10

All the glamours fade away by the time we’re back in the Midlands and hailing down a carriage. The ride back to Hemlock is so long that the exhaustion has dug down to the bones of us all.

No one speaks in the late hour of the carriage and the Quiet outside thickens the silence.

Dare isn’t with us; we are one down as we all splinter off in the foyer of Hemlock House.

No one utters a word. The weariness of the trip has all our shoulders slumped, our faces slack, and our lashes heavy.

Daxeel takes Aleana to her room, slung over his shoulder like sack of grain. Eamon climbs the stairs with Ridge who is releasing too many yawns—but I fight through my fatigue and stumble my way to the kitchens for a snack.

Time speeds by in the human lands, so in Hemlock House, we must have only been gone for I guess around two hours. I’m grateful that the house seems to be fast asleep as I duck through the stone archway to the kitchens. Even the slaves are nowhere to be seen this Quiet.

I pin my night’s hopes on a plate of assorted snacks, a warm tea and then to be rugged up in the blankets of my bed. I might finish the book I’m working through, the one about Mother and her stirs from slumber.

But Daxeel comes to interrupt my brewing schemes of relaxation.

I’m plating up some strips of cured ham, a sugar cube, apple slices, and buttered bread when I sense him.

Without looking over my shoulder at the archway, I know it’s him.

Daxeel’s scent creeps into the kitchens and alerts me to his presence.

But it’s more than that now— I feel him. It’s in the sudden icy chill creeping through my gut, his sensations flooding me.

I feel him, but only when we’re in the same room, it seems. And they are only flickering senses, moments quick to pass.

If Daxeel has figured out this connection between us, then he doesn’t think I have caught on yet. Always underestimating me. So as he comes into the kitchens, he ensures his bootsteps are firm enough that I hear them.

Standing at the bench, I sprinkle some cinnamon over the apple slices. I say nothing. I just wait for his wrath.

I know it’s coming.

The ice-grip his feelings have on my insides is more than enough to warn me of his mood.

Back when he first came out to the human lands with me, it was different. Times when he was so intent on keeping me comfortable with him, to ensure I felt as safe with him as possible.

Now, those days are phases of darkness, and he’s not so kind to me anymore.

I’ll be punished for the adventure through the human lands.

That’s what I expect.

That’s what the icy lashings in my gut warn me of.

But instead, he makes his way to the bench.

As his wandering steps—still punched with purpose—draw closer to me, he pauses only to scoop out a spoon from a mason jar. Freshly whipped caramel clings to the copper spoon and glistens amber under the glow of the fireplace.

He advances on me.

Reaching out for a cloth, I wipe the cinnamon dust from my fingers.

Daxeel hands me the spoon.

I look at him.

His glamour has been stripped back, his shadows returned. Wisps of them curl over his shoulder, as though sleepy themselves; some tendrils lick at the sharp cut of his jaw. Flickers of shadows darken the dimples carved into his cheeks and burn his cobalt eyes brighter than the moons in the clearest of skies.

I reach out, and for a moment, I don’t know if I’m going to take the spoon from him or sweep aside the stray tendril that grazes his brow.

I take the spoon.

Exhaustion quietens his gravelly voice, “Get to bed, Nari.”

I lure the caramel off the spoon with very deliberate twirls and laps of my tongue. “Yours or mine?”

The breath he exhales is so very like a sigh.

“What about Aleana’s?” I murmur and toss the clean spoon onto the bench. It clatters beside the untouched plate. “Who will go to hers?” I narrow my eyes at him, at the weariness he wears, the darkness of his kohl lines, “or are you so determined to stop her from finding that with a male?”

A snarl is quick to crawl up his throat.

He moves for me in one fluid step, then he’s an inky tower of shadows, looming over me.

“Why don’t you mind your own concerns?” he hisses at the shell of my ear. I keep my cheek to him. “This business with Aleana, it has nothing to do with you. Since you know so little about it, you might consider keeping that pretty mouth of yours shut.”

“Your sister—” I start, firm.

“ My sister,” he cuts me off like a hot blade through butter, “deserves more than anything Rune can ever offer her.”

My jaw sets and I readjust the plate. But I don’t take it into my grip and storm out of the kitchens, though I should. I stay—because I ache for his attention. I yearn for the fight, because at least he speaks to me.

Keeping my cheek to his burning gaze, I lift my chin, smartly. “You have no right to determine that for her.”

“No?” his growl deepens. “I was separated from my evate for a decade, and I took lovers. Fleeting affairs.”

White hot rage erupts throughout me.

