Chapter 54
C old, strong fingers gripped her tight, thumb brushing over the ring as twilight whispered around them. Blanketing the sky in soothing hues of navy, a faint twinkling of stars prepared to ignite the night when the flaxen smears of sunlight slumbered behind mountainous, rolling green hills.
Leaves and stones crunched as they stopped near a stone bridge across a winding stream leading to …
Alora blinked.
A lawn.
Nestled on the banks of that winding stream. Its grassy blades like the soft furs of Garrik’s tent glowing in lantern light lined the wrap-around porch of a two-story house. Cozy and beautifully rustic, inviting, walls lined with earth-colored stones and held together by straight and angled dark wooden beams.
On the side, a balcony overlooked a crystal-blue lake. The opening in the wooden railing appeared as if someone with wings could land and walk through the open door.
A creaking wooden swing on the porch drew Garrik’s attention. The sound echoed between them, but the air … heavy and thick, was almost too much to bear.
That fast, Garrik pulled away from her. Leaving her warm and empty.
But Alora decided she’d weather the distance for as long as her heart could withstand and surveyed the landscape anew. Noticing the way the lake calmly rippled along a melody of creeping things bedding down. Brushing over the smooth stones of the shore. Listening to water trickling and rustling leaves.
Garrik watched the water too. Maybe that was easier to face than her. The war inside him shouted down the tether so loudly it roared in her ears. She dared to imagine if Firekeeper’s realm opened to the pits, he would be more comfortable there than in this moment.
“What is this place?” Alora broke the silence, his roaring inside.
He didn’t turn, only gestured a nod to another house on the far side of the lake, designed in the same stones and dark wooden beams. “Home,” Garrik rasped and slowly gestured to another tucked between two forests. Then pointed to each as he spoke. “One for Thalon. Jade. Aiden. Eldacar.” His teeth gritted slightly. “Ezander… Mother wished us to have somewhere to forever call home. Existing outside time. Somewhere irrevocably safe.”
Alora gaped. The wonder in her eyes might’ve scanned the dreamscape longer had a small square hedge-bordered iron gate not stood stark against the fading evening. In the center, rectangular rounded stones sunk into the grass. Pearlseas and ivy wrapped the graystone elegantly, as if locked in time before fully maturing, and rested flawlessly preserved to display etching on the faces.
A graveyard.
She narrowed on a particular headstone when Garrik caught her exploration and explained, “A memorial for Aiden’s father lies there. The marker for his burial by sea. Everlyn’s ashes, too, proceeding the pyre that carried her to the Stars Eternal.” A muscle flexed in his jaw. “My mother’s tombstone.”
Empty , she heard his heart murmur. Not even a dusting of ash for her memory.
“Another, waiting for me.”
That headstone she narrowed on, etched with the letter G .
Alora walked toward him. Feeling his heartbeat quicken as barren hope fluttered there. And when she stood before him, her heart as wildly thrumming as his, Alora didn’t take his hand. Instead, her warm arms encircled his neck.
Garrik startled at the contact. Even when the ice of his arms instinctively enveloped her waist. Rigid and stiff as she laced her hand through his hair. “You should hate me for what I did not do to protect you from him,” his voice cracked.
She intended to mend it.
Taking in his leather and metal scent, the smell of home, Alora said, “I’ve told you many times that I do.”
He breathed a laugh, dropping his chin to his chest, and she pulled her face away to stroke warmth on the back of his neck. Even now, he thought himself the monster. After everything he’d endured. What he had done to protect what he loved. How far he had gone. By how much he had suffered.
Alora couldn’t bear that look in his eyes. The one where he was one step in Firekeeper’s realm and the other, there, pleading to be worthy enough to simply breathe.
How could he think it wasn’t enough? That what he gave… His body. His mind. His soul…
For Elysian.
For her.
She couldn’t hold it in any longer. Refusing for months to know what her heart would think of that one simple word.That name she couldn’t speak.
“Garrik.” It was like something exploded in her soul. At the taste of his name on her lips. Like a final piece had fallen into place.
So, she said it again as his chin lifted from his chest to meet her watery eyes, “Garrik.”
His hands were on her cheeks, stroking away the tears as his began to fall.
“I thought I would never hear you say that.” With rapture, Garrik kept staring at her as he shook his head. “Of every name I have been famed… I thought mighty prince would forever be my favorite. But that , clever girl…” His eyes, beautifully glassy and silver, beamed. Outshining the moonlight and lanterns from his home. “Say it again.”
