Chapter 22 #2
“If you launched a campaign of deicide, tortured my secrets out of me, put a stone knife in Death’s heart, and then rowed across the ocean to torment me further, I could almost admire your single-minded devotion to our ruin, but tell me how I am supposed to make it stop.
It needs to stop, Iona. What am I supposed to do with you if I don’t kill you? ”
“I keep suggesting you take me to Wesha so that I can go home.”
“With your mortal lover, off to plot more inventive methods of our downfall? Why would I allow that?”
“I’ve never done anything to hurt you,” I said, finding a little more rebellion when I needed it. “I built your funeral barge myself. I bandaged your body. I sent you past the Gates with my scarf wrapped around your hands. Who did you think did that?”
Was it so hard for him to imagine, after today, that he’d cared enough about us to sacrifice his life?
“It’s hard for me to appreciate all your help, because I died in your war,” Taran said, green eyes blazing.
“Try harder then, because you are still in my war, and I’m the only one who wants to save you.”
Taran’s eyelids lowered, his expression becoming even more dangerous. The blade on my neck was pressing against my skin hard enough that I felt the burn of a first drop of blood welling up.
His voice was soft. “You know, I thought you were my reward. Sent by Wesha, the Allmother…fate, maybe. And I’d be yours. For surviving everything Wesha did to us both. But now I wonder if she sent you here to destroy me. You’re a wildfire. I’m dying in the flames.”
It felt like a compliment, or at least reassurance that he’d really seen me. I wasn’t a redheaded ornament to play pretty music for him. He knew me.
I was glad we’d finally had a halfway honest conversation, even if this was the last one. This was healing.
“My love, you should see what I can do when I really try to destroy someone,” I said, taking the opportunity to appreciate how his eyes sparkled when his face was lit up with anger. Taran being beautiful had seemed contrary to the point of him when I first knew him, impolite for me to notice.
Were you trying to be good, Taran? I was. If I’d known you were such a liar though, I might have allowed myself a little more of you.
I tilted my neck to the side, not trying to avoid the blade, just getting enough freedom of movement to stretch out my legs and enjoy the weight of his body.
I supposed I would never know whether he’d wanted me, but I didn’t have any illusions about my own desires.
He was being terrible, and I was still shallow enough to be thinking about the way his every exhale pressed his chest against mine.
Every thought I had went directly to my face, so I wasn’t surprised when Taran’s eyebrows dipped in a knowing way, or when he bent his face to mine.
When his teeth deliberately closed around my lower lip, I was surprised, but more from the bolt of heat it sent through my stomach than by the pain of it.
He held the bite for a second, then soothed it with a wet swipe of his tongue.
The noise I made was swallowed by his mouth covering mine in a kiss that was less hungry than punishing.
I gave in to it, even though he tasted like copper and stone dust, even though the sharp points of his teeth and his knife were very present dangers as I sucked his tongue into my mouth.
My body was so light and unmoored from fatigue that his weight felt like the only thing keeping me from floating to the ceiling.
I pulled up a knee to tip him farther into the cradle of my thighs, and the friction of his hips against my core made us inhale in unison as anger flashed into desire.
Fear, anger, want—those emotions were all closer to each other than I’d ever let myself admit.
I should have shown this part of myself to Taran while I still had the chance to be truly openhearted with him.
He shifted onto an elbow, hand raking down my side to fumble with my clothes in a quest to get his palm against my skin.
I didn’t help him at all, twining my hands into his filthy hair instead and pulling hard enough to make him curse.
If he wanted to get my clothes off, he needed to commit to putting the knife away, and he still had it in his other fist.
His next movement brought the hard length of his thigh between mine, and it felt purposeful.
It was permission to chase the thread of tension curling in my stomach, even though I didn’t know this route and had never reached this destination.
The scrape of Taran’s stubble against my chin as he looked down to examine how the catches of my clothing were tied was the only encouragement I needed to roll against him and follow that thread a little further.
