Seravyn
The bedchamber is draped in black and shades of crimson, completing tonight’s wedding theme in the color of blood.
My gown, the cathedral roses, the wine that flowed through the court. And now this room, the marriage bed swathed in deep red silk, the white sheets beneath waiting like a held breath.
I stand at the foot of it in my nightdress, Isolde and my handmaidens assisting and readying me for my wedding night. Robing me, brushing out my hair. Isolde takes her time removing the pins, as though if she takes long enough, she can stop the door from opening, stop Aldric from coming.
But I feel the moment he enters, the air of the bedchamber gathering with his tension around his presence.
“Leave us,” he orders the women.
Isolde meets my eyes briefly, offering one firm nod of encouragement. I return her reassurance with a tight smile, gripping the wine chalice in my hand tighter. The dulling draught has already been laced into the wine.
The door latches shut, followed by his heavy, unhurried tread across the room. I keep my back to him, my spine straight.
“My beautiful wife,” Aldric says, his voice a low husk, the words curling through the room like smoke.
I feel the heat of him at my back. His hands settle on my shoulders, his thumbs slip beneath the lace straps there. His breath stirs my hair. The scent of him, vetiver and cardamom, wrapping heady around me.
“I’ve tried to be patient,” he murmurs, his mouth at my ear. “Waiting for you to give herself over, but you made that extremely hard, Seravyn.” His hands slide down my arms, gripping.
“My Lord—”
“Aldric.” His grip tightens. “Tonight, I’m only Aldric. Tonight, there is no court, no servants, no priest. There is only us, and a moment long overdue.”
Hand trembling, I start to bring the chalice to my lips—thinking I should offer him a sip. That maybe he’ll drain the wine, that it might serve better to dull his senses rather than mine, make him too impaired, too sloppy to—
His hand covers the cup rim. “Not tonight. I want you to feel everything.” He removes the chalice from my hand, meticulously places it on the table, sending a sharp current of fear through me.
Then he removes my robe, letting it fall to the floor, before his hand finds my thigh. The feel of his rings through the silk too cool compared to the heat of his palm. His fingers slowly drag the material up, inch by torturous inch, as his other hand tugs the shoulder of my nightdress down.
I flinch when his fingers find skin, my body assaulted by the stimulation of both the rough caress of his touch, and the press of his lips to my neck.
My mouth parts soundlessly, my eyes seal shut, trying to harness what senses I have control over as he sweeps my hair aside, his teeth scraping over the sensitive joint of my neck and shoulder, his fingers sliding up my inner thigh.
“Fuck, Seravyn,” he growls as his fingers reach the damp fabric between my thighs. He prods there, applying pressure, swirling his fingers in a rough manner to trap my breath. “You’re so gods-damn wet. I knew my Threnmere girl was filthy the moment I laid eyes on you—”
“Aldric, please…” It leaves me in a shaky whisper, my gaze snapping to the chalice just out of reach.
“Gods, I love you begging—what hearing you beg my name does to me.” His teeth scrape harder over my skin, his tongue licking the trail of his tender bites. “I’m going to have you on your knees begging, love.”
I curl my hands into fists at my sides as his hands ravish me, moving faster, harder between my thighs like he’s lost all reason. “What happened to your patience?” I manage.
He releases a dark groan, then there’s the sound of tearing material, the cool air touching the slick heat between my thighs as he tears my underclothing at the hip.
I have no time to recover before he turns me by the shoulders until I face him.
His pale eyes are lit with lust, the gray ring around them swallowed by the dark of his pupils.
He thrusts my hand against his hard length, barely restrained behind his breeches.
“As you can feel, my patience to have you is long depleted.”
I can feel him, hard and thick, through the confines of his pants, and it wracks my muscles with a shiver, knowing he won’t be gentle when he shoves that monster inside me. It’s a reflex that my fingers grip him, and it makes a slow, cruel smile curl his lips.
He pushes in close to my ear. “That’s it,” he whispers. “Such a good girl for me.”
Then the last of his patience ends.
His hand fists in the front of my nightdress and yanks it down, revealing my breasts to him.
His heated eyes absorb me, his mouth muttering praise and desire in the same breath.
“Fucking beautiful. My very own Threnmere goddess.” Then his mouth is there, teeth scraping and nipping my flesh, his tongue swirling my nipple.
I bite into my lip, refusing to give him any sound.
With a furious groan, he hauls me against him, chest to chest, his mouth crashing down on mine, hard and bruising.
