Chapter 115

"Mark me as yours…"

Tears pricked my eyes as I considered just that, Silas' beautiful body rocking into mine. He was already splitting me in two, breaking me open, so why not return the favour? Because this was what I wanted. If I'd asked him to, he'd have kissed every inch of me, force me to sigh until I was dripping for him, but I was afraid to allow him that liberty. It would only prolong something that I knew.

I couldn't believe I was facing the potential of loss again.

My face ached, particularly my nose. My breath came in this horrible little whistle due to the swelling, but none of that hurt as much as this. The thrust of his cock into a channel unprepared, the drag of it setting my teeth on edge, even as I pulled him deeper. I needed it to hurt a little, because then when he pulled away from me, when he went to face the Raven of Khean, I'd feel the burn he'd left behind.

And he needed it to hurt too.

I think I understood him more then, the flick of Roan's fingers turning Silas' thrusts into a mixture of pleasure and pain that seemed to multiply by the second. I gripped the fingers of my free onto his hip, and when my nails dug into his flesh, he let out a shaky little hiss. For just a moment, I thought I'd done something wrong, but his expression, the way his eyes bored into mine corrected that assumption. Sex hurt, connecting with someone hurt, love… love hurt so much more it took my breath away and that was why I raised the knife.

"Some say…" My gasp ruined my speech, my hips bucking up now to meet his. "That some of the… oh!" Roan's fingers moved faster, creating delicious waves of pleasure. "Tribes in the north…" I flipped the knife around, making sure it was the hilt that pressed against Silas' hip, not the blade. I was getting far too caught up in what we were doing to risk the edge against his skin. "They mark themselves… Gods, yes, just like that."

Silas' strokes shortened, and he rubbed so very distractingly over a spot inside me that was driving me mad. My thoughts fractured as I was forced to just feel, but then he changed his angle, driving my eyes open. Harder, more insistent, it was like something bloomed inside me, growing and growing. Not just pleasure, not just sensation. I gazed into his eyes and felt our connection snap tight.

"They do it as a kind of magic." My back arched, the change in angle allowing him to thrust deeper. He let out a little moan, as if he couldn't help but sink right in. "For strength, for protection."

I reversed the knife and held it up. Silas eyed it, then me. A little nod as his whole body shuddered was the sign I needed.

"I don't know the spells they cast…" The clock was ticking, that I knew. All of this delicious pleasure couldn't last. His strokes were growing faster, dragging me along with him as we went stampeding towards something we both needed. "But perhaps intent is all that matters."

This was madness, but so was everything that had happened to me since I left my father's house and this time it wasn't the burn of roseblood that drove us here. I realised then why Magnus was so addicted to the stuff. It was the closest he'd ever get to this. Feeling perfectly, completely in sync with someone, his hips and mine crashing together over and over.

My hand wasn't still, my grip shaky, and later I knew it was only the blunt blade of the knife that stopped me from seriously hurting Silas, but I let the tip scratch across his skin. J was the first initial, a spasm of pleasure forcing the end of the letter to whip off in a strange flourish. The P came next. I winced at the way the skin broke this time, blood beading around the letter but his deep groan made it clear he was not so concerned. Rather, he pounded into me harder, faster, as if obliterating every barrier between us, though there was none left, none but this. A long, distorted looking Y was formed from two shaky slashes and then there was the last of my initials.

"Silas…"

"Gods, lass, if my father bests me, if my death is the price I have to pay for this moment, it will be worth it. Mark me, Jess. Let me walk into the Guild headquarters with all of your initials on me. Each one of us has a duel to fight to win you and this is mine." He paused then, thrust as deep as he could go, and I felt myself ripple around him, warning me of the pleasure that was to come. "Finish your spell of protection, Jessalyn, because I have been enchanted since the moment we met."