Pressure flashed into pleasure, with even the drag of fabric across the hard points of my breasts suddenly exciting and new. I twisted against him, discovering a rhythm that made my body sing. Just like this, I thought, this would be enough, more than enough—
I was never not listening for an ambush, even with Taran’s tongue in my mouth and his fingers curling into the waistband of my trousers, so I heard the fluttering of wings outside even before the pull of the latch of the door.
It didn’t sound like an attempt at stealth, so I didn’t embarrass Taran by taking the knife away from him, just pulled my mouth from his as the door creaked open to admit a very bedraggled black swan.
“Genna’s rosy tits,” she swore at the sight of us, hiding her face under a dust-streaked wing.
Taran jolted in surprise but didn’t roll off of me until I jabbed him with two fingers in a sensitive spot below his rib cage, and even then, he only scooted to put me between him and the bird goddess.
“Is this some kind of sex thing, or are you trying to kill her?” Awi demanded of Taran, her beaked face somehow horrified. When my disappointed grimace suggested that both were true answers, she violently rattled her feathers. “Never mind. I don’t even want to know. Just stop!”
Taran wiped his mouth on his forearm and propped himself up.
“Don’t think that I was looking for you in Smenos’s palace because I care what happens to you,” he warned Awi. “My priestess and I were in the middle of an important discussion. Scram.”
Discussion, ha. I’d been prepared to disregard all of Taran’s past lies and present threats of violence just because I was thirty seconds away from finding completion with all our clothes still on.
“I’ve said all I want to say until you’ve calmed down,” I retorted. And taken a bath. And firmly committed to no executions for blasphemy. Probably other things I’d think of when my head was clearer too.
“Did you finally tell him?” Awi exclaimed.
“Tell me—”
“Yes. He joined the mortal rebellion and killed Death.”
I wasn’t inclined to tell him what he’d been to me—at least not unless he accepted that I’d been right to rebel and he’d been right to help me.
He’d never be able to tell me whether he’d meant what he said, and if he hadn’t, I didn’t want to give him any brilliant ideas on how I might be best manipulated.
If you promise to love me forever, I won’t ask any more questions.
He made a strangled groan and scraped himself to his knees, glaring first at me, then at Awi.
“How many people have you told?”
“About two dozen people saw you head up the cliffs to confront Death, and most of them survived,” I said, putting my clothing to rights with what I hoped was more serenity than I felt. “Why hide the fact that Taran ab Genna heroically sacrificed himself to destroy our tormentor?”
“How many immortals know,” Taran said, eyes narrowing.
“I forget we have a different definition of people. Just Awi, then. Oh, and Wesha.”
“Wonderful,” Taran said, eyes closing in dismay. “Just the goddamn bird and the goddess who’s willing to kill and blackmail her way to everything she wants. The one responsible for this entire fucking situation, you mean.”
That did seem like he’d accepted the truth of what I’d said, at least, which was encouraging.
“Do we need to move again?” I asked Awi, trying to turn back to the situation at hand. Instincts from my time in command. “Did you see which direction the survivors went in? And was there any pursuit? What’s the Mountain doing?”
As I peppered her with questions, Taran got to his feet, grim determination in the lines of his body.
“I’ll go look at the Mountain. We’ll leave for the City when you’ve rested.”
“I’ll go with you,” I said immediately, but Taran waved me off.
“No, you’re going to stay here until I’m convinced that murdering the bird and then deflowering you on the floor of this filthy hut is a bad idea.”
I blinked but was cheered by the news that murdering me seemed to be off the table, even if parts of me didn’t think the rest sounded like a bad idea, exactly.
He fixed me with a stern look. “You are going to want to be asleep when I get back.”
“And then what are we going to do tomorrow?” I asked, feeling daring.
Taran sighed and put my knife away on his belt.
“That’s what I am going to think about while I’m out walking. Because you’re right that I’m still stuck in your war, but I’m telling you right now that I’m not dying in it again.”
“Good,” I said firmly, and this was the second thing I said tonight that seemed to really surprise him.