Rubbing her hand through his hair as the other cupped his cheek, she happily obliged him, only this time… “I love you, Garrik.”
The ground beneath them shuddered. Trembling in waves from his body as its origin.
So, she said it again. “I love you, Garrik. I’ve loved you for a while. But my heart was terrified to give it to another. So scared to believe someone like you truly existed and didn’t want a thing from me other than to see me healed and protected.
“Your body is scarred from the cruel things they did to you, yet your hands are gentler than a calm wind. And that scares me. Because for longer than I can remember, I couldn’t trust anyone but myself. I had my sword raised for so long that any kindness you offered was foreign, and I fought it off, thinking it was another way to manipulate me. I didn’t know what true kindness and love were. Yet you showed me in every little thing you did, despite how awful I was to you. From letting me discover who I was to showing me something as simple as a flower was beautiful. That I could be more, could love all the things I lost.”
He didn’t tear down her walls. Didn’t beg her to drop them and meet him on the ground. No. He climbed them to show her she was worth falling for. Worth breaking for. Worth trying a hundred million times until he reached her, no matter the cost to his life.
She placed her hand over his heart. “You’re a part of me. My soul cannot exist without yours. I love you, Garrik. All of you, every piece, every scar, every bit of darkness. And if this is to all end in ashes, then I will stand in the flames with you. I will burn with you. Because I cannot exist in any world without you. I can only survive it with you.”
Her lips quivered as she added, “I have only ever survived because of you.”
“ No , clever girl,” his voice rough. “It was you. You never required a savior. I may have stolen the bride of Telldaira, but you were already saving yourself. You only needed someone to stand alongside you while you reformed your shattered pieces and showed the realm who you are. You think you are fire in need of oxygen. But my love, you are oxygen, keeping us alive, helping us to survive.”
Her High Prince slipped from her, pulling her hand with him as he knelt.
Cold metal touched the tip of her finger.
Alora whipped her eyes to her left hand.
To the ring waiting there.
Garrik’s next breath trembled as the ring stilled, unmoving as if he were waiting for her to say something, but instead, it was his voice that broke. “This ring can mean different things. It is yours regardless of what you decide. A million worlds—their doors are bound to it.”
Tears collected along her lashes as she examined the center stone. In certain light, it appeared to have a mossy hue, but when angled another way, it was crystal-like.
Garrik traced his finger along the silver band. Along the leaves that twisted under flowers made of diamonds. As her eyes followed his thumb’s path, she fell on the stars framing the stone shaped like a dragon’s tooth.
A swirl of shadow coiled inside the stone.
Alora gasped as another appeared. Then another.
“Every last kernel of my power is linked to you inside this stone.” Like Jade’s ring—like all of his. Crafted for one. Only removed by the creator, the bearer, and whoever else he permitted. Vicious shivers ran down her spine as Garrik continued, “It is all yours, Alora. Everything I have. Everything I am. Everything. ”
Alora slipped her attention from the ring to his breathtaking face. Her voice a whisper. “What else does this ring mean?”
Garrik found the night sky beginning to bloom. The stars flickered. “I cannot live in a realm without you, either.” He looked back to her. “And though I deserve nothing, I wish to spend every day of my existence making sure neither of us have to.” His hand—the ring—shook. “Will you bond with me, Alora? Be my wife?”
Not lady. Not general. Not consort.
Wife.
Garrik’s wife .
Starfire gathered around his fingers and the ring. Alora offered him a smile brighter than starflames as she guided the ring up her finger, and said, “I’ll do more than that,” before falling to his lap.
His hands claimed her hips as he dipped his head. In a slow sweep, Garrik kissed her. Again and again. Kissed her like a sweet devouring. Like he didn’t know where to touch, wanting every part of her, unable to breathe unless his lips were on hers.
Garrik’s back flattened on the grass, but he didn’t seem to care. Not when her mouth opened for him, his tongue slipping inside, teasing in waves as she moaned against his mouth.
“What do you say, clever girl? Make me a claimed male?” he panted between kisses.
Alora singsonged a taunt, “I was waiting for Ezander but?—”
He growled, and she chuckled against his lips. Enjoying how her male’s eyes narrowed, lip curled.
Her male.
Never had anything sounded so right.
