40. Maxim
Chapter Forty
Maxim
Of all the fucking cruelties…
“Merovians are extinct.” I snarl, unable to control my surging fury or the pain Thyra’s claim brings. “They were hunted and killed.”
As far as I’m concerned, my mother is one of the women waiting in the darkness to the south of these mountains. She’s there. She is one of them. She is not, and cannot be, a Blood Fae because that would mean—
“You’re a Blood Fae.” Thyra advances on me the same way I would advance on prey.
Her silver armor ripples around her body, reforming itself into a corset, boots, and mid-thigh-length pants, the remainder of the material streaming up past her shoulders like a floating shawl.
Once again, she is like a queen, her head held high. If she’s afraid of my fire, or even of me, she doesn’t show it.
“Don’t speak such lies to me,” I growl.
“Not lies,” she says, her faded blue eyes sharp. “Hope.”
My eyes widen. “When has hope ever been brought about by a Blood Fae?”
She circles me as I circle her, extending her right arm and pointing to the dark runes running alongside the Dragonstone Blade.
“My father’s last command to me was to unwrap this blade. He told me: Unwrap the blade and your path will be clear. But I never did. Do you see?”
She jabs at her arm. “This ivory material in which the blade was wrapped sits between my palm and the blade’s hilt. If it weren’t for the blood bind, Stellen could have sung the ribbon out of my arm and pulled the blade out with it.”
I catch on quickly. “The blood bind stops everything.”
I’m certain Stellen would have told me that. He told me there were things I needed to know. If only I’d had time to speak with him. Well, if I’d made time to swallow my fucking pride and speak with him.
“Until this bind is broken, I can’t remove the blade,” Thyra says, her voice soft, her footfalls a continuing prowl. “Until I can remove the blade, I can’t unwrap it and neither can I break the curse. You are my hope now, Ember King.”
“Do not place your hope in me,” I growl at her. “I will only destroy it.”
She was meant to be my hope. When she breaks the curse, then I’ll control my fire. Until I can control my fire, I can’t safely touch Thyra. These are undeniable truths as far as I’m concerned.
“Where else will I place my hope?” Thyra asks, the flex of her muscles as she continues pacing opposite me making it appear alarmingly like she might leap at me. “There are only two other fae who could help me—”
“Then ask them for help.”
She continues, unflustered. “One is a shapeshifter in Frost. Her mother was a Ferocie Scribe who disappeared when she was three years old. The other is the soulmate of Antony’s brother Victor.
Your staunch enemy. In both cases, the chances that their Ferocie powers would be strong enough to defeat a blood bind are slim.
” She stops pacing. “You are the one I need.”
Need.
She keeps using that word, but she can’t possibly know how intense my needs are.
The need to be free from the flames I carry within me.
The desperate need to connect after years of physical isolation.
The inescapable need to connect with her.
“What will it take, Ember King?” she asks softly. “What will make you feel safe?”
I can only stare at her. “A question I should be asking you.”
“Then ask me.” She spreads her arms at her sides. “If you’re willing to consider for even the smallest moment that you might want to touch me, then ask me.”
I should move away, but I can’t.
Because I’m fucking starving. Hungry for touch.
Before I lost control of my fire, Thyra wrapped her hand around my wrist, and I didn’t allow myself to fully comprehend that she was touching me. Without harm.
The danger happened when I lost control. Which I still could. And probably will. Any second now.
“Ask me,” she whispers.
“What will it take,” I rasp, “to make you feel safe?”
She moves toward me, smoothly and with a confidence I could shatter in a blast of flames.
Extending her blade arm, she says, without taking her gaze from mine, “Hold my hand.”
A humble request. Painful in its simplicity. Devastating in its impossibility.
The longer I stare at her hand without taking it, the more the tension in her posture eases. An unexpected and contrary reaction.
“I nearly froze to death in the Frost Kingdom,” she says, her voice calm. “I needed the heat of hot springs to survive. At first, my body was so cold, the warm water burned. But that was only for a short time. Then it soothed me. Warmed me. Saved me.”
She isn’t fabricating this story. I saw her while she was having a blade vision. She was freezing to death and Stellen was desperately telling her to hold on. I wanted to warm her, but I was a kingdom away and even the amber thread connecting me to her had flickered and faded.
“After that,” Thyra says, “Stellen sang me a coat from Alak-Teahan web. And after that, slowly but surely, I stopped feeling cold. Every morning, I woke up warmer than I’d been the day before.”
My brow furrows. For me, every morning I would regain consciousness after another night consumed by her blade visions, the pain in my heart worse and worse each day.
“Heat doesn’t have to destroy me,” she says. “Heat can save me.”
With every word she’s spoken, she has moved closer to me, and now she closes the final distance, her right arm outstretched, her palm approaching my heart, but she doesn’t touch me, bending her hand at the wrist so that her hand stops mere inches from my skin.
With every beat of my heart, I battle the pull toward her. The need to know what it would feel like for her body to press against mine. Fully. All of her. As if this could really happen.
Very slowly, she arcs her arm down to her side so she can step forward until her chest is close to mine.
