Chapter 31 Antony
Chapter Thirty-One
Antony
Could breaking the curse be as simple as fucking her?
I have all night.
If I can curb the poison in my heart, I’m certain I could stir her blood and make her want this.
More than once today, I’ve wondered what it would be like to hear her moan, tip her over the edge, and find out if her entire body tastes like roses.
But I’m also certain it could never be that simple. She’s bound to have been fucked by somebody already, and the fact that I’m a king, well, I can’t imagine it would make some magically divine difference.
Which means I have a decision to make: Whether or not I believe she doesn’t already know how to break the curse.
Fuck it, but I want to believe her.
The desperation with which she tried to gouge the blade out of her arm, back on the roof.
The sharp clack as her teeth closed over the circlet’s links against her wrist. A second longer, and its serrations would have triggered and done their horrific work.
It reminded me of the way she was willing to risk her hand to leap over stalactites back at the village.
Just as she was willing to risk her limb tonight.
What this tells me is irrefutable: She wants to escape.
Like a trapped animal, she would gnaw off her paw to do it.
If she could break the curse and secure her freedom, she’d do that too.
Now, her hand rests upturned on my thigh. My knees are a bare inch away from nudging her folded legs. I lean toward her, close to cupping my hand around her cheek.
Close to brushing her lips.
But, dammit, I can’t risk it.
Constraining my dangerous impulses while I touch her arm is hard enough.
It’s foolish to believe I could connect fully with her body and not destroy her.
No woman survives me.
I may have told her the truth about Mother’s crimes, but I’m no fucking better than Mother is.
We’re monsters, both of us.
Slowly, I lower my hand.
Disappointment flashes in her eyes. I read it in the drop of her shoulders and the softness of her exhalation in the breeze.
I assume it’s because she thinks I’ll deny her request for help.
“Okay.”
Her lips purse, and her head tilts. “Okay… What?”
I clear my throat. “I agree to help you. We’ll walk this path together.”
“Oh.” It’s a soft exclamation, followed by a small smile and a lifting of the darkness in her eyes.
The strangest sensation floods my chest. A kind of warmth. Like drinking hot, thistleberry wine on a cold night.
It isn’t unpleasant, but I don’t like that I can’t classify it.
Unsettled, I rise to my feet faster than I intend, and the circlet rattles as its loose end slithers to the ground. I ignore it for now, letting it clatter against my armor to remind Thyra of the danger it poses to her.
I add gruffly, “Only if you do everything I say.”
Her sweet smile grows. “I said I would.”
She looks up at me from where she continues to kneel in the grass, and the unfamiliar warm sensation in my chest grows stronger.
Fucking warmth.
I want it to stop.
“Get up,” I snap. “You need a bath.”
Her smile doesn’t fade, remaining soft and small.
Damn smile, putting me off balance.
As she rises to her feet, I gather up the loose circlet, wrapping it around my armored left wrist before catching my forefinger against the small, sharp protrusion on its final link.
The merest smear of my blood is all it takes for the latch to click closed.
Only with my blood can the circlet be opened. Since I wear steel all over my body, it adds a layer of protection against someone cutting me and using my blood to override the chain.
“When the sun rises, I will put this on you again,” I threaten, expecting her smile to vanish.
“Good.” She smooths her palms down her thighs. Then she squirms a little. “A bath isn’t all I need.”
I incline my head sharply toward the cabin, at which she steps ahead of me, constantly in compliance with my command to stay within my sight at all times.
Quickly gathering up my discarded armor, I carry the pieces as I follow.
She veers toward my eagle on her way past. “Does it have a name?”
“He doesn’t have a name. I’m not attached to him.”
She makes no comment about this, but my eagle peers at her, his red eyes taking on a ghastly gleam in the starlight.
He ruffles his feathers at me, and I give him a soft, low whistle. Permission to go and hunt for his food. He and I will stay out of each other’s way tonight.
As he takes to the sky, disappearing across the treetops, I clear my throat again. “Tell me, what is it like to experience a vision?”
I remind myself not to take Thyra’s answers at face value. I don’t have to believe everything she tells me, and maybe I’ll catch her in a lie.
Her sigh reaches me across the breeze as she continues to walk ahead of me, a hundred paces away from the cabin now. “Which kind?”
So there are different kinds of visions. I wondered about that when her body behaved very differently on the street than it did at the forge. “What kinds are there?”
“Well…” Another soft exhalation passes her lips. “I thought there was only one kind: Oracle visions. They’re calm, warm, and they allow me to help others, to prevent harm. But the blade seems capable of producing visions, too.” She shudders before she shakes her head. “Those visions are violent.”
The movement of her head causes her clumped hair to drag across her back. If it weren’t for my strong eyesight, which is far more powerful than other fae, I’m certain the strands would blend seamlessly with the darkness around us. So completely they might disappear.
The idea of Thyra disappearing wakes my rage, but I rein it in, controlling my response.
“Your first vision was of me.” I choose, for now, to believe what she told me minutes ago and to draw a conclusion from how she described it. “It was violent.”
“Yes,” comes the whisper. “What remains to be seen is if it comes true.”
The chain no longer extends between us, but I fight the desire to drop my armor to the ground and slip my arms around her narrow waist, dragging her up against me, to prove to myself she will never disappear.
“From now on, you will tell me when you have a vision,” I command her, my arms and hands aching for where I want to touch her. “You will tell me what you see.”
She pauses so suddenly that I run into her and, inadvertently, she grants my wish, pressing her back to my front.
It’s only because my hands are full of armor that I don’t wrap my arms around her fast enough before she turns to me.
“I’ll need your help with that, too.”
My forehead creases. “What do you mean?”
“I’m vulnerable when I have Oracle visions. I’m conscious of everything around me, and I can speak, but I can’t move. My father said there was once a time when the Oracle had an entourage of protectors. I watched over my father. But I don’t have anyone. Not anymore.”
My lips rise. “Don’t fret, Thyra. I will be your someone.”
She doesn’t appear comforted, jabbing at the blade’s image.
“When the blade gives me a vision, I not only lose all awareness of the world around me, but it seems the people around me wouldn’t know it.
Like today, in the forge, I came back to myself to find you gripping my hand, yet I don’t remember moving toward you.
Then tonight, on the roof, I came back to myself to discover I was on the brink of a nasty fall.
I may have been determined to get this blade out of my arm, but I didn’t knowingly walk myself to the edge of the roof, and—”
Allowing my armor to clatter to the grass, I reach up and cup her cheek before she can say more.
Her speech dies in her throat.
I didn’t mean to startle her. Not that it should matter to me. I just needed to halt her fear because that heightened emotion is fucking intoxicating right now. For the wrong reasons.
Her skin is warm beneath my palm, both of her cheeks flushed. Her hands may be callused from hard work, but the contours of her face feel fragile, the edge of her earlobe tantalizingly soft where my little finger brushes it.
“I will know.” I lower my face to hers, but not so close that I’m in danger of closing the gap between my mouth and hers.
“When your eyes turn brown, and your lips burn crimson red, and your hair gleams, I will know you’re having a vision—shall we call them blade visions?
—and I will know you aren’t in control.”
My lips rise as I continue with a cold promise. “I’ll be sure to steer you away from danger.”
Unless the danger is me.