She kissed him and said firmly, “Yes.” Stars, without a doubt yes. Alora’s eyes darkened. And with sheer certainty, she looked into his perfect silver and unleashed him. “You’re mine, Garrik.”
The stars flared.
Something snapped in him. Ripped a force—a teetering hold inside him—in two. Knowing curved up the side of his mouth. Recognizing the meaning behind her words. Perhaps hearing his own when he made her a promise inside a veil of darkness.
Smokeshadows roared around them until it wasn’t his back flattened but hers. Pressing her against the stone wall on the porch now, Garrik’s dilated eyes bore into her soul.
She’d witnessed every version of Garrik. But this…
Calling back to the primal beasts that first roamed the lands of Elysian. When there was nothing but that instinct, that deep-seated longing. A bloodlust, an unbreakable craving, that first existed when the realm was new and hungry …
Garrik caged her in with that same glazed lethal focus.
She wanted to be devoured by him. That beast teetering on the edge. Wanted him unbridled as her own need became utterly painful.
His teeth grazed her neck, and she moaned, pressing her hips to his, urging him to do so much more. More. She needed more .
With whatever curse the stars donned on him, Garrik’s restraint could’ve killed her.
He didn’t move. That voice, like the Celestial sovereign ruler of night himself, rumbled, “Let me make one thing perfectly clear.” Dangerous to all else but her, his voice infiltrated her core, threatening to drop her to her knees. “If I take you any further than this threshold, nothing but you will stop me from doing the things I have longed to do.”
Even now, even with the ring on her finger and everything it meant, he still offered her an escape.
But he never needed to again.
Alora fisted his tunic and pulled him until they were across the threshold, deliberately backing inside. “ Yours , Garrik.” Alora spoke with enough control that his cracked a little more. “I am yours .”
Her words were his undoing.
Garrik lunged for her.
The kiss was as desperate as his hands. Roaming down her side, over the aquamarine and diamonds stitched there. The other cradled the back of her head while Alora fumbled on the buttons of his tunic. Feeling his muscles flexing underneath as he scooped her legs around him.
There might have been furniture in the room. Might have been a lack of walls, one room spilling into the other as windows extended high between the stones and wooden beams. May have been a kitchen and an island, picture frames and rugs and everything else that made a home.
But Alora couldn’t be certain of anything more than the way his lips molded to hers or the reckoning of his hips. Her back pressed against the smooth stones before she inhaled his scent. Taking in the smell of burned wood along with it to realize he had dawned them near a fireplace.
The last of Garrik’s buttons slipped loose, and she eased it off to pool on the hardwood. Her hands brushed his shackle-scarred wrists, up his biceps, down the swells and dips of his muscled chest. Over the scars of his abdomen, which didn’t tremble. And when the warmth of her fingers met his belt buckle, he released a growl of approval. A bottomless rumble thrumming from her mouth deep into her chest.
His sinful lips were a drug of enchanted bliss and intoxication that no matter where he put them, she desired more, more, more. And he gave it. Garrik pulled away and found the soft flesh between her neck and shoulder. Those sharp canines lightly bit, tongue swirling, soothing the pleasing sting.
Garrik licked and sucked up her neck, kissing the sensitive spot below her ear, and said with a possessiveness only reserved for her, “Say it again.” Then ground his hardened length against her.
It threatened to unravel her. Alora cried out, “ Garrik .” And did it again. And again with every claim of his lips, she clung to his shoulders.
Love—this was what it was supposed to be. Not tears lining her eyes or her screams filled with pain, or her body used for sadistic pleasure. This—Garrik. This claiming. This desperation. This unbearable ache to have him so close that even feeling his heartbeat against hers was still too far away.
And he may have been feeling it too. What his memories stirred inside him. Because Garrik’s lips slowed against her neck, and he pulled back to survey her.
They tenderly smiled at each other as she clasped his cheek. As knowing and purpose and healing glistened in his eyes. In hers too.
“Never again, mighty prince,” she whispered. Never again would either of them hurt by the hands and force of another. And never by each other.
Garrik tilted his head in her palm, kissed the pulse on her wrist, and repeated, “Never again.”
Never again . He kissed down her arm.
Never again. Across her shoulder to the swell of her breast.
Never again. Smokeshadows coiled around her wrists and guided them to the wall as Garrik knelt and looked up at her.
