Chapter 41

41

kane

I grasped Arwen’s slender hips, my thumbs nearly touching at her spine, and rocked into her. I could do this—take my time with her. Nice and slow and agonizing. Just a hair shy of painful.

Arwen bucked and rolled her hips, her slick core contracting. I ground my teeth with the force of keeping my cock in check. Her tense whimpers were so sweet. Desperate little sounds that brought me closer and closer to the edge.

But this time felt different than before. Different from the frenetic, frenzied declaration of love—that hurried, near-haphazard rush to join, to become one. And different, too, from Briar’s—that first real night together cautious and tangled in misunderstood feelings. Now there was . . . time. Time and promises and hope all unfurling generously between us.

“Harder,” she breathed. Then, a whimpered afterthought. “Please.”

There was nothing in this world, no torture, no suffering, that could keep me from obliging her request. I unleashed whatever part of myself I had just barely been succeeding in holding back and drove into her, over and over, mumbling how tight she was, how perfect and wet and good.

The moonlight fell in pale beams over the rumpled bedsheets, painting Arwen’s long, silky brown hair, her back, and the faded scars striped across it. My heart squeezed as we moved together.

I wanted to be closer to her.

Leaning forward, I pulled her up by her shoulders until she was kneeling between my legs, her back flush against my chest. Her scars pressed to my heart.

“I missed you,” I breathed against her ear, kissing her temple, her brow, wrapping my arms around her collarbone and stomach as I continued to thrust. We panted, messy, slick, and sweating. Arwen letting out one choked moan after another as my hands ran down her arms and thighs. Flushed and misted in sweat as we grasped and groped—her breasts bouncing with our rhythm. The sight was so erotic it was nearly excruciating. Some base, possessive, wholly male part of me wanted to come all over them.

She was mine.

But there would be another time for that.

The thought that this wouldn’t be the last time I was with Arwen in this way was almost as euphoric as the sex itself.

At the sound of Arwen’s groans and the weight of the back of her head against my chest, I picked up the pace, bringing my hand down to the apex of her thighs and stroking her until she squirmed.

She clenched and shuddered with her release, sobbing as she arched against me. It was my name on her lips that pulled me over the edge with her. A savage combustion of pleasure, white-hot and pulsing through my entire body.

Arwen collapsed onto the bed beneath us and I lay down next to her, careful not to crush her under my weight, both of us winded as if we had been running for miles.

“Is it always like that?” Arwen rolled onto her back, eyes fluttering open to stare at the sheer canopy above us.

“It never has been for me.”

She raised a brow in silent question. “But you . . .”

“Have had a lot of meaningless, disconnected sex with a lot of women. None of whom I loved. None of whom were you.”

Arwen nodded, but she didn’t seem concerned either way. Perhaps she had taken our conversation in Mariner’s Pub to heart and was comparing herself less to others.

“I’m not ashamed of my lack of experience,” she said, her eyes bright on mine. “Or your surplus of it. I just want to be enough for you.”

A laugh rumbled out of me, and Arwen laughed, too, even as her brows knit together in confusion. “You really have no idea what you do to me.”

Arwen rolled her eyes.

“I’m serious. Here, I’ll show you. Make the pinched face you do when you’re mad.”

Her eyes filled with mock insult. “What pinched face?”

“When you’re angry with me, your brow furrows and you get a little pinch between them, right here.” I touched the spot in the center of her forehead. “And down your nose. It means you’re about to lay into me, which for some masochistic reason I find wildly attractive. So much so, it gets me hard.”

The look on her face told me how little she believed me.

“A bit like a bull,” I said, placing a hand behind my head in disinterest.

“Hey,” she snapped, brow furrowing and nose scrunching up.

My cock twitched and I grabbed for her hand, placing it under the sheets so she could feel the proof for herself. “See?”

Arwen let out a surprised laugh. “You’re sick.”

“Yes,” I admitted. “Completely lovesick for you. I have been for months.”

Her eyes fell to my lips and she leaned in to kiss me, long and slow and soft.

“My beautiful bird.”

“My king,” she purred in response.

I groaned, laying my head back into the pillows. “Talk about things that really do it for me.”

“You love when I call you my king?” She scoffed. “So drunk on power.”

“I love when you call me your anything.”

It was still night, but now that my eyes had adjusted, I could just barely make out a silver outline on the trees that surrounded the keep. The sun would be rising soon.

I traced my hand lightly across Arwen’s shoulder, closing my eyes to the gentle sounds of her breathing. She grasped my hand in both of hers. “This ring is my favorite of yours,” she said, touching the onyx signet I wore on my pinky.

“It was my mother’s.”

“She had great taste,” Arwen said softly.