My nostrils flare as I slowly draw in a calm, soothing breath, and I grapple onto any thread of rational thought that I can reach.

I, too, had other lovers in our separation. And I’m all too aware of the Comlar whore.

Still, I itch to knee him right in his male-hood.

“And all that time,” his tone drops, still gravelled, but softer, “my mind, my thoughts, my soul were consumed by you. If you fool yourself for a moment that I thought of anyone but you in those intimate times, you are a fool, Nari.”

The spears of rage start to fade. Flutters soothe my insides as the tensions in my shoulders ease.

“Rune will always yearn for her—his lost evate.” Daxeel’s hand rests on the edge of the bench. “He will not think of Aleana as he chases his own pleasure in her,” and at those spat words, I flinch, “and she will accept it because she thinks that’s all her worth is.”

Shame burns my cheekbones, hot.

I keep my gaze tucked down.

But Daxeel isn’t done. “If my sister is the evate of a male, then so be it. She deserves nothing less than devotion. But I have been the male with the lost evate, and it never leaves—no matter what path Rune takes in life, who he takes, it will never be enough to fill that void in him.”

He snatches my chin, hard, and tugs it to align our faces.

A hiss escapes me on instinct.

But his growled warning overpowers me. “Stay the fuck out of it, Nari.”

And just like that, I’m silenced.

Whether it’s his threatening tone or the command of the contract, my throat tightens on any response I might have.

I swallow back a gulp, then tug my chin out of his grip.

His fingers slip away, grazing over my skin before he draws back a step.

I feel his stare run me over.

A moment passes before, softer, he says, “My bed.”

My mouth puckers.

I lower a glower onto my plate. “Is that a command from a master to a slave?”

He snarls down at me, “Words to a whore.”

A strangled cry snares in my throat.

Before I can draw in a calming breath, or steady my soaring rage, before I can even blink, I have spun around—and raised my hand with me.

I strike him, hard.

The crack echoes through the kitchens.

Daxeel’s face is turned by the force. The beige tone of his sunkissed cheek darkens into an angry red. The searing leftovers of a slap face me—my handprint.

My chest heaves with the hot rage pulsing through me.

Daxeel is still.

His lashes are low over the searing blue of his eyes. They cast shadows down the caramel tone of his face. But through those shadows, I see the clench of his jaw.

Slowly, he blinks, then turns his chin. He looks down at me.

My breaths steady. The rage rushing through my veins cools into a glacier panic.

Daxeel rolls his jaw as if to release the sting of my strike.

Instinct jolts me. I step back, but before I can think, before I can turn and scramble out of here or utter a word, Daxeel lets his eyes blaze like oceans aflame.

He snatches out for me.

I shove back with a yelp.

But he is faster.

His hands are iron grips at my waist. He hoists me off the ground like I’m little more than some fistfuls of feathers. A squeal escapes me as he turns, and in two blurred steps, throws me onto the kitchen table.

I grunt on landing.

Left out plates and mugs clatter to the stone floor.

Sharp pain spears up my arm to my shoulder—the corner of my elbow thrumming from the impact.

I make to push forward, to hit out at him, but before the last plate can smash on the floor, he’s struck out and hit my legs apart.

He pushes between my thighs in one swift move.

Standing over me, the summer of his eyes fixes on me. Tousled hair grazes over his brow, one tip brushes his lashes—and all I can do is stare for a moment, trapped in my panic.

“You hit like a halfling,” he growls, the corner of his lips daring to twitch into a smirk.

That glacier fear shatters like glass.

Challenge accepted, fucker.

I hike my knee—then shove my boot into his middle.

He staggers back a step, and I am not fool enough to believe my strength pushed him away.

He watches me, eyes smouldering in the dim kitchens.

The light from the hearth’s tender flames gleam over the lashing tattoos that climb up the side of his neck.

I slip off the edge of the table, never breaking our locked gazes. My boots smack down on the stone floor.

“And you kiss like a male in love,” I snarl at him, my upper lip curling back enough to reveal my sharper teeth.

Daxeel moves for me in a breath, his chest expanding with my scent. The advance backs me into the edge of the table.

I crane my neck to keep my snarl aimed at him.

He towers over me, his mouth hot on mine.

But he doesn’t kiss me.

“I am wholly in love with you—” against my lips, he seethes the words with venom. “—and it is what I hate most about you.”

I bite, hard.

The sharpness of my teeth sinks into the meat of his lips. I taste the inkiness of his black blood on my tongue.

A rumble hums in his chest, vibrates against me, and shove into him. he falls back some steps and looks at me.

