Chapter 44 #2
Stellen’s gaze flickers to the stone garden and I’m reminded that these stone flowers were a gift that represented false promises from his father to his mother.
“It took him a year to finish the dress. The Lethians call it the Year of Yearning. With every day and each new thread he sang for her, he proved his love to her.”
My heart hurts, an ache growing. For the lost Voice of the man who wove these threads and for the woman who waited for him to complete his gift.
“A year of wanting.”
Stellen’s fingertips cool my skin. Not only where he presses them gently to my throat, but also across my heart, because, with my next ragged, indrawn breath, the threads part to allow his hand through, his palm now pressing to my bare skin.
“Close your eyes, Thyra.”
Doing as he asks, I close off the visual and focus on the sounds around me. The quiet. The soft swish of material as he brushes my dress aside.
“Inhale and exhale,” he says, waiting for me to follow his instructions, the air slowly leaving my chest. “Feel the air flowing through your throat and mouth, becoming an instrument you can play.”
The remaining tension leaves my shoulders and neck as I lean into him and relax into my inhalations and exhalations.
“Imagine you’re completely safe.” Stellen’s voice is like the air I’m inhaling, soft, caressing my senses. “Any danger feels far away. There is only heat, soft at first, then more intense, building layer by layer.”
Slowly, he speaks, drawing out each word. “From the first brush of fingertips to the firmer press of a palm. The caress of warm lips. The drag of a tongue…”
My breath catches, my body pressing closer to his, a moan building at the back of my throat but catching there.
“Find that sound, Thyra.” His lips brush across my jaw, a tantalizing sensation. “Find it in the heat of an indrawn breath and in the letting go of an exhalation. Find it in your most uninhibited thoughts. Draw them out. Give them freedom. Submit to your desires—”
I jolt forward, my eyes still closed, my most basic desire exploding through me.
My lips crash against his.
A kiss that destroys my shields.
A clash of my mouth against his.
A crash he returns, his hand slipping from my throat to the back of my head, crushing me against him, his lips consuming me until I’m caught in a battle of souls that tears through my barriers, fed by every remembered torment of his songs.
Every drop of blood he shed in front of me.
Every quiet touch and gentle press and wordless glance he’s given me.
Oh, but his silence tears me apart.
I want to rip his silence to shreds, just as it rips me to shreds, shattering the ice around his heart.
All I can do is fill the silence with intent.
A moan wrenches from me, painful and needy, fueled by the ache in my heart.
It’s like a trigger.
His other arm whips across my back, wrenching my hips to his, my pelvis pressed against his hard length.
Desperate with need, I rock against him, a near grinding as I try to get closer.
Need to get closer.
“You found the sound.” He forces space enough between our lips to snarl, his voice so icy cold that I should fear his sudden fury, the sharp contrast to the heated message his body is sending me. “Now control it, Thyra. Before you destroy us both.”
My eyes fly open, a cry of protest on my lips that he’s keeping his mouth from me.
At my cry, the silver dress opens up around me. Every thread slips away from my chest and legs and arms, sliding out from between us and stretching out at my sides, leaving me completely naked.
My breath catches.
My breasts are crushed to his chest, my thighs pressed to either side of his waist.
The threads form a swatch of material, a gauzy sheet gently swaying at my back and curving around my sides, stretching forward as if it would wrap around him and bind him to me.
“Control your sounds, Thyra.” Stellen’s jaw is visibly tight, the tension in his muscles turning his arms into a cage around me. “Before I lose control and fuck you on this cold stone floor.”
His pants are the only barrier between us and my overwhelming need threatens to consume me.
I catch hold of the desire thrumming through me to hum another note, at which the threads curl inward, angling for the space at his back.
A seductive movement to a sultry moan.
He told me to control my sounds and I did, but it doesn’t seem to ease his fury and, damn, that’s probably because I’m arching into his chest.
I can’t stop my challenge to him. “Would fucking me be so bad?”
I crash back to his lips, but he jolts, keeping his mouth separate to mine.
“Yes,” he snaps. “It would.”
My eyes widen, but his arms don’t soften.
Neither does his voice. “In the Alak-Teah, boundaries were blurred. When we were out in the snowstorm, the song I first sang to force your soul to return to your dying body was one of the darkest songs of my people—forbidden because of its cruelty.
“But after that, the music I used to keep you alive for long enough to reach the Alak-Teah, that music was something else entirely, and it had consequences. A heat from which you needed release or it would have consumed you. I gave you that release to ensure you were free from those consequences.”
“What are you trying to say?”
“That no matter what you feel right now, or how intense your need becomes going forward, I will not take what isn’t offered freely.”
I didn’t think it was possible, but his hands tighten even further around me. “Free of sound. Free of magic. Free of coercion, including the desperation that comes with needing to survive. I will not coax you to me or portray myself as anything other than what I am.”
I search his pale eyes for answers. “And what is that?”
“A man capable of atrocities far crueler than any horrors the Iron King could ever have committed even in his worst blood rage.”
I reassess the chill in Stellen’s voice. The shadows in his eyes.
A flicker of darkness that chills me to my bones.
My throat is tight. “Worse than a vampyr’s blood rage?”
He pins me with his cold gaze. “Yes.”
Releasing me, he pushes himself backward, angling lithely through the gap in the silver material.
Scooping up his tunic and swords, he leaves me perched on the edge of the bench.
My feet touch the cold ground. The silver threads have remained partially under my bottom, but otherwise, they continue to float like a fine sheet of silver around me curving inward now like a shield, most certainly concealing my body from his view.
Pausing, only half-turned back to me, he says, “I have no feeling in my heart, Thyra. The organ in my chest is ice-cold by choice. But your heart—” He stops. Shakes himself. “Your heart beats with life. You must be truly free before you can know what your heart really wants.”
Making it to the open door, he stops again, but only for long enough to say, “I will sleep outside tonight. Snowstorms cool my thoughts. I prefer them. I’ll ensure food is brought to you.
In the morning, come to the door. Be ready to start combat training.
Once your training has progressed far enough, we will begin to deal with the curse. ”
With that, he disappears along the hallway, leaving me to grip the edge of the bench with hands that would have willingly explored his body—and a heart threatening to bruise.