“She did. She would have loved you.”

“You think so?”

“Definitely. You would have gotten along like old friends. She wasn’t necessarily funny, but she had a great sense of humor. She laughed hard and often, like you.”

“I wish I could have known her.”

“I would have been instantly excluded.”

A laugh breezed out of her. “Like you and my mother at that dinner in Siren’s Cove. She adored you.” Arwen tucked her chin into my chest. “I wish she could have seen us figure it out. Could have known that I was happy.”

“She knew you. Perhaps better than anyone else. She knew you would be happy, Arwen.”

We sat in a content quiet, and I began to doze off before Arwen squirmed beside me.

“I can’t sleep now.”

I smiled. “Breakfast?”

She sat up to peer out at the balcony windows. “It’s not even morning.”

“Exactly.” I eased out of bed and threw on my breeches. “I’ll send for some food and we can eat as we watch the sun rise.”

“That sounds blissful,” she said, falling back into the plush pillows behind her. My bed was so large, the sheets and pillows nearly engulfed her.

“One thing,” I added as I headed for the door to my study, guilt already creeping in that it had taken me this long to remember. “Can I let Acorn in? He hates to sleep alone, and I haven’t seen him yet after being gone for months . . .”

“You’re kidding,” Arwen said, eyes wide. “The strix really is your pet?”

“Of course.” I frowned. “What do you think I keep him around for? His conversation skills?”

Arwen’s mouth lifted in a smile, but fear still flickered in her eyes.

“You said you trust me always. I would never let something happen to you. Especially not at the claws of my own strix.” I didn’t blame her entirely. Acorn’s glowing yellow eyes and owl wings paired with his goblin-like features and torso had the same effect on most people: terror. It was one of the many, many things I loved about him.

As soon as the door popped open, Acorn bounded inside like a tornado, long wings nearly slapping me in the face, claws scrambling to find a grip on the hardwood floor.

“Hello to you, too,” I cooed. But he flew past me and prowled onto the bed, sending Arwen wriggling away. Acorn only curled up beside her, screeching happily and rubbing his front claws together.

“See, he loves you.”

“He tried to eat me!”

“Now, how can I blame him for that?”

“Kane,” she said, still twined in blankets she must have believed would protect her. “He really did almost kill us.”

“If I recall correctly, you almost killed him. When you broke into my study. To steal from me.”

“Well, that was after you kept me in a dungeon.”

She said it with nothing but humor, but I felt my smile fall. I pulled the door open and asked the guards down the hall to fetch us breakfast before striding back into the room and opening the balcony windows.

A pleasant, chilly breeze caressed my face as I looked down on my keep. The barely peeking sunrise beyond the treetops had brought out the stablehands and landscapers, a young man washing the masonry, and various soldiers just waking up or shuffling through the barracks to take a piss.

All people whom we needed to protect.

As badly as I desired it, we couldn’t hide in this room forever.

When I turned back to face Arwen, the first rays of dawn light had just feathered across her face, highlighting that delicate nose and those full lips. She was tentatively petting Acorn—very tentatively—but he was thrilled, eyes half-closed and burrowing deeper into the duvet.

Her beauty made my heart twist.

No wonder she was the daughter of a God. That kind of regal, arresting splendor could never be found in a mere Fae. Even a full-blooded one. I crawled into bed beside her, tucking her warm body into mine. Acorn scooted to nestle at our feet.

“I was only joking about the dungeon,” she said after a while. “You can’t carry that with us the rest of our relationship.”

“I know.” She was right. It was no way to begin a life together. “When you do me the honor of becoming my—”

She pushed a finger to my lips. “Don’t.”

“All right,” I said, muffled.

“I mean—” She shook her head. “Do, eventually. Do ask me. I want to be wed. I want to be with you, but first . . .”

First let’s make sure she has a life to spend with me at all.

Arwen’s hand splayed across my chest as we listened to the rhythmic sounds of Acorn’s snores twined with the wind rustling between the balcony drapes. Arwen dragged a finger across my forearm. All its small raised lines and pale white marks. “Why do you have so many scars? Are these from being in your dragon form?”

“Some.” I scanned my own biceps and torso. “I wish I had more valiant stories to tell you. Most of them are from a pretty standard Fae childhood.”

Her brows met in confusion.

“Fae heal very quickly. Growing up, Fae children tend to find themselves in precarious situations because they know they can survive almost anything.”

I could hear the pieces clicking together in her mind. “So, when I heal quickly . . . that’s not due to my healing abilities, that’s just part of being Fae?”

I dipped my chin in confirmation.

“Would I also age very slowly? Would I have lived thousands of years?”

“Yes, bird.”

“Longer than Mari, and Ryder, and Leigh . . . longer than you?”