Could I score his flesh with a T? Tennesley was my father's name, not mine, so instead he stared down at me as I carved a C beside the last initial. C for Corvus, his last name. I winced as the blood began to drip, feeling somehow it was a sign, but he grabbed the knife from my grip and tossed it aside. My fingers were pressed into the blood dripping there, the slickness, the colour making my eyes widen because it couldn't help but feel like a harbinger of what was to come.

Our eyes locked and an aeon seemed to pass as we mutely communicated what we couldn't say. That he had to return to me. That there would be no more pain. That I would never fear that a monster lurked under my bed or in my closet. That none would sit on the Emerald Throne either.

Or at the head of The Guild.

My hand rose shakily, the blood drying on my fingertips, but not before I smeared it across his forehead and down his cheeks, creating markings from the ceremony of this that I hoped would keep him safe. He grabbed my hand, kissing the back of it and then let go.

Wild, hard, pounding thrusts, my body had opened up enough to welcome every one. The others couldn't help but wake up as a result, turning bleary eyed to watch something they would never be able to understand. Creed growled at the blood, belatedly realising it was Silas' not mine, but he wasn't my focus. Silas was. I felt that as I wrapped my arms around his ribs and clung with all of my might.

The first spark of his pleasure caused my own to catch alight, tearing through me, forcing a scream from my chest. Pain and pleasure, that was what I shouted out. Physically all I could feel was bliss, the aches in my face and wrists unable to exist in the same space of it, except in my heart.

"Come back to me," I begged, I pleaded, between frantic kisses. I nipped at his lips, needing more blood to consecrate this. "Come back to me in one piece, Silas. Silas?"

"As you wish, my queen."

He pressed a kiss to my forehead, then another, pulling back as the first tears fell. Somehow I'd gone from someone who blinked away every tear to some weepy girl who sobbed at the first sign of danger. I hated the way it wracked my body, emotions I was keeping stuffed right down clawed their way out of me, but also I loved it. The way he held me close, murmuring a stream of sweet words until finally I went still.

"But now I must go."

It always hurt a little when they pulled free of me. It was as if my body was rejecting that separation. My nails left welts behind as I tried to hold him tight, even as my heart knew I had to let him go. The others all clustered in closer as Silas got off the bed, casting his eyes around dully before finding clean clothes and more weapons in the cupboard set up in the corner of the room.

"No one can bring Silas down," Creed assured me. "The Raven has to have known this moment was coming."

"You'll have him back within the hour, panting every time you pick up a knife to cut your meat." Roan smiled down at me, but my lips wouldn't move to do the same. Perhaps because Arik crawled off the bed and went to stand before Silas.

"I want to say I know what you're going through, but I've never felt a thing other than hate for my brother," Arik said, offering Silas his hand. "But go knowing we are with you in heart if not in reality."

"This is the moment where I share some sort of feeling," Silas said. "Talk of my father fondly, all while acknowledging what an old bastard he is." He shook his head slowly. "Instead, only the latter part of that is true. We should've done this years ago, you know that, right?"

"What matters is what we do now."

He reached for Silas' hand, but the other man tugged the prince into a rough hug. They thumped each other's back and then pulled free.

"To the eradication of monsters," Silas said, his smile so brilliant my heart felt lightened, even as my eyes ached. "To the beginning of a new era."

So why did it feel like just the end of something as he closed the door behind him?

I jerked upright, wrapping my arms around my knees, needing to cling to something, but they would not allow that. Arik sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled me into his arms.

"I trust Silas with my life," he assured me, holding me cradled against his chest. "I trust him to end the Raven's."

"Promise?"

I was being a child, I knew that. It was as if everything that had happened had forced me to regress some years, but as I stared into his eyes and watched him nod slowly, I took comfort from it, just like a child would. Anything other than taking things on face value was just too hard right now. I buried my face into his chest and just breathed him in. In and out, in and out, the spicy male scent of him soothed me somewhat, but true peace would only come when that door opened and Silas returned.