face, down my throat, over the crimson silk, coming to rest at my hip.
“On this, you have to trust me. Let me make your body want it before he lays a hand on you. Let me be the one who arouses you, so the pain is dulled and you’re wet and willing, and when he touches your body, it’s my touch your skin remembers. ”
I can’t breathe.
I should say no, yet I’ve asked so much of him. And he’s vowed so much to me already, all of his trust—I have to give him mine in return.
“This is madness,” I say. It’s beyond reckless, the kind of treason that gets a man’s head taken from his shoulders.
But his eyes are on mine, dark and pleading and certain, and I think of the dwale in my bodice, ready to swallow any moment when Aldric comes for me, and I think of how much I would rather stay in my body—if only for these last few moments before the night takes me—and I think:
A blade does not weep.
But a blade can choose what it carries into the dark.
“Yes,” I whisper.
His breath leaves him in a rush of relief.
“Make my body remember you,” I say.
He kisses me then. Slow, this time. Devastatingly slow, like we have all the time in the world instead of stolen minutes.
His mouth moves over mine with a tenderness that makes my eyes sting, and his hand at my hip begins to gather the crimson silk of my wedding gown, drawing it up by inches, his fingers grazing the bare skin of my thigh above my stocking.
He pulls back just enough to look at me as his hand stills at the edge of my skirt, his intense gaze holding mine, every line of his body taut with restraint.
And as his finger traces the seam at the joint of my thigh, a sound breaks low in his throat. He pushes the silk higher, bunching it at my waist, baring me to the cool air of the dark room, and his hand slides up the inside of my thigh with a reverence that makes me shiver.
“Tell me if you want me to stop,” he murmurs against my jaw. “One word, and I’ll stop.”
“Don’t stop,” I breathe.
His fingers find the edge of my undergarments, snatching a breath from my lungs before he eases them aside.
And Morrishan’s mercy, when he touches me—when his rough fingertips slide through the slick heat already gathered there—we both go still. His forehead drops to my shoulder. A shudder wracks his whole body, and the sound that tears out of him is half a groan, half wrecked.
“Gods, Sera,” he rasps, then swallows hard. “You’re already so wet for me, Princess.”
The endearment slips from his mouth on a reverent breath, and it tears at something in my chest. “I will always be your princess,” I say, never wanting to stop hearing him utter it the way he is right now as his fingers begin to swirl over me, sparks of heat crackling through me.
“Mine,” he says, and his fingers move in slow, careful circles, learning me, his calloused fingertips gliding over the most sensitive part of me until my hips chase the sensation, until a soft, broken sound escapes my lips and I press the back of my hand to my mouth to silence it.
Ren kisses my throat, my jaw, the corner of my mouth, murmuring across my skin.
“That’s it, let me hear you, let me feel you.” He forces me to lower my hand, the whole while his fingers never cease touching, building with firmer pressure to make my back arch.
The pleasure builds in a molten tide, my thighs spreading wider for him, encouraging his quicker movements. “More,” I gasp.
And with a deep groan, he gives me more.
His finger slides inside me, measured and careful, and I tense at the unfamiliar stretch of it.
He stills instantly, his mouth at my temple, as his thumb circles that aching tight place until the tension melts and my body opens around him.
Then he moves—gentle, deep—working me open, his breath ragged against my hair.
“Fuck, that’s it, love,” he whispers, so wrecked I don’t even mind that he uses Aldric’s endearment for me. “Let me feel how well you can take it for me.”
He pulls out suddenly, the pressure and sensation gone.
My eyes fly open to see him pushing his glistening finger into his mouth, his eyes glazed with desire, and he groans, muttering a harsh oath before he’s pushing inside me again, working me open with two fingers, and mine are digging into his shoulders.
“Oh, goddess…”
A third finger joins the others, and I bite down on his shoulder to muffle my cry.
“Does it hurt—?”
