Chapter 16
Lux
Why had I said that? The name slipped out.
This was a wishful hope—not that I was Myrah, but that being with Drak couldn’t be selfish. If destiny forged us from a twisted past, then our actions weren’t wrong, regardless of the gods’ warnings in my mind.
As a witch, my upbringing taught me to view the king of Vylheim as a monster.
As the huntress, I was molded to destroy him.
Freya’s words were on repeat, even if they were short. “Be the weapon.”
“Fuck first then kill him. Then use your dominance for your pleasure again.” Loki spoke more chaotically and with vulgarity between unsettling laughter.
Odin said nothing. His silence was heavier; a weight on my mind that caged my temples and squeezed my skull. Disappointment, anger, and hatred were evident in the pressure convulsing through my head.
Even when Drak and I first came together, the gods hadn’t been this loud. Perhaps it was because only our bodies had intertwined, not yet our souls. Back then, my heart and mind had only just softened to him.
But now I remembered, or at least I remembered the excruciating grief of losing him, lodged in the hollow of my gut, as if we had been one soul torn apart by Freya and Odin’s choices. I had no idea where such grief had come from.
I’d never lived this.
“They’re not memories, girl, that’s what madness sounds like.” Odin finally reached out. “Kill him, and the rest of them before you lose yourself.”
“Don’t listen to them.” Drak’s whispers slipped through the cracks in my mind. I heard him, even if he felt distant—like the Gods were standing between us.
It wasn’t until he softly bit my bottom lip that I was pulled back into the present.
Succumbing to him was exactly what the Gods didn’t want because it put barriers between them and me.
Walls erected in my mind when I fully allowed myself to enjoy his touch and think of nothing else.
With his lips brushing against my neck, Drak opened his mouth again, but it was Freya’s words I heard.
“A weapon is as much for protection as it is for aggression. Didn’t he once deny you weapons? Deny you protection? Deny your loved ones any hope?”
She was right.
A rope cinched around my heart, tugging it lower in my ribcage.
Every beat hurt, and every one of Freya’s words matched the erratic rhythm.
She didn’t speak all at once, but with pauses and skips, just like my pulse.
It was off-tempo with the rumble of Thor’s storm outside.
Each strike of lightning reverberated with the following thunder.
“If you don’t kill him for us. Do it for your mother.
” Odin’s voice cut like a serrated blade along the back of my skull.
I seethed at the sting. “Don’t fail me. You selfish witch.
” His tone grew sharper, more tense, making my heart skip.
He would not stop haunting me, and the back of my eyes ached, tears burning at the edges.
Still, I resisted. “Your hands…give me control, Lux. Give me all of you. NOW!”
Breath sucked from my lungs, and my throat tightened with a raw scratchiness.
“Lux, I’m here,” Drak said. Focusing only on Drak’s voice, the pain receded with Odin’s fading voice.
“I’m here.” He coaxed me out of the spiral with the same phrases I’d used to call him out of his episodes.
The more I experienced this life alongside him, the more I realized we were what we’d once said—what I’d once vehemently denied. We were the same. “Come back to me.”
My eyelids fluttered as I met his intense gaze. The white of his scarred eye was like snow, while the blue in his other eye mirrored the fjords. Together, they held an all-consuming beauty, the kind I had adored gazing at since I was a young girl.
Taking in every mark on his face, I sank my fingers into his hair. Drak dragged his thumb across my bottom lip, parting my mouth before he crushed it with a greedy kiss. I wrapped my arms around his neck, and he lifted me higher, propping my legs on his hips.
Everything within me scrambled for this moment of reprieve. Never would I understand how Drak beckoned me out of my head, but he’d been able to do it with my frayed nerves, and now that the Gods’s voices were louder than my panic and self-hatred, he pulled me away from them too.
His hand slipped over my core, eliciting a sudden gasp from my throat. Arching my neck, I let my head rest against the wall. The feather-light touch of his finger had me writhing, trying to press against his hand, but his rhythm was a steady tease.
Drak tipped his chin back, and with one brow arched up, he smirked at me, eyes roving over my face. “You’re so fucking beautiful when you’re needy.”
My needs should be second—
“Stop,” he interrupted as he ceased teasing me and grabbed my jaw to force me to look at him. Really look at him. “I will not let you put yourself last. Everyone wants to use you. The Exile, the Gods, even the people who came here on Supplication Day.”
You do too. For Godhood.
He let out a breath. “Fuck.” Stepping back, he released the pressure of his body against the wall. His arms slowly went slack as I slid down his hips and straightened my legs. As he turned away, his fingers raked through his wild hair, and his broad shoulders tensed.
Every muscle in his back seemed to tighten.
“Isn’t it true?” My voice was quiet.
He nodded but did not turn around. When his arm fell to his side, he let out another sigh and stared across the room at the opposite bookshelf. “Maybe.”
“Maybe?” I stepped closer to him, reaching out but not letting myself touch him just yet.
“I don’t know anymore. Yes, I have plans for more power, but your safety comes first.”
