Chapter 49 - Consolation
Never before was I so eager for the sun to rise.
As Riyan held me in the center of the grassy meadow, I caught him up on all he had missed since we separated…except that Derrick was going to collar me.
I could not break his heart just yet.
The first break of golden sun over the rocky ridge sent red fire into the familiar meadow as the Bloodstone lilies opened their petals to greet the day.
The fragrant smell of the lilies shoved the image of Alastar’s covetous glare out of my mind.
I gave Riyan a grateful kiss. He kissed me back and squeezed my thigh. Heat flooded my hips as my heart pounded.
We certainly made the first sunrise count.
I was on my hands and knees, the soft petals of the Bloodstone lilies tickling my breasts and belly as Riyan took me from behind. He held my hair in his fist and exhilaration from the pain flicked down my spine.
My arms shook from holding myself up. My legs shook from the building pleasure.
Right as I was at the edge, he slowed down. The glorious pinnacle of ecstasy slipped away and my insides wound into a frustrated knot.
“I was close, you fucking bastard!” I cried.
“And here I was thinking you’d be grateful that I was going easy on you.” He chuckled and tugged on my hair. “But this could be fun—I’ll go nice and slow to stretch you to the edge of your good-girl vocabulary. Let’s see just how many bad words you know.”
I dug my nails into the grass and closed my eyes as that knot in my hips pulled even tighter. “Come on, Riyan.”
“Where are your manners?” He gave me a light smack on the ass before returning his hand to the curve of my hip. “Say please.”
“Please,” I whimpered.
Riyan picked up his pace and snapped that frustrated knot out of existence. Pleasure brighter than the sunlight flared behind my eyes as I cried out into the crisp morning air. As soon as my legs started quaking, he gripped my hips and finished with me.
Little by little, he slowed. My entire body trembled from both the ricochets of my climax and from fatigue, but I slowly tried to catch up with my racing heart.
With a satisfied sigh, he released my hair and tumbled onto his back in the lilies.
I let out a shaking breath and shot Riyan a look. “Whatever happened to—” I dropped my voice to imitate his, “‘ Get on your hands and knees, Sera, I don’t want to crush the flowers? ’”
Riyan gave me a dazed grin. “Eh, they’ll grow back.” He raised his hands to form a frame with his fingers. “I could commission a portrait of this—the flush on your cheeks, the ‘freshly-fucked’ glaze over your eyes, and on all fours in the middle of Bloodstone lilies. Gorgeous. I would hang it above the mantle in the dining hall.”
I tucked some strands of hair behind my ear. Maybe he should commission a painting of me, it would be the only me he would get to have.
He wrapped his arm around my waist and gently pulled me onto his chest. I snuggled into his shoulder as our heartbeats calmed down.
I let out a soft sigh. “You might be smaller now, but you still make a great mattress.”
He gently swept my hair off my back. “I’m glad you brought me down from the mountain just to be your furniture.” He kissed the top of my head. “Although just imagine all the fun places you can sit.”
Riyan’s arms wrapped around me as I took a deep breath and his scent filled my lungs. Birds sang their morning melodies in the trees. The fresh sunlight smiled down on us.
Finally, a moment of paradise.
“So, when are you going to tell me what’s bothering you?” he asked.
Shit.
I pushed up on my elbows and looked down at him. His face was still calm, but his voice was serious. “What I just said about you in the lilies…I thought you would laugh, but I heard the crackling of a fire burning instead.”
Fuck, our bond worked both ways. He might not have the gift of sorcery, but he could still hear my inner self calling for help.
Not that he could do anything to sever my bargain.
“I know your immortality came with conditions,” Riyan said, “and you don’t want to talk about them because they’re bad. I might be stupid, but I’m not that stupid.”
“You are not stupid.”
“My point is that I saw the panic in your eyes when I heard that burning.” Riyan’s arms wrapped more securely around me.
I bit my tongue. Had I really been that transparent?
“Just tell me, Serafina,” he begged. “I want to make you feel better and I don’t know how.”
What could I even tell him?
I gripped his shoulders and looked him in the eyes. “You can do nothing to stop it. Just…hold on to the truth that we will both be alive in the end.”