The fine wool of his sweater is crumpled at his front. Fresh tears tug on the collar. It slinks with the rise and fall of his chest, and I think his insides are surging with need—pure, primal need.

Slowly, his tongue drags over the fresh cuts on his lips, tiny, freckled teeth marks.

He licks away his own tarry blood.

Then he’s after me. He chases my lips.

Each step I stagger back, he strides to meet.

My spine hits the edge of the table, stops my retreat dead in its tracks.

His hands are fast on the meat of my hips—then the floor is swiped out from under me. He shoves me onto the table’s edge.

“I want nothing more than to only hate you,” he bites the words out, hands pushing up the skirt of my dress, “You don’t know how deeply I regret courting you, vicious one.” My undergarment is shredded with a rushed, firm yank. “I let you in when I should have cut you down.”

His fingers cut into my thigh, and I wince into his mouth. The faint warmth of freshly drawn blood tickles down to the curve of my bottom.

“I fear that if my love for you is nothing short of eternal—” Desperation cracks his voice. “—it will destroy me.”

The sound of it breaks something in me, snaps it in two, and it might be my heart.

My hiss turns into a whimper and, in a heartbeat, I’m grabbing out for him, snatching onto fistfuls of his sweater, as though if I can touch him, I can heal him.

And maybe myself.

His warning comes in a gravelled grunt, and he smacks my hands away from his sweater. In a swift blur of darkness, he’s torn off his sweater and thrown it aside.

In that same rushed moment, I’ve reached down for the waistbutton of his trousers and fumbled it undone.

Shadows peel away from his flesh like tattoos come to life—and small tendrils spear off for me.

Urgency steals him.

Mouth hot on mine, his hand is quick to fist around the base of his cock—and it pushes against my slick folds in a hurry.

I don’t have a moment to drape my legs over his hips, to position myself better on the edge of the table, to ready myself for the intrusion before it comes.

His hold on my thigh firms.

Then he brings me down on him.

My reaction is quick and cold, like frosted lighting striking through my body.

A hiss escapes me. My teeth bare on instinct, the fright jolting through my tensing muscles.

A snarl presses against my mouth.

Daxeel’s lips curl with the instinctual growl, his hand gripping tighter onto the meat of my thigh.

The heel of my foot digs into the edge of the table, and I push away from him, from the sudden filling sensation I wasn’t ready for.

But Daxeel doesn’t let me get away.

His arm loops around the small of my back, and he yanks me back down. He fucking impales me, again.

“Fuck you,” the words grunt out of me, restrained like the gasp I keep pinned to my chest. But the curse is barely off my tongue before a rope of shadows lifts from behind me—and coils, fast, around my mouth.

I blink.

Lashes flutter on the blur of cerulean eyes and honeyed skin and pink lips, the colours that warm my dreams and chill my nightmares, that consume me and empty me.

The shadow gags me.

And more come.

Shadows are licking at me all over.

The caresses are the faintest of tickles on my flesh. Hot and icy breaths along my arms, over the curve of my neck, up the inner touch of my thighs.

My toes curl against the sensation, the feel of a thousand mouths on my body at once, a harem of lovers all over me.

But it’s only him.

My one. My love, my monster.

His teeth bite down on my lips softly. Sharp points press into the meat of my lip, daring to draw blood, but don’t.

The pain comes from his sudden thrust.

I grunt against the impact.

His arm loops around the small of my back, and he holds me to him, firm, distant, like the pace of his harsh thrusts, but there’s nothing distant or firm in the way he watches me, like I am life, I am god, I am everything in between.

My spine curves; back arches against the slithers of the shadows. Tendrils of darkness, devouring me. And I bask in the adoration of it.

I feel the unravelling of a tendril along my collarbone.

Another flicks over the strap of my dress, then tugs it down .

Dazed, I frown on the curiosity, but it’s all I manage before the neckline of the dress falls down—and tingles jolt through me as the shadows caress my nipples.

A shudder runs through me.

Fluid strokes, he fucks into me, but he worships me with his shadows, he loves me with the hot press of his mouth on mine, the flutter of his lashes over enamoured eyes.

Every flick of the shadows between my legs sends shivers down to my toes. I point them against the cold air, as if I can regain some semblance of control over my body—but I can’t. It’s building, fast, too fast, and all I can manage is a drawn-out moan.

I push at him. Lame attempts to fight the crescendo in my body—but all that does is quicken the shadows all over me, tighten his hold around me, and he plunges deeper into me.