She didn’t need to give him permission this time. Garrik removed her gemstoned heels before he guided her gown up, up, up. Leaving a trail of kisses. Then he offered another to her inner thigh, then the other.
Alora writhed as hands made entirely of shadow dusted over and caressed the expanse of her body stretched for him. Phantom touches grazed exposed flesh with wisps of darkness, sinking inside her gown to taunt her there too.
One brushed the underside of her aching and heavy breast. Another flicked her nipple.
‘I would claim you … slowly . Allow my shadows to worship you while I watch you writhe and moan my name until you shatter.’
Alora gasped when Garrik removed her underthings before he spread her trembling knees, settling his mouth at the sensitive juncture of her thigh before she felt his breath.
“ Garrik ,” she begged on the edge of insanity as he lifted her leg over his shoulder. She gasped again. Moaning loud enough to rattle the picture frames when he gave her exactly what she pleaded for.
Garrik’s face drifted between her, and all she could see through her half-lidded eyes was the gleam of moonlight on gray hair as he licked tauntingly slow up her center.
She may have cried out his name, though words were far beyond her.
Garrik’s feral hum and the vibration of it against her was as electrifying as dawning through millions of worlds. Unknowing—uncaring—of where or even who she was as he licked and sucked and flicked over that bundle of nerves, which grew taut and swelled for him.
Her mind emptied on the next stroke. On the hands that gripped her ass and pulled her pulsing core closer as he sunk his tongue deep inside.
On the rapturous sounds his groans made on the taste of her.
To the rhythm of his tongue, Alora’s hips undulated.
“ Fuck ,” he groaned, adjusting his straining cock behind the snaps and ties of his pants. “That’s my clever girl. Just like that.”
Alora’s back arched, pulling down on the shadows holding her there at his mercy as a strangled sound released from her lips. She wanted him buried inside her so badly she must’ve said something about it. Barely heard Garrik’s promise as he licked her wildly and curved a finger, then two, deep inside until pleasure surged down her spine and crashed over her like two Celestials warring to claim their star.
And by that star, he did it again.
Devouring her like a starving male. Like only her moans and her release satisfied the ravenous hunger.
She couldn’t hold herself up anymore, trembling and weakened from a pleasure, that before Garrik, she never knew existed. Shadows caressed her, he rose before her and lifted her into his arms.
Carrying her against his bare chest, Garrik strode up the staircase, never taking his eyes off her. The fireplace on the top floor roared into existence. Low autumn light brushed over the stacked round-stoned pillars and wooden beams. Over the flat-slated stones of the floor and the fur rugs and chandeliers. Casting a glow outside the tall windows and the open door to a wooden balcony displaying the mountainscapes and the lake beyond.
Garrik carried her to that balcony threshold and eased her feet to the cold floor. Alora closed her eyes and leaned her head back on his incredible shoulder, stretching it slightly when the ice of his lips feathered over her pulse.
And she wondered how a few short months with him had turned into forever as he tenderly kissed her neck. That same feeling laced within his simplest touch. Laced within the way his hands roved down her sides along the fabric separating them.
Alora couldn’t think past the way his hands moved so carefully over the gown. Wishing they would find the laces and strip her bare. Wanting it so terribly that the hem of her skirt?—
Garrik’s growl vibrated into her back.
She opened her eyes to see her gown misting away by a night-kissed wind. But it wasn’t by Garrik’s command.
Because that ring on her finger …
Inside the gemstone …
Shadows whorled, as wild and demanding as the darkness crawling up her gown, and consumed inch by inch until it was gone.
Garrik chuckled against her skin. “Someone’s eager.”
She may have made a sound of amusement.
A ribbon of his power flowed behind her, along the fabric of his pants pressed against her. But instead of leather, now flesh brushed her, and he was naked too.
Alora’s mouth went dry. Her stomach fluttered.
Garrik’s fingers drifted across her ribs—so tauntingly slow—to her breast and cupped it, swirling his thumb on the peaked nipple.
She couldn’t stop the moan. Unable to stop the next one too as another finger drew lazy circles down her stomach before it slipped into the wetness waiting for him.
“Do you think they are jealous?” There was nothing but pure male pride in that guttural voice.
Alora’s answering whimper was fractured, and her question came out breathy, “Who?”
“The stars,” he answered. “ Starsdamn. Look at you— my wife—mine .”
His words… The reverence, awe, and undiluted love within them struck a deep-seated longing to be loved like this, and had her choking out a sob.