“What changed?”
Spinning around, he pinned me with a desperate gaze. “You, Lux. You are what changed for me.” I searched his eyes as he towered over me. “Fuck, can’t you see that? The first time you looked at me, I swear you didn’t see a king.”
My mind flickered back to that day in Skaldir when he’d strode into my village flanked by executioners. Though he looked the part of a royal, I saw something else. Angling my chin up at him, I said, “I saw a warrior.”
“You saw me.”
“I don’t understand,” I said, even as I remembered his grin that day. How he looked at me with a crooked smirk I interpreted as a threat. Of course I’d been wary of his smile; he was the crown in a kingdom that executed and exiled witches.
“You didn’t listen to me either. When I told you to fight back. Everybody listens to their king whether out of fear or respect, but even at your own execution, you didn’t listen.” I tilted my head. What the Hel was he getting at? “I couldn’t control you.”
A strange laugh forced its way out of me. “And you’ve hated that.”
“No,” he stepped closer. The back of his finger grazed my chin as his eyes took me in.
Suddenly, his gaze dropped to the space between our feet.
“But I can’t say I don’t want your help at Yggdrasil.
So you’re right about me using you, and I don’t think I would have done that…
” He jerked his head to the side. “In the past.”
After a moment of silence, he stepped past me and strode toward the door.
Why was he leaving now, when my body still ached for him?
I had agreed to lie about our vows, but when we consummated it, nothing about our relationship felt fake.
Now we no longer needed to prove our marriage with our bodies.
No witnesses waited outside to confirm the sound of our climaxes, and yet I wanted nothing more than the pressure of his body against mine again.
My hand shot out and I gripped his wrist. “Drak.” He stopped, but didn’t face me.
“You made me beg already, so you know exactly what I’m going to say now.
” He said nothing—did nothing. He only waited.
“Please.” I tugged him toward me. When he obliged, I matched the energy his desire had given me.
Trailing my fingers along his rough jaw, I followed the line of his beard to the back of his neck.
I snaked my hand around to cup his head, my fingers tangling in his overgrown hair.
With a pull, I beckoned him to my face and kissed him with the same intensity he always offered me.
Taking a breath, I whispered, “demand that you’re the only one I worship. ”
His hands found my face. The space between his thumbs and fingers framed my ears as he held my head. It was all he did.
He simply held me, looking at me as if I were the one who had him frozen in place.
“Please,” I said.
A single twitch flickered over his lips, and then the dam broke.
We consumed one another. One moment we were kissing, the next he ripped his shirt over his head. I dragged him onto the rug so that I could climb on top of him. His need was obvious from the strain against his pants. I freed him and drank in the sight of his cock.
Taking all of him into my mouth, I wanted to tease him the way he had me before I straddled him. His moans beckoned me to lick up and down his shaft, swirling my tongue at the tip. It was the only thing I could focus on.
Being entirely absorbed in the moment shut everything out; the pressure in my head, the skipping in my heart, even the voices—mine and the Gods’—were deliciously silent.
I could remain here forever, drawing desperate groans from Drak’s throat, focusing only on his pleasure, and then mine.
The only other thing I was aware of was the storm. Roaring thunder grew more frequent. We couldn’t hear sheets of water falling from deep within the castle, but the weather made itself known by shaking the stone.
Drak grabbed my wrist and pried me off him, dragging my face to his.
“Let me feel that needy pussy, Lux,” he breathed, then refused to let me respond as his mouth devoured mine.
I spread my legs around his hips and pressed myself against his tip. A small cry escaped me as I sank lower. His cock split me open and I suddenly needed all of it as deep inside of me as possible.
Reading my thoughts again, he gripped my hips and slammed me down against him. I cried out, both pleasure and pain threading together in perfect harmony. I tilted forward and back, soaking in each rising ripple deep within my belly.
His hands guided me to grind harder, faster, and with as much fervor as I could. Rocking with the rhythm of the storm, ragged breaths burned hot in my throat. Bjorn—Kayn too—had pleasured me, but this, with Drak, destroyed me. The closer I came to the edge, the more tears collected in my eyes.
“It’s because we’re destined for one another,” he said, addressing my thoughts without a lick of the jealousy he once expressed for Kayn. “You’re so perfect, Lux. So perfect sitting here on my cock like a fucking queen on her throne.”
I absorbed his words, using them to build my pleasure until I couldn’t keep going.
The tension was too much, too intense, so I let him take over.
His fingers sank into the skin at my hips, and he held me against him, guiding me to lift and arch and writhe until my breathing became desperate panting.
Ecstasy unfurled within me, and I couldn’t stop the words spilling from my lips. Again. “Rune!”
“Say my name again, baby.”
I could hardly speak with the ripples undulating throughout my entire body, but I managed a whisper that made him explode. “Rune…”
All at once, our storm ended, and outside had become quiet, too. The earth stopped shaking sometime during our ecstasy. Mara’s Keep was still, which meant Thor’s storm had finally ended.