His teeth catch my lip. I taste a hint of copper mixed with him.
His other hand grips my hip hard enough to mark, dragging me up onto my toes, and when I gasp he takes it as an invitation, his tongue invading, claiming, his fingers already tearing at the laces.
All my senses are assaulted at once. I have just enough willpower to twist my face away. “Aldric, please slow down.”
An impatient grunt passes his lips, then he spins me, one arm banding across my body. “You might regret asking me that, love. I can make it last all night.”
He pushes me down onto the crimson bed. The breath leaves me as I hit the silk, my breasts rubbing the cool, slippery fabric.
He stands over me from behind, and there’s a moment where I look back to see him reach behind his head and yank his loose tunic over his head, then his heated eyes are raking down my body with a possessive lust that flutters my belly.
“Spread your legs,” he commands. “Let me see what’s mine.”
I look ahead at the headboard, hoping this will go quickly as I force my thighs apart.
A low growl rumbles from his chest at the sight of me opened to him, my ass on display, the wet between my thighs, all exposed to him.
“Fuck,” he mutters the oath, low and vicious. “You are so fucking beautiful, my wicked wife.” The rough of his palm is at the sensitive skin of my ass, rubbing, his fingers digging into the flesh. He spreads my cheeks wide, forcing me to hear my own noises, how wet I am.
I squeeze my eyes shut. “Just do it,” I demand.
His movements stop. Then the heat of his body falls over mine, his mouth resting at my ear.
“Make up your mind, Seravyn.” His fingers push down, slipping lower until he’s caressing me between my thighs, right through my slit, sending an aching throb deep.
“You want me to take you slow, then you want me to fuck you fast. Which is it, love?”
All the while, he’s slowly, tortuously swirling his fingers over me, just pushing the tips inside. “Take a breath for me, Seravyn.”
And as I take a shuddering breath, he pushes one finger in deep.
A string of oaths hit the air as he works his finger inside me, plundering deeper, and I try to hold on to the feel of Ren touching me earlier, how my body gave over to him… I gasp as Aldric inserts another finger, then another, stretching me around him.
He puts a knee on the bed, getting a better angle to fuck me with his fingers, and I grip the sheets. “Fucking realms of hell, you feel so gods-damn good. Your cunt is going to be so tight around my cock, love. Not sure how I’m supposed to be gentle. Gods, I’m going to tear you wide.”
For my own sanity, I tell myself that it was Ren’s doing—that it was his touch that brought me to this precipice, why my body is behaving in such a way. Even if the king’s touch is different, more sure, more skilled, making my body rebel against my own command.
He’s working sounds from me I’m unable to hold back, and shame spreads through me like a brushfire, my insides lighting up hot and wanting and needy.
His groan of approval lets me know he can feel me, growing wetter, pulsing tighter around him, and I bury my face against the crimson cover.
“Such a good, filthy girl,” he praises, “getting so wet and ready for me. Fuck, Seravyn, you’re going to be the gods-damn death of me.”
Then his fingers are gone, leaving the ache pulsing deep in my core.
I hear him lower his breeches, then his body falls heavy over mine, the press of his cock lined up to my wet entrance.
The impatient grunt of Aldric sliding over me, rubbing his cock between my folds, steals my breath, right before he stills.
“Aldric—”
Somewhere beyond the balcony doors, a sound rings out in the dark. My body stills. I look over my shoulder, just once to see the flutter of gauze curtains. Then there’s a loud grunt.
Aldric’s body slumps heavy over mine.
A cry tries to tear free, but a hand is there to cover my mouth.
“Sera, it’s me. Shh.”
The sound of Ren’s voice brings on a relief so fierce, my eyes prick with tears. His hand drops away, and I drag in a breath. He rolls Aldric away, onto his side on the bed, and I scrabble around to face him.
“What are you doing here?” I demand, my gaze taking him in. The candlestick clenched in his hand—heavy, brass. Then I look at Aldric, knocked unconscious on the crimson bed. “Oh goddess, what have you done?”
He tears a hand through his messy hair, his other gripped white-knuckled around a brass candlestick, blood tipped.
“I heard you cry out and I couldn’t…” He trails off, dragging that same hand down his face.
“From down the corridor, where I was pacing, just torturing myself. I heard your cry from the royal bedchamber. And I imagined Aldric drunk on his violence, forcing himself on you. And I knew I couldn’t get around the guards, so I climbed from my room window onto the balustrade and scaled the wall to get to the balcony. ”
His explanation does little to comfort me, knowing the treason he’s just committed. I look down at the weapon, and terror washes through me, cold and paralyzing.
