21. Cross

Leni can’t mask her reaction quick enough. She shrinks back and dips her head, straining to hear more of our tablemates.

The couple—fellow Brits, of course—halt their lewd proclamations to suck face.

Sixty-three seconds of spittle and moans before the man’s grunting over his sugar baby anew. “You’re gonna take it. I’m gonna fuck your face until you can’t move without thinking of me. You gonna cry for me? You gonna scream and bleed, baby?”

His date whimpers with the range of a Broadway star.

Leni withdraws from me, shoving air between our bodies to lean closer to the couple, to listen. Her expression is one of misery, eyes hooded, lips pressed, brows furrowed.

I expect disgust or fear from a princess. A firm chastising. But this princess has been working tirelessly to forfeit her virginity to a male she thought might be a monster. She’s resigned to be unhappy, to pain, and abuse.

I block out the semi-BDSM ramblings from a dude experiencing a midlife crisis and catch Leni’s fingertips. Assure her quietly, “It doesn’t have to be like that.”

“Like what?” she asks airily, brushing it off, picking at her fries.

I wish she’d eat.

Some primal instinct within me yearns to feed her, to indulge her, to pour fresh springwater between her lips, and place peeled grapes on her tongue.

I just want her strong. Nourished and ready for the hell that’s pouring down on us.

“It doesn’t have to be brutal or violent,” I say, casually setting the best, crispiest fries closest to her. “Sex doesn’t have to be about dominance or control. It can be just pleasure. It can be … sweet, Leni.”

She likes sweet.

Her icy cool eyes find mine, and I’m struck, again, by the force of her beauty. A walking contradiction, vulnerability and strength. “I’m tired of pain,” she whispers.

My stomach clenches. I can’t help but ask the question I’ve been fighting all day. “Is the prince really so archaic that he won’t marry you if you’re not a virgin?”

“He wants to put a collar on me,” she croaks. “He wants to break me into submission. And you’re asking me if he’s archaic?”

Another rhetorical question. One I deserve. “He’s not going to touch you,” I vow, dark, grisly, clamping down on a surge of my gift.

She doesn’t respond.

I long to wipe that awful, terrified look off her face, return us to moments ago, her hand on my thigh, her eyes alight.

I angle her to face me, let our knees brush, tuck her hair behind her ear and follow it with my mouth. Barely a kiss, but it throws gravel into my voice, “You smell good.”

“I smell like you.”

“You taste good too.” Not even the beer stripped the taste of her from my tongue, the syrup sweetness.

Her responsiveness, her moaning my name, writhing in my bed.

My tattoos bite and sting. I clench my teeth, grit out, “Phoenix.”

“Yes, right.” She clears her throat. Blinks rapidly. “What were we … What was I saying?”

Fuck it.

Fuck the curse. Fuck this mess. “Something that can wait, something we can hold off until …”

Until when? Until she’s no longer hunted by the only creature I can’t kill?

Until the curse is lifted?

We’re immortals. There’s no end. No waiting.

“No, it’s alright,” she says. “I need to say it now or there’s a chance I never will.” She shuts her eyes. “The Phoenix didn’t fight with Kadmos because they were afraid to lose their memories. They don’t.”

“But you said—”

“They remember how they’ve been hurt,” she explains, hurrying her words, as if she’s afraid she won’t make it to the end. “Therefore, in a Phoenix’s final death, after dying repeatedly, they’d only know pain. Have lifetimes of it. Some records state the Phoenix were the best slaves in the realm because they could be trained by pain.”

Cold dread scours me. Trained by fear. “And if they died,” I realize. “Slavers could start over.”

She purses her lips. “Glad I don’t have to spell it out.”

Not to a man who’s seen the worst in the world. “Could you retrieve these records?”

A wave of her hand. “No, they’re gone.”

“Gone?” I ask. “How? How’d you get them?”

“Don’t hold it against me, I’m not proud of it.” She slants her eyes to me, cautious, guarded. “I needed a distraction to aid in my escape of the palace.”

My mouth drops. “You burned down the royal library?”

“No!” She slaps my arm halfheartedly. “No, of course not. I lit one of Queen Vinia’s precious apple trees on fire.” She fiddles with her napkin. “It started a small chain reaction. The entire orchard burned as well as most of the library.”

This is not the time to be grinning, and yet. “My little pyro.”

“I didn’t mean to!” So obstinate, so embarrassed.

“My sweet darling, menace of a pyromaniac. You should really stop playing with matches.”

“It wasn’t my fault.” Her whole face has gone spring rose pink. “The orchard was freshly watered, meticulously cared for. It’s a miracle I even got the bark to light. How was I supposed to know it’d burst into flame and hopscotch from tree to tree?”

She’s exasperated. I’m laughing. “Vinia loves that garden more than her children.”

“I know,” she hisses.

I collapse back in my seat, undiluted pride racing through my veins. “Between the two of us, you’re the better criminal, pyro, and I’ve been accused of regicide.”

“So have I,” she retorts.

I laugh. So quick and clever. So fucking perfect with her fire happy fingers.

Fed up with my teasing, she shoves at me. I catch her hands in one of mine, yank her close until the only scents in the room are honeysuckle and rain.