His brow hardened. “My immortality is not a consolation gift for your unhappiness.”
I bit my tongue and glared at him, keeping my thoughts as quiet as possible in case he could hear them. The bargain was set, the last thing he should do is make me feel guilty about it.
I shoved out of his arms and walked across the lilies to where we had thrown my chemise. I slipped the chemise over my body and caught Riyan’s eyes as he looked at me from across the meadow.
The gentle breeze ruffled his golden hair across his back. “It’s okay to be scared, sweetheart. I…I’m scared too.” His shoulders dipped forward as he looked at the lilies. “Not because the army is coming, I just…I don’t want to see my father again.”
The sound of a wave breaking on a rocky beach crashed through my mind. The diamond in my heart lit up.
Riyan was tugging on our bond. Despite the distance between us, I could not ignore the call for help.
I carefully stepped across the lilies and placed my hand on his shoulder. “Your father might be a monster, but that does not make you any less of a man.”
His brow stayed hard but his lip twitched. He had looked the same way when he wanted to talk about his failed battle with the giants, but somehow could not bring himself to. I bent at the waist and kissed his temple, sending a little white flame of truth through his skin to give him the bravery to talk.
Riyan’s throat bobbed as he swallowed. “He was tougher on me than anyone else. His command was the beginning and the end of my world. When he told me to fuck someone up, I just did it. Didn’t matter if it was a piece of shit who murdered three women or...”
His voice broke. “…or Evereon Mydina for defying an order to fight me.”
I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and tried not to think about that jagged line that split Evereon’s face in two.
He took a long, deep breath. “I was only ten years old when I did it. Even after he was screaming and holding those bloody flaps of skin against his skull, I didn’t feel bad. My General gave me an order and I wanted to make him proud.”
I rested my chin on top of Riyan’s head. Of all the rumors I had heard about the forsaken Mydina heir, none of them painted a picture of someone who refused to harm a child.
He was a better man than I gave him credit for.
“Let Evereon Mydina keep the House pins,” Riyan said. “Let him rule the North. I owe him that much.”
I let out a soft breath. “He does not want it, Riyan. He cannot have heirs.”
“Then who should it be?” He twisted out of my hold to look up at me. “You said you can’t have it because of your bargain and I sure as hell don’t want to be Baron!”
His hair fell in his face and he angrily raked it back. “If I stay a Bloodstone, I have to face that I destroyed every member of my House. If I claim my Hyton blood, showing the whole Dukedom that I’m his son…”
He shook his head only slightly and then his eyes met mine. “I have to face that I want it. He’s the only family I have left other than you and…”
I gritted my teeth to keep my lip from quivering. He did not need to finish his thought, I felt it, I understood it. His desire to be sheltered in Hyton Blue was different than mine, but it was still just as strong.
Where I had wanted power and security, Riyan just wanted a family.
Just as the monster inside Derrick was larger than any giant, so was Riyan’s father in his own mind.
And just like Alastar, the General would be near impossible to overcome.
Strands of Riyan’s hair fell into his face again and he tucked them behind his ear with a scowl. “Everything just feels so wrong, even my damn hair. General Hyton would always shear it every two weeks—”
I walked around to his back before he could say anything more and began combing through the tangles in his long golden hair with my fingers.
We only had one sunrise left, but I was making him something he could have even when we were apart. If I was not going to get a happy ending like in a faerie story, I could at least give Riyan one.
I pulled the pins and leather wraps out of my own hair and worked them into Riyan’s, braiding back the front strands so they would stay out of his face.
“I told you before that I don’t need to look pretty,” Riyan said with a laugh.
I stuck my tongue out at him but kept braiding. When I finished, I ran my fingers through the ends of the shining golden hair that flowed freely down his back. “There! Just like Prince Haldar.”
Riyan played with the tail of one of his braids. “Why Prince Haldar? There are no more giants to slay.”
Suddenly Alastar’s breath was on my neck again. I swallowed and shoved the thought of him away.
Alastar could take my eternity, but he would not take my last day of peace.
I sat in Riyan’s lap and kissed his cheek. “There are always giants. Most of them just live in our heads.”