I shake my head, my hips moving of their own accord, sounds leaving my throat I’ve never heard from myself.
“Gods, the sounds you make,” Ren all but growls next to my ear. “You don’t know what you’re doing to me.”
I cling to him. My hips move against his hand, taking him, riding his thrusting fingers, and the war in him bleeds through every touch—the love in the tenderness of his fingers, the loathing in the tremor of his arms, the agony of knowing he is preparing me for another man even as my body comes apart for him.
“I want you to come,” he breathes as he works me higher. “I need to feel you come around me, Princess. Let me feel you taking me…”
“Ren—” The tide is cresting now, sharp and bright and unbearable. My head tips back, and his fingers sink deeper, hitting that deep ache that makes me unravel.
Another ruthless oath falls from his lips, then his mouth covers mine, swallowing my sounds, his fingers relentless as he brings me to the edge. “That’s my girl. You’re doing so well. Fuck, you’re beautiful. Come for me, Sera.”
A cry escapes right before the pleasure breaks through me.
I shatter against his hand with his name on my lips, muffled into his kiss, his teeth scraping my lower lip as my whole body trembles.
My fingers fist in his motley as the pleasure tears through me in wave after wave.
He holds me close, his arm banding around my waist to keep me upright, his mouth gentling against mine, his fingers slowing, coaxing every last tremor from my body until I sag against the wall.
And when I open my eyes, I find him watching me with an expression that shatters me further.
His jaw is tight, his muscles corded, and there’s something cracked open in his face—some terrible, tender devastation—as though watching me come undone for him has split his chest wide and shown him his own heart still beating in the wreckage.
His finger swirls deep inside me, and my hips buck, the aftershocks coming alive once again.
Ren grips my jaw in a firm but tender hold, forcing my eyes on him as he works me, kindling another fire low. “So fucking wet,” he says, voice low and ravaged. “And still begging to be fucked, gods damn.”
He releases a dark growl, his fingers rubbing me until I’m a trembling mess.
A soft moan tumbles out, and he works me harder, faster, bringing me right to the precipice again—
Then he removes his fingers.
His head drops between us, his breaths ragged. “Now you’re ready,” he says.
I swallow the ache crawling up my throat, my body humming with unmet need, unable to stop the grind of my hips. He’s leaving me wanting, needing more…
For him.
I feather my fingers through his hair, drawing his eyes up to meet mine. Then I kiss him tender and slow, letting my need remain with him, showing him that I want only him.
“He doesn’t deserve you,” he whispers hoarsely, smoothing my skirts back down with hands that shake. He presses his forehead to mine, his breath shuddering.
An ache burns in my throat. “How am I supposed to go to him now,” I whisper.
His hands frame my face, his thumbs brushing my cheeks “Nothing about this is supposed to happen. But if you don’t walk out that door right now, I won’t let you go, Sera.”
He releases me, taking a step back. The empty air replaces his body heat, leaving me cold.
“Go to him,” Ren says, and a broken sound leaves me.
“Please.” He drops his head, his voice dropping with it, fierce and low.
I push off the wall, my hands reach for him, gripping his wrists, and for one suspended moment I think he’s going to stop me—
Then I turn, pushing the door open.
“Find me in the dark,” I whisper. “When it’s over. Promise me you’ll be there.”
There’s a long beat of silence. Then he says, “Every day. Same time. I’ll wait for you until the gods themselves drag me away.”
I kiss him then—one last desperate press of my mouth to his, tasting the salt and the wreckage of everything we can’t have—and then I make myself do the hardest thing I have ever done.
I let go of him.
I smooth my crimson gown, straighten my ruby crown, school my face into the porcelain mask the night demands.
Then I slip back into the hall, back into the light and the noise and the crush of a celebration of a marriage I never wanted, and I walk toward my husband and the bed where the night will try to unmake me.
But I won’t let it.
Because my body will remember hands in the dark.
And no draught, no king, no cruelty in any realm can take that from me.