Treason. From braining the king over the head with a candlestick.
I hunker near Aldric, quickly checking his pulse, his breathing. “He’s not dead,” I say, claiming some measure of relief.
Ren drops the weapon to the stone floor, taking my face between his warm palms. “I made a vow to you,” he says, his voice deathly low. “I told you there’d be no power in any realm that will stop me from ending him, Sera.” His throat hitches with a hard swallow. “I keep my vows.”
I release a breath, my exposed skin prickling with a chill. Death hanging over us both, I slowly draw higher onto my knees on the bed. I grasp his hands over my face, bringing them between us.
“Ren, listen to me,” I say, forcing his wild eyes on me. “Strip your trousers.”
Shock contorts his features. “Sera—” It’s half warning, half prayer, his gaze cutting to the king sprawled in the wreckage of his own wedding bed, then back to me, searching my face for something like madness and finding only resolve.
“If there’s no blood on these sheets come morning, no evidence that Aldric bedded his wife and consummated his marriage,” I say, my voice low, my words deliberate, “the king, humiliated, won’t stop at one execution. He’ll burn through everyone I love with a vengeance.”
I see my meaning register in his taut features, understanding moving across his face—the realization, the war, the same war that tore through him in the dark antechamber when he had to let me walk away.
“Sera…” he says, shaken.
My heart is pounding, but my voice is steady. “There has to be proof I came to this bed a maiden and left it a wife. Otherwise there will be questions raised, ones neither of us survives.”
Despite the conflict I find in his features, I see the lust come to life in his eyes, and I grab the string of his pants. His hand traps mine. “Lie back,” Ren directs, his voice a dark rasp. “Let me do it.”
I swallow, pushing back onto the bed, feeling Aldric next to me. My heart vaults into my throat. “Wait—” I slip off the edge, grabbing the chalice from the table. “Roll him over first,” I tell Ren. “Tip his head back.”
There’s only a brief moment of hesitation before he does so.
Blood trails Aldric’s temple, staining his pale hair.
A low groan falls from his mouth as I carefully line the cup up and let the laced wine funnel in.
It drips down his chin, but he swallows instinctually, taking much of the laced wine down.
“This will ensure he stays unconscious,” I say, stroking Aldric’s throat, coaxing him to swallow the rest. “And that he’ll have little memory of any of this tomorrow. He’s vain enough to fill the gaps himself.”
Once done, Ren lets Aldric collapse sideways, boneless, onto the crimson silk.
The candlelight gutters lower, the still silence of the room gathering the tension between us, the dark of the room sheltering us.
I scramble toward the headboard, my nightdress torn at the shoulder, my chest heaving. For a moment we just stare at each other across the wreckage—the unconscious king sprawled between us.
Ren climbs onto the bed, closing the distance between us, where he sinks to his knees before me. “Are you sure,” he says, making a demand of the question.
“It was always going to be you,” I say. “Some part of me knew it the moment you fell on your face in that throne room and made me laugh. I’ve wanted it to be you ever since.”
His breath shudders out of him. His hands rise to my waist. “Say it again,” he breathes. “Say that you’re mine.”
“I’m yours, Renick Ashbourne.”
And the war leaves his face.
What replaces it is devastating—a tenderness so fierce it looks almost like grief, the look of a man who has been handed the one thing he never let himself pray for. His hands tighten on my waist. His mouth finds mine.
And he kisses me like the world is ending.
Because it is. Some version of it. The version where I belonged to Aldric solely—that world ends here, in this candlelit chamber, with a defeated king next to us and our hearts hammering against each other.
He lays me down on the bed.
He’s careful in a way Aldric would never be. Reverent, slow, his bloodied hands gentle as they map me, his mouth following, worshipping every inch of skin he bares. He whispers against me, broken and aching—that he loves me, that he’ll be tender. That he’ll make it feel good.
And when he finally settles between my thighs, when he looks down at me with those intense eyes, wet and pale and dark and full of me, I brace. Letting my eyes fall shut.
Ren stops.
My eyes flash open.
My breath stutters in my chest at the sight of Ren above me, a rusted blade held against his throat. And Aldric, his hand gripped to the dagger’s handle.
His arctic blue eyes meet mine, wild and full of menace. “Hello, love.”