“Come for me, Nari… My vicious one…”

Murmurs, a hot, husky whisper, words almost unspoken, and they flood me with the rise of a violent wave.

“ Come .”

The command strikes through me.

My head throws back with a cry.

My throat closes around it, to silence it, and I hope—I fucking pray—no one hears the squeaks and whines of the cry I can’t quite batter into silence.

I ride out my climax on him.

Daxeel doesn’t stop, doesn’t pause.

He’s driving into me with a desperate urgency. But the grin of his mouth against my lips coils hatred in my gut. It’s a grin of victory.

His pace is quick, like he never fully draws out of me, like he can’t bring himself to leave the warmth of my body completely, and he’s just jutting into me now, his own pleasure catching in his chest with grunts and strangled groans.

He is my victim as much as I am his.

I remind him of that.

Lashes lower over my eyes, and I know I must look like I am in a fuck daze—and I am. I aim that look on him, deadly, and hiss, “Look how well you worship me.”

His eyes flash.

The bow of his lips twists, a snarl that crawls savage up his throat.

His arm tightens around my middle; he yanks me against him, hard.

I get no moment, no second, to pull back, to draw away from him, not before he’s taken me clean off the table.

In two rushed steps, I find the cold of the wall—

He slams me into it, hard.

The breath is knocked out of me.

My back arches from the cold bite of the stone wall. Chest presses into his. And my silent gasp for breath is crushed by the push of his mouth down on mine.

He swallows my pain.

Devours it.

And, holding me in place, he fucks me against the wall.

The stone presses against my back, each block crushing my bones. His chest is suffocating on mine, the shadows coiled around my ankles, my thighs, my wrists—and they all bind me, like rope.

My lips part around a strangled sound.

The cries of pleasure are clawing through me, violent.

I tighten my vocal cords around them, and they escape in scratchy whimpers, whines, grunts. Those grunts are deafened by his, the fierce savage growls that claw through him.

Crushing, his mouth presses down on mine. The kiss is staggered, uncertain, like he’s desperate to hold onto it, to hold onto the control he’s losing his grip on. And I know, in that, he fights off his climax, he fights off my victory in his body.

The back of my head screams from the pressure of the wall.

My lashes flutter shut. White spots dance and glitter in my sight, and whether they come from the pain or the climbing pleasure, I don’t know.

The chill of a shadow unravels over my cheek. The tip of the tendril falls over the corner of my parted lips, then dips into my mouth.

A shuddering breath runs through me.

The shadow lashes at my tongue, it curls and curves over it, explores my mouth—and that sends me flying over the edge.

I bite down, hard.

I bite down on the flesh of his lips, the shadow, the sensations battering me.

The inky taste of his blood spills onto my tongue. I hardly taste it over the rageful flavour of his savage snarl.

And he’s pumping into me, fast, frantic, his hands flexing on my waist, his legs struck with bone-deep trembles beneath our weight.

I tug my head back.

My mouth leaves his before I spit his own blood back onto him. Black dots spatter his face.

His eyes tense, shut on me as his body jerks, once, twice—

“Show me how you worship me,” I spit at him. “Show me how much you love me, Daxeel.”

A growl rips through him.

It vibrates against my chest, but the weakness doesn’t go unnoticed.

A cruel, victorious smile slides onto my face.

Because I heard the moan .

The faintest failing of his snarl.

I heard his weakness.

My walls flutter with my own climax and with the pulses that wrack his cock within me.

He shoves into me further, deeper, all the way until he can’t possibly fit anymore inside of me.

The warmth spills deep.

It spreads through me.

Warm puffs of breath tickle the bone under my eye. He slumps, harsh breaths scraping through him in rasps.

His mouth tightens, and he kisses me.

A whisper of a touch, but a kiss all the same.

I turn my cheek, lift my chin. I bring my mouth to his.

I part my lips, just as he does, and the taste of his tongue isn’t bitter, it isn’t fuelled by ink and shadows and hatred.

It’s sweet. It is honey.

There is love in this kiss, and only love.

My lashes flutter open.

I watch him, melted to him.

Any doubt I ever had about how deep his hurt runs, it’s shattered to pieces right in front of me as I watch the pain gloss over his eyes.

I lift my hands for his face. Fingertips press into the warmth of his cheek. I graze my touch up to his cheekbone, then down to his jawline.

I stroke him, caress him, I love him.

The tension in his chest deflates. He loosens a breath, a soft and curt sigh, then drops his forehead to mine.

The flutter of his lashes tickles my face.

This moment is soft in its silence. And yet it is so fucking loud in its meaning.

His surrender.