She glares up at me from beneath white lashes, and deadpans, “I’m glad you find this so amusing.”

Me fucking too.

My fingers pulse on her thigh, and a low chuckle spills from my lips. I love her fierceness, her plans, her inability to be anything but the brightest thing in the room. “Every time I think you can’t impress me more, you prove me wrong.”

In another world, we could spend a lifetime laughing.

One wiggle of her wrists and I free her. Instantly, she straightens her back to face me, bringing our lips close. Too close. I lower my gaze to her mouth, and watch her lips part on a whisper of a breath. And all I think is how well the Fates did, selecting her for me. How being with her could make eternity feel short. “Leni.” A plea.

She pulls away, turns to her plate. “The point is, through no fault of my own, the information is no longer available. Not that there was much to begin with. None of the books could even depict a Phoenix.”

I can’t peel my eyes off her. Come back over here, I want to say. I don’t. Instead, I ask, “Let me guess, it’s a big red bird?”

“For someone who speaks Danish like a native, I expected more.” Flippant, wry. She tilts her head at me, all pompous.

My skin hums. “They weren’t fighters. I had no reason to learn about them. But now—” I wipe a hand across my mouth, half worried there’s drool. “If a Phoenix killed Kadmos, how would we even find one to question?”

“Question or torture?” she asks, voice suddenly hard. Defensive. A warrior for peace. “I said I’d help you, but I still won’t let anyone be harmed. Forgive me for not trusting Atlas to do what’s right.”

“He thought he was protecting us.” He was, technically.

“Protecting you, you mean. He was happy to tie me up and toss me to the Queensguard,” she reminds me, lips hovering on the edge of her beer.

The couple beside us stand abruptly, stumbling, bumping our table, giggling as they stagger to the doors, hands shoved in each other’s pockets.

Leni’s gaze chases them to the exit and I wake up. A drop in my stomach. The bar has cleared out, servers are trading breaks, the barbacks are catching up on dishes. Rags wait on empty tables.

I didn’t even notice.

Shit. I need to be better.

“We should leave—”

Brows furrows, a ketchup painting on her plate, Leni doesn’t look at me, when she says, voice fragile, “Promise you’ll be gentle with me, Cross.”

I’ll be anything she wants me to be.

Gentle and calm and serene, patient. A man who doesn’t pressure, doesn’t rush.

I’d make sure to give her that. No matter how desperately I crave to devour her, how potent my lust.

I could do it right now. Not like I haven’t been hard since she ordered me tea. Pekoe tea. Because she remembered. Because she cared.

I could cover the entire pub in shadows this very second, splay her across the table and force her forget to everyone but me. Free her from Draven, and more than that, better than that, make her mine.

I won’t.

The curse is supposed to give me a week, but Leni has changed the time limits. Shortened it, by consuming my focus entirely. It doesn’t matter how many times I direct the conversation back to the king, how often I nip dirty thoughts, the influx of information fades too quickly. Drains as my focus centers on the pulse in her throat, the wet gloss of her lips.

Her every breath brings me to the brink. Her mind, her movements, the curl of her voice around my name, the flick of her lashes—white without the makeup, beautiful.

She gives me only agony.

I love it.

Saving her, giving her gentle, will be the best and worst thing I’ll ever do.

“I haven’t been gentle in a long time,” I admit after a slow, steady breath. My voice sounds low and murderous, vile even to my own jaded ears. “But for you, I would become it. As gentle as you ask. But please, don’t ask it.”

“You like it rough.” Resigned, dreading.

“I’d like for you to not be coerced into fucking me, Leni. We can come up with another solution, we can …” I trail off, having generated zero alternatives. Lying is the best option, but most creatures can scent relations.

Atlas blames the skill on rampant adultery among the Olympians, assumes they trained the ability into their ichor. Whatever the reason, a lie would only keep Leni safe if Draven never found her.

I could hide her.

Yeah, right, try it,the curse taunts. You’d last days.

If that. She distracts me too greatly.

She glances away, a blush fanning out across her cheeks like wildfire. “There is no other way,” she says. “I have to do this. I can’t go back there. The torture, the isolation. Yaya chose death over seeing what would happen to me in Draven’s hands.”

“Then pick someone else. Pick a better man. Don’t pick me.” I won’t survive it, knowing she’ll leave, knowing I’ll never have her again.

“It has to be—“ She stops herself. Tips her chin up. “Do you hear that?”

“No.” I cup her cheek in my palm, lower my gaze to hers. “Why does it have to be me, Leni?”

She shakes her head out of my hold. “It’s coming from you. It’s … buzzing?”

I hear it then. Too late.

Static. Crinkling hissing static. An old TV, a phone on hold. So quiet, one could only hear it in an empty bar with an avid eavesdropper.

Fuck.

I lurch to my feet. Throw money on the table.

Too distracted.

“We need to go.” I snatch the phone from the pocket of Atlas’s coat, clench my teeth, and drop it into Leni’s beer. “We need to go now.”

I pull her scarf across her mouth again, jerk her hood up, cover up those rosy lips, flushed cheeks, the blue hair.

“Is that your phone?”

“Not mine,” I growl, panic crawling up my throat. “We’re made.”

We’ve been set up.