Chapter 34 #2
Disappointment flitted across his face, and I understood why: he wanted me to save a kingdom, and I still wanted to save my family. But he said, “Yes, Lidi.”
“When you brought me to the Trials, you had this plan all figured out, and you didn’t tell me.” My voice was bitter.
“Do you think you’ll bear Lightbringer’s silence better now knowing you might be able to give back your sister’s magic?” he demanded. “I wished to spare you that pain.”
“I would do anything!” My gaze snapped up to his. “To be able to do that for her…for all of them…”
“I believe Lightbringer sees you would do anything,” he said dryly. “She seems unmoved by your tendencies toward self-sacrifice. Perhaps because she saw one hero after another slay themselves—and her with them—on their enemy’s swords.”
“You thought I couldn’t endure failing.” The anger was there, clean and clarifying. “You kept my own powers a secret.”
“They are not your powers yet and they may never be. I kept my hopes a secret, which seems my right.”
He rose from the bed, not hiding the irritation that tensed the lean muscle of his back as he turned away from me. The tent offered little space to avoid each other, so he tampered meaninglessly with the brazier.
“I decided to preserve you from feeling like you were failing your family, to the best of my ability, though you seem determined to take an entire family’s weight on your shoulders.”
“You take an entire kingdom’s weight on your shoulders,” I retorted.
I could not stay still. I rose from the bed and paced, which was an unsatisfying proposition within the width of the tent. “That’s why you maneuvered me and tricked me. Why you and I are bound forever. So I can give mortals back their magic.”
“I made you the weapon that can destroy this rotten kingdom.” His words were flat and certain and unapologetic as he turned to face me.
I made you.
Had he made me into something he could control, truly?
I pulled the knife from my scabbard and pointed the tip at the same hollow where my head seemed to settle when he carried me. “And if that weapon ends up at your throat?”
He did not step back. He did not reach for a blade of his own. His hands were at his sides, and his eyes were on mine, and his pulse was steady under the edge of the knife.
“Then the knife is at my throat. But together, we can remake this kingdom into what it was meant to be.” The gold of his eyes glowed in the dark, reminding me he was not mortal. Not like me. “Wife.”
The word landed like what it was: binding and intimate, a promise and a threat.
I held the knife where it was for a few heartbeats, our gazes on each other’s.
Then I lowered it. “Do you have any other secrets from me, Fear?”
The question sat between us in the low lamplight. His expression didn’t change, but he looked at me for a beat longer than the question would have required from an honest man.
“Yes.”
He took the time to pour us both a cup of spiced, milky tea from the pot on the brazier. I hadn’t asked for tea, but when he held it out, I took it anyway.
He let out a sigh that felt like a breath for a long time, his broad shoulders falling. “Tesa is alive.”
The words took a moment to assemble into meaning. “Ander’s Tesa.”
What moved through me first was a bright pulse of joy. She was alive. Ander could have his love restored.
“She’s been inside the queen’s household,” Fear said. “Working against her. Her memories have been partially destroyed by an enchantment.”
Darker understanding crushed that glimmer of joy. Where had she been? What had she gone through that she had not come home to Ander all these years?
“Where is she now? Is she still in the castle?” What if she was lost to the queen’s cruelty?
If Fear had been capable of guilt, what passed between us then might have been a guilty silence. There was a look on his face, slightly rueful. “She’s here. She is one of the Nightwalkers.”
The last of the relief curdled as the full shape of his latest deceit arrived, each piece landing after the last like a volley of arrows: Tesa was here. Ander was not. Ander had mourned her for years and mourned her still. If he knew she was alive, nothing would keep him from her.
“He doesn’t know.”
“No. She’s a Nightwalker.”
“You’ve known she was alive.” My anger was changing shape, finding a new edge. “You stood next to Ander and kept that secret, knowing she was alive.”
“Her memories are gone.” He held my gaze, steady, as if he had already held this argument with himself, and he was well-prepared to argue it with me.
“The enchantment ate through her mind. If Ander had known she was alive and then met her and she hadn’t known him… . I was not going to do that to him.”
“That’s not your choice.”
He scoffed. “You are trying to take a moral high ground despite the pain you would inflict on your friend. Ander is my enemy, and I am trying to be merciful.”