I tucked a finger under her chin and brought her eyes to mine. “Yes. You will outlive us all. Even me. I’m not full-blooded. But I’ve got at least another thousand years in me, so don’t get too excited.”

Arwen continued her lazy strokes, this time across my abdomen, and I shut my eyes against all that stood against us as soon as we left this room. Hemlock wouldn’t be easy, but hopefully we could get in and out, as long as—

“Why are you so . . . fit?”

I choked on a laugh. “What do you mean?”

She sat up and stared at my abdomen. “You’re practically carved out of stone. Do you exercise a lot or something?”

I shrugged. “I suppose I do. In my free time. I don’t have a lot of . . .”

“Hobbies?” she supplied.

“I was going to say friends.” The truth sounded fairly depressing. “Other than Griffin. And Acorn. So I train whenever I can. Sometimes out of boredom.”

“I know you didn’t appreciate my offer of friendship in the caverns, but you are probably my closest friend. Don’t tell Mari.”

I chuckled. “I’d say don’t tell Griffin, but I’m sure he wouldn’t give a shit.”

“Oh, yes, he would. He loves you.”

“I haven’t the faintest idea why.”

She pushed back to put space between us and held my eyes in hers. “Don’t kid yourself. You’re a good man, Kane.”

If I had any hope of that being true, I owed her one final truth. “I have to tell you something.”

“I swear to the Stones, Kane, if you have kept one more horrible secret from me, I will castrate you.”

“I doubt castration will be necessary, but I don’t want anything else between us, either. Last night when you came to my bedroom, I was preparing to leave for the Pearl Mountains.”

Arwen paled. “Why?”

“Remember what Beth said about the way of the Crow? Long before we found you, I heard rumors of a sorcerer who lived there in isolation. Someone who might be able to make me a full-blooded. I hoped to take the place of the Fae from the prophecy. I’m not even sure if it can be done, but apparently this White Crow is our best chance. I have to go see him, Arwen. I want to find a way for us both to survive. But if for some reason that’s not possible . . . if there’s a way I can take your place—”

“Absolutely not,” she said, sitting up straighter. Acorn jolted awake with Arwen’s movement before realizing nothing was wrong and closing his eyes once more.

“Arwen—”

“That is not a price I am willing to pay for my life. You’d be dooming me to an existence of grief. That’s not a noble sacrifice; that’s you taking the easy way out.”

“Arwen—”

“You told me—promised me—that we would find a way out of this, and I am choosing to finally have some hope, and now you tell me your brilliant plan was to kill yourself?”

“No,” I said calmly, attempting to ease her hysterics. “I won’t go. If that’s what you want, I won’t go see him.”

“Thank you.” She exhaled.

“We’ll find another way.”

“We have to,” she said. “We just have to.”

---

We called a meeting to converge in the war tent at six. Inside, noblemen and soldiers crowded the space, sharpening weapons, poring over maps, and discussing strategy over piping-hot mugs of coffee and tea. At the sound of our entrance, over two dozen eyes landed on us like moths pulled to a flame, focusing on our hands, twined together.

“Holy Stones.” Mari clutched her collarbone, looking up from the spell book in Dagan’s grasp. “Did you two finally—”

“Definitely, they did,” Amelia said, lounging in a leather love seat next to Ryder, who peered up from a desk stacked high with diagrams.

“You two are so foul,” Ryder said.

Mari rolled her eyes at him, but it was Amelia’s reaction to Ryder that caught my eye.

She blushed. Actually blushed.

And not secretly, privately, hiding her face from him, like some schoolgirl with a crush on Arwen’s brother.

No—this was the flush of a shared secret. A private joke between two people who had shared something intimate. Thinking nobody was watching them, Ryder and Amelia made the briefest eye contact, so fleeting, so quick that I was sure I had made the whole thing up.

Until he brushed his hand against her folded arm and they both fought a smirk.

Maybe something had happened between them while stuck in Citrine together. Ryder surely had the blind arrogance needed to get within a foot of the impenetrable Amelia.

But what on earth did she see in him?

I wanted her to be happy—to find someone she cared about, and not just for the benefit of her father—but Ryder?

The kid was a weasel. A thief, a coward who paraded around as brave but seemed to always protect himself first and everyone else second, if at all. He was a self-serving, boastful creep who likely knew of Arwen’s suffering at the hands of his father her whole damn childhood and did nothing about it.

As if Arwen could sense my tension, she gave my hand a squeeze. When I caught her curious expression, I shook my head as if to say it’s nothing. I’d fill her in on what I saw later, once we had returned safely to Shadowhold with the blade.

Right now, we had more important matters at stake than who may or may not have been sleeping with whom.