Alora needed him, now. No more waiting. The world and who they were and everything outside this realm didn’t matter. She twisted in his arms and met him with a soul-mending kiss because she couldn’t portray the words as beautifully as he had.
Garrik kept her pace, panting and just as starved. Fingers splayed in her hair, across her jaw. Drawing her tight against him as he backed them to the bed with the same urgency, she threw down their silver tether until it tightened around his soul and intertwined with hers.
Alora’s thighs hit smooth sheets. She placed a hand to his chest—over the star-shaped scar wildly beating—and lowered herself to the bed.
His throat worked. For a moment, terror stole his face as she surveyed the steely muscles and …
The scars—the ones she hadn’t yet seen below his waistline.
The ones marring his inner thighs.
But Alora’s eyes softened as she refused to look away. Every nerve-ending in her body utterly mystified, burning like an inferno at the mesmerizing sight of him towering over her. Amber flames from the hearth gilded him in perfect light, displaying him as borderline angelic with a halo gleaming around him.
“Beautiful,” Alora warmly breathed. Awestruck by her strong and worthy and selfless male standing before her—because he was. So, so beautiful.
Something unreadable flashed across his face. Garrik’s words were strangled enough they collected as a timid whisper, “You think I am beautiful?”
She leaned forward and kissed a scar on his abdomen, throwing that word to him again. Over and over as she kissed him. Avoiding his hardness because he wasn’t an object to be used, there would be time, so much time to worship him there later, and kissed down his thighs, showing him how incredibly beautiful he truly was. “The most beautiful male I have ever seen.”
That terror and remnants of shame transformed into something like the heat of lightning and was just as deadly.
Alora backed across the silken sheets and Garrik crawled over her—the first female he’d ever willingly shared his bed with. Trembling, giving her a moment to reconsider even now as vowed and bonded, Garrik stilled. Breathing unsteadily with uncertainty in his eyes as he settled between her thighs.
Garrik, she whispered down their tether, at the thoughts and memories surely running through him. Whispered with such a gentleness that the entire night sky blazed in his eyes. Enough to remind him of where he was. Who he was with. That he was in control.
And because of it all, the same longing and desire outshining the stars flared and ignited.
She wrapped her hand around his cock, guiding him, marveling at how he filled her hand, at how much he would fill her. At the silken touch, hard and weeping for her as she stroked him tenderly and ran her thumb across his slit.
Garrik’s eyes fluttered; his cock twitched. “I’m afraid I have to break my promise,” he rasped, but she didn’t understand, drawing back amidst the sheets and pillows, disturbing her hair and crown. “This may hurt a little.” And lowered his mouth to hers.
Alora gasped against his lips as the broad tip of Garrik’s cock nudged her entrance, and she decided she craved every ounce of pain and hurt he could give her.
Tortuously slow, he rolled his hips. Sinking into her only an inch when her fingers curled around the hard muscles of his shoulders.
Another glorious inch?—
Garrik stopped, bracing himself with one arm at the sound of her blissfully pained cry. “Forgive me?—”
“Don’t stop,” she mewled, flexing her thighs to ease the burning ache, the need to have him deeper. Deeper, deeper, deeper. Her body craved it so terribly her skin felt aflame.
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
By his caring words, liquid burned her eyes. The echoes of her past attempted to sink in their fangs, but Alora stared into Garrik’s loving gaze and knew his desires weren’t fulfilled by screams of pain, and said, “You won’t. Please, Garrik.”
His name was enough of a plea that he slowly nodded his head. He withdrew nearly to the tip and pushed back in. Further this time. And again. And again.
Garrik laced their hands together on that last inch, resting them intertwined beside her head as he seated himself fully. He groaned her name like a treasured prayer as her inner muscles flexed around him, adjusting to the considerable size of him stretching her to the point of delicious pain.
“You feel.” Garrik cursed, retreated, and slowly, so slowly , sunk back in. “Better than I ever imagined.”
Alora tensed underneath him, squeezing his hand to will herself not to burst into embers as the other slid to his arm. “So do you,” she panted, and he rolled his hips.
There was no rush, no urgency. Feeling the unhurried glide of his thrusts, making love to her thoroughly. The care and love deeply rooted within them, as something … something began to pour from his chest and grip her so tightly, she was hopeless of ever being parted from it.