“Ander is only your enemy when you are a fool. You only see him as your enemy because you are a fool.”
His gaze narrowed. He let the insult pass without comment but left time for me to admire his graciousness. “The knife might restore her memories. After she is freed from the queen’s enchantments, then we decide.”
We decide. As if he ever wasn’t the one deciding. “Do you want to keep this a secret for Ander’s sake or because you need his help to bring the other clans in line?”
Fear’s lips ticked up, reluctantly pleased despite the accusation. “You’ve grown so clever. It can be both, can it not?”
Of course. I had grown so clever. Under his wicked tutorship. He would make a gift of the very thing he had forced me to develop. “You must tell him.”
“I will. Once we use the knife and see that she is still Tesa.”
“And if she’s not?”
“She will be. She’s always been strong.” He said the words as if he had said them often to himself until they were worn smooth with use.
“He has been grieving her for years, Fear. And now I am a part of your deceit.”
“Yes. You are. You wanted to know all my secrets.” The lamplight moved across his face. Slowly, as if it hurt, he said, “You think I’m like Corbyn.”
Quickly, because it should hurt, “I know you are like Corbyn. You’re a controlling bastard.”
His jaw was tight. He was once again choosing not to answer an accusation or an insult from me.
“I believe she deserves to be whole when he finds her. Because he deserves that too. Tell me that is only control.”
His gaze met mine, full of challenge.
I wanted to still be furious at him. But I pictured Ander, flying here full of hope, only to find himself face-to-face with one of those dark-shrouded, cold Nightwalkers.
“Fine. We have to use the knife in the morning anyway. We can’t leave Tay and the Nightwalkers enchanted. Then we contact Ander.”
If we were not shielded by Corbyn’s magic, we could not have waited, no matter how exhausted we were. But I was not eager to cut into anyone with shaking hands and bleary eyes.
“He’s going to be furious with you,” I said.
“He generally is.”
“Do you think he will despise you less when he has Tesa back?”
“I don’t care.”
“I thought you were going to stop lying to me, Fear.”
His gaze narrowed on me. I thought he might repay me some ugly truth in exchange, but instead, he reached for me.
I let him.
Not because it was safe. Nothing about Fear was safe. Even if he had loved me once and even if he might love me once again someday—I did not let myself dwell on this possibility—and if I might love him…. That would not make me safe with him.
Corbyn had loved my mother, and he had still sacrificed her. He had planted the seed of the half-mortal that the kingdom needed and then taken her memories and sent her into hiding.
He had believed she would be the kingdom’s hero in her own way. And so she had carried me into a strange village, not even knowing herself anymore, and brought a child into the world thinking the father was a monster. Thinking that he was the one from which she ran.
Fear’s hands were careful. He touched me slowly, giving me time to stop him, which was its own infuriating quality: the way he never took anything without leaving the door open for me to close it. He made me admit I wanted him.
Anger and desire could share a bed, it seemed. Just as Fear and I must.
I kissed him, a kiss that had teeth in it, all the anger finding somewhere to go.
He walked me backward until the tent post stopped us again, his body warm and solid against mine, his mouth at my jaw, my throat. My fingers found the laces at his collar without deciding to. I tugged at the hem of his shirt as if it had offended me.
“Cara.”
My name, rough, not controlled, as I began to pull the shirt over his head.
He let me strip it off him, revealing the width of his shoulders, the lean taper of his waist. It was clear he was not mortal, not with those muscles, with his impossible perfection.
Not with his beauty, which was unfair and relentless and which I could not make myself ignore.
I kissed him again, slower, and his hands moved down my back. His thumb found the hem of my shirt. The warmth of his hand against my skin was a shock even though it shouldn’t have been, the warmth of his palm flat against my ribs.
Against his mouth, I said, “Still angry.”
“And I, your potential murder victim, remain peeved as well.” The words were pat and cool. “Are we going to stop?”
“No.”
He smiled, as handsome and unflustered as ever. I wanted to bite him again for being so amused at me, but his hands found the hem of my shirt and pulled it over my head.
I would have unleashed a few sarcastic thoughts, except his mouth was at my collarbone before I could, tracing lower with unhurried focus. I pressed my hand against the tent post behind me.
