Chapter 39

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Malakai

I woke to the sound of a whip cracking in my ears.

Jolted upright to a sting shooting down my back.

My vision blurred, blood coated my skin, and my breathing was heavy?—

“Malakai.” Cool hands cupped my face. “Malakai, it’s okay.”

That voice sent a soothing wave through my body, tempering my racing heart. I blinked furiously and did my best to get my bearings, to count what was tangible in the room. No whips, no blood. There was a desk and a wardrobe and a fire in the hearth—that’s what I had heard cracking, not a whip.

My hands…they were on soft wool. Not a sticky marble surface, nor a chilled cavern. I rubbed the blanket between my fingers, the material grounding me.

And my back didn’t sting. No, it was sore, but surprisingly whole as I caught my shaking breath.

“You’re okay, Malakai,” that voice before me said again. The one that had come to mean comfort and warmth and support.

Mila . I met her eyes, so wide with concern. Or perhaps it was fear. Torment, maybe.

Mila. The inn. We were back in the inn. In Valyn.

Titus…he had me whipped. And Mila had to watch, but she…

“You’re okay?” I asked frantically. Gripping her wrists over her gold cuffs, I turned my head to kiss her palm.

She smiled slightly, brushing my hair back from my face with glassy eyes. “I am. And so are you.”

It was coming back in flashes. Getting here from the chancellor’s manor. After Vale had…Spirits. Vale had killed him. That was going to be an issue.

The ride back had been one of the most disorienting experiences of my life. Ombratta was gentle as she carried us—me leaning heavily on Mila to compensate for my back—but every step had sent a bolt of pain through my open flesh. Every breeze had stung like my skin was lit on fire.

“How long have I been out?” I asked. A storm raged outside the windows, so I couldn’t tell what time it was.

“About a day and a half,” Mila said, and my heart sank at those words. She spoke so clinically, as if she were a healer reporting casualties to their superior. “Your wounds are fully healed, though I’d be careful for another day so you don’t reopen them.”

She’d bandaged my back and wrapped a dressing around my torso. That tender care made my chest feel crowded. Now that I noticed it, the white linen was tight with every breath, but that firm brace against my ribs was another comfort. Another reminder that someone had been there to heal me this time. That I’d taken a punishment, but things were different.

My voice was thick as I asked, “And is everyone else okay?”

Before she answered, the door slammed open, and Cypherion filled the frame. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I heard your voice. Figured you were awake.”

Cyph approached the bed, looking over my bandages. Emotion burned beneath his stare, piercing down to my fresh wounds.

“I heard what happened. Saw—” He swallowed, choking up. “Thank you.”

It was only a few words, but it said enough. Thank you for taking that punishment. For withstanding it. For getting Vale out.

“I promised I would get her back,” I said.

Cyph looked between me and Mila, his cheeks slightly pink. “I’ll leave you to it.”

The exchange was over so quickly, his words brief, yet his gratitude was thick in the air. He left, and that feeling of accomplishment lifted my bones and spirit.

“Everyone made it back,” Mila answered my previous question, still in her orderly tone. “There were some injuries, but they’re all here.”

They were all alive. Mila and I were alive. I dragged my hand up her arm, solidifying her presence. No cells or chains or bars were keeping us apart.

We survived .

I repeated that to myself as my fingers danced along her leathers, from shoulder to wrist, counting our breaths. Her skin was likely so warm beneath the material, so soft and scarred. Fucking beautiful and real. I wanted to cement the feel of her in my mind.

“Did they get the emblem?” I asked, voice hoarse. My forehead fell against hers.

Mila swallowed, the air heavy as she breathed, “We can talk about all of that later. You should rest now.”

My eyes flashed to the door Cypherion had left through, his gratitude ringing in my ears still. Gratitude because he loved Vale and wouldn’t waste another day pretending otherwise.

I looked to Mila. Took in those bright blue eyes and full lips.

“I don’t want to rest,” I told her. “I could have died a few nights ago. Everything could have been taken, and all I can think is life is too damn short to not live it.” I may have had new scars slicing across my old ones now, but we’d damn well made it out of the manor. “So, I don’t want to rest, Mila.” I sighed, locking my eyes with those crystal blue ones. “I just want you.”

She inhaled. “What?”

Leaning forward, I caught her lips in a gentle kiss, one that was almost a caress. But even that taste drove me wild. I cupped the back of her neck, tugging gently to angle her head so I could kiss her deeper.

“ Please ,” I said against her lips.