But it wasn’t his heart she felt spilling and mixing with hers. It was his soul. That thing that belonged to her and hers to him. Twining together, melding and reforming as one with every slow thrust of his hips.
Garrik pulled back, wholly disarmed—exposed—and held her gaze, yielding to the melody that Alora had been homesick for her entire life as it sang in their heartbeats. “I love you,” Garrik tenderly vowed. Leaving room for the unsaid to caress her down their tether and let it sing.
“I love you,” she vowed too, tracing her fingertips along the mounds of his biceps, along the burn scars on his death mark, until her hand rested over his heart.
Garrik buried his face against her neck. Feasting—claiming her in enchanting waves and long sweeps of his tongue. Trailing kisses down the stretched column, hovering there, flicking torturously until she thought she’d go mad if he didn’t travel further.
Alora arched her back, pressing her chest against his.
Garrik slipped from her flesh long enough to release a hungry growl. Cupping one breast, he took her nipple into his mouth, carefully biting, causing electricity to barrel down her spine, then swirling his tongue over the same spot.
Throwing her head back, Alora released a moan that flared the flames in the hearth. A sound she knew surged across the calm waters of the lake and splintered through the mountains until the stars rattled. She was going to burst into starflames. His— their —home would burn to ash if she didn’t practice control.
Garrik’s thumb stroked as icy breath fanned across her. “How am I ever to do a thing without thinking of you like this?” His hips rolled harder, strangling a moan deep from her gut. “Of feeling you like this. Of Seeing you like this— fuck. Alora. My beautiful wife.”
The borders of her vision shifted. Instead of looking into those radiant silver eyes, he projected his vision, so she looked down at herself. Scanning the magnificent aura of white hair and captivating sapphire eyes. At her skin gleaming and shimmering like a star shooting across the sky.
“They should be jealous,” he said roughly. “Every-fucking-one of them.”
Pleasure ripped from his throat as his restraint, the slow thrusts, became desperate. Garrik gripped her hip, angled her to sink deeper, and unleashed himself.
Alora chased him, unable to stop, just as wild and rapturous as she met his strokes with a perfect rhythm to match his.
Garrik’s hand drifted between them, finding her taut and gleaming and on the edge of oblivion. He released a groan, shuddering at hers as he thrust into her and lifted her leg up until he was impossibly deeper.
Smokeshadows exploded. Enough to devastate the room.
The sheer power of him had her hopelessly ruined.
Alora cried out as release slammed into her, and she wasn’t entirely sure that a star hadn’t exploded from the bright light erupting.
He slammed into her once—twice?—
Garrik’s roar echoed across the room and trembled this realm so intensely that a new one could’ve formed. She rode his thrusts, spilling into her over and over, crying out her name as she called his.
Only when Garrik collapsed, still seated inside her and panting against her neck as he stroked her cheek, only when his tender voice coaxed her back to this reality, did she open her eyes.
“Come back to me, my love. Look into my eyes.”
She did. Nothing would stop her from finding him again. From opening her eyes to gaze upon the beauty of him—of them. Because as she lay there, Alora knew she could die from this thing pulling her so ruthlessly to him and even a second of not seeing his face was the worst torture.
Darkness covered him. Like the aftermath of a burned building, it coiled and whorled.
And Alora—she gaped. That damper she held on herself had cracked entirely.
Stars and flames danced down her skin, mixing with his incredible power.
Garrik traced a shadow-covered finger down the flames of her arm, then between her breasts, and rested his head on her shoulder. She splayed her fingers in his hair, feeling the rumble of his moan while she stroked the silken strands. For minutes—hours maybe—they lay there. Reveling in their magic, in their heartbeats. Breathing each other in and the calm of the realm when he broke the silence.
“What did I do to deserve love like this?” he murmured against the sensitive flesh below her ear. Garrik kissed it.
But he never needed to do anything. This wasn’t something he was required to perform for. Not something he would be tasked with for punishment or reward.
She gave it unconditionally.
Garrik was worth everything. He was enough. With powers or without them. High Prince or Lord of Darkness and Minds. The gray-haired demon or no title— he was enough, scars and all.
She unspooled everything, blooming like a flower in spring, shouting it between their souls so he felt all of it in the language they spoke so well. The silence.
He must’ve felt that glimmer and love and everything that was freely his, forever, because the icy chill of his lips brushed against hers.
And then they were kissing again. That acceptance boldly rolled across him in waves, and he hardened inside her before they moved again as one.