His hair was soft under my other hand, then—as his mouth latched on to one spot on my throat and my back arched—my fingers tightened in his hair. I murmured, “You’ve been thinking about this.”
“Longer than is useful,” he confirmed, his lips moving against my skin. His warm hand teased up my skin, pulling my shirt up and then off.
His hand was on my breast, and I was not quite as sharp as usual in delivering an insult. “Even after—you perverse—”
His hands were at the waist of my trousers. “Before and after and with very little break during. But I’m still angry.”
His hands stilled, checking in with me, and my palms slid over the rough callouses over his knuckles to urge him on.
Yes. More. He pulled my pants loose and shoved them down, his big hand palming my ass, rough and needy, pulling me against him so that his thigh parted my legs. His mouth was urgent against mine.
I stumbled forward, pushing him down onto the bed, and he let me.
He was so much bigger than I was, but he was pliant under my hands.
He let me lay him out, let me straddle his lap.
I ground against him, through my damp panties and his rough trousers, feeling the solid length of heat through two layers of fabric.
He caught my hair in one hand and pulled me down, steadily, insistently, unyieldingly. His fingers wrapped in my hair, guiding my mouth to his. The two of us traded slow, teasing kisses as I kept my momentum, rubbing myself over him slowly and steadily.
His fingers pushed aside my underwear, pressing between my lips, and he let out a groan at finding me so wet.
“Wicked girl…”
He set a punishing rhythm against my clit, hard and fast, and I pressed myself down into his palm, wanting more of him.
But then as heat gathered, as something tightened low in my belly, the sensation grew to be too much.
I gripped his forearm, feeling the corded muscle ripple under my fingers as he kept chasing my release.
“No,” he murmured against my mouth. “I want you to come on my hand.”
“I want you inside me.”
His scoff of a laugh was something I felt through my own body. “You want to not owe me anything. Not even your satisfaction.”
He rolled us both over in one seamless move, his body carefully braced over mine; his thighs bracketed mine, and his elbow was pinned just over my shoulder. He was a cage of flesh and heat, his hot mouth pressing kisses against my lips and my throat.
My back arched, my hips rising toward his as his hand considered its relentless exploration. I was so close, my heels locking at the small of his back, my hips driving up to his hand, and he slid his thumb to the left, drawing it out, delaying my release.
“Come on, mortal. Endure a little longer.”
He captured my sound of protest with his mouth.
He kept teasing me until I was wild with need, my head thrashing across the pillow.
Then he thrust his fingers inside me at the same time as his thumb kept its time on my clit, his first two fingers pressing my wall at the exact place that turned me to liquid heat with every pump.
“I love feeling you squeeze around my fingers like you’re going to milk my cock later.”
“Fear,” I murmured into the hollow of his throat. “Please.”
His smile, lips brushing against my temple, was mean. “The one time you’re polite.”
He kept his pace on my clit, kept thrusting, and I shattered around his hand, calling his name.
When I collapsed back into the soft quilts, coming slowly back into reality from the haze of pleasure, my face felt hot from both orgasm and from the way I had all but screamed his name.
“Fear, do you think anyone…” I trailed off. I could not bear to ask if anyone had heard.
“Much of the camp, I would think,” he said mock-seriously, and I groaned.
“It’s a good thing. People will believe you love me.” His voice had turned to that cool, polished, amused version. Charming, on the face of it. “It’s the most convincing you’ve been.”
My clit was still throbbing and raw, my legs wrung out and weak. But something had shifted between us, and I wasn’t sure why. Perhaps he had just suddenly remembered that he hated me after a momentary distraction with my lips on his.
I rolled onto my side and slid beneath the blankets, and he did the same.
Fear
When she called my name, she hadn’t spoken with scorn or irritation or fury. I’d expected a reprieve from her hatred when she was coming around my fingers.
The last time she said my name should have been different. Back to anger. Instead, she’d asked me easily, “Fear, do you think anyone…heard?”
She’d had a red flush in her cheeks, her eyes bright and alive as they met mine. She’d said my name as if nothing between us had changed.
She would hate me again in the morning. Perhaps I deserved it.
Regardless.
The worst thing about Cara’s lies was that she was genuine, in both her anger and her tenderness.
She did not even intend the deceit that pierced me through.
As if she still saw me as she had when we met in Stonehaven.