Heat waves beat around me and her cheeks begin to glow, but uncannily, not a drop of sweat appears on her bare skin despite her flush.
Her armor ripples softly, the threads sliding back and up, leaving only the barest covering across her breasts and pelvis.
“I need you,” she whispers.
I sway toward her before I mentally shout at myself to stop.
Fucking stop.
With ragged breaths, I rasp, “You’re inviting death, Thyra.”
“Am I, though?” As slowly as she lowered her right arm, she raises it again, this time reaching for my forearm, her fingertips so near to me that she’s heartbeats away from making contact.
Despite every sane thought in my head telling me to step away from her, I choose…fucking choose…to stay where I am.
To let her act while I hold my breath and try to calm my thumping heart.
Convincing myself that she’s reaching for me with her blade arm and that means she can’t be harmed. Ignoring the fucking reality that I could destroy the rest of her.
She leans forward, a controlled movement, her head tipping back and feet arching to bring her lips closer to mine.
The intoxicating scent of white roses fills my head, dulling my senses, thrashing my rational thoughts into submission, and then—
Her fingertips brush my arm.
The contact makes my world spin. My thoughts turn to chaos, a mess of hope and need as she runs her fingertip ever so slowly along the tensely ridged muscle of my forearm toward my hand.
Her touch consumes me. Gentle. Firm. Exhilarating. Comforting. Intensifying while a roar grows in my mind. A single wish: don’t burn.
Her fingertips brush the inside of my wrist, and then the base of my thumb, and then her palm slides against mine, pressing insistently as she laces her fingers with mine.
My jaw is clenched so tight, I’m certain my teeth are going to crack, tension keeping me frozen as I drown in her calm breaths and the assurance in her eyes.
“You won’t hurt me,” she whispers, the strength of her grip on my hand increasing as she arches upward again, not so slowly this time, her lips stopping a breath away from pressing to my chin.
Then more slowly, a controlled ascent that brings her lips toward mine, where she pauses, completely still.
I sense the nearness of her chest as she inhales. “Ash and fury.”
Another stream of silver threads rises up and back, lifting off her body and slipping to the shawl floating in the air behind her. Possibly the final strands covering her body.
Possibly leaving her naked.
A challenge enters her voice, her whisper tingling across my lips. “What would you do if your fire wasn’t stopping you.”
“Kiss you,” I rasp without hesitation and then, unable to control the heady upward tug of my lips, I say, “Everywhere.”
The press of her lips is languid, her eyes bright. As if we could stay like this forever and no harm would come of it.
“Try,” she says.
My free arm rises, incremental inches as I imagine pressing my palm to the small of her back, trailing my fingers along the curve of her waist and out to her hip, wrapping my hand around the back of her thigh, drawing her leg up beside me.
Fully pressed and gripping her. Not hovering beside her body as my hand is now.
I dare to tilt my head slightly, nudging my nose toward the side of her nose, my lips toward her lips, already so close to me that my head swims with her nearness.
All it will take is one fearless moment of belief…
Slowly, carefully, I brush my lips to hers. The smallest, briefest contact.
Barely a kiss.
Her lips part softly as her hand tightens on mine. A soft moan washes across my mouth. Her moan. Fucking overwhelming.
Goddess help me, I want more.
I want all of her.
I crash against her, fully claiming her mouth, desire flooding my body as I drink in the taste of her skin. Sweet, honeyed roses.
She gasps, then groans, her free hand rising to the back of my head, her fingers grazing hard as she pulls me closer, her tongue clashing with mine.
Heated desire breaks free of the chains I’ve been wrapping around myself, and then I’m dragging her close, my free hand wrapping around her hip, then the small of her back, then up to her shoulder blades, unable to get enough of her all at once.
Her naked chest presses to mine and all logical thought vanishes.
Need is everything.
A frantic need that threatens to devastate me and drive me to the ground, where I would take her with me, tumble across the sand and let her rail against me if she wished.
Just as I’m about to voice my impulses and ask her what she wants, a spark of light flares close to me on my left.
In that second, I register that Thyra’s blade arm is pressed to my left bicep. At some point, she let go of my hand and now she grips my shoulder.
It’s the first time the Dragonstone Blade has had contact with this part of my body.
Golden energy sparks across my bicep.
Before I can drag a breath into my chest, runes light up all along my arm.
Golden runes. As bright as the energy of a blade vision.
Thyra freezes, her focus snapping to the light, a cry on her lips.
I throw myself back from her as fast as I can, needing to break the contact with her body, my heart pounding.
She lets me go, her eyes wide.
A burn spreads across my chest and golden runes now begin glowing down my other arm. A second row of golden images lighting up one by one.
I stumble farther back from Thyra. “What is this?”
Her chest heaves as hard as mine. Her lips are parted and her cheeks are flushed, her body glowing in the yellow light glimmering around me.
Her perfect curves are fully visible, her beautiful body exposed and her vulnerability intense. “I…”
In my fear, I hunch to the side, snarling, “What are these?”
Was she right? Am I a Blood Fae?
Could I be more monstrous than I already thought?
Her quick, startled breath could break me.
“Those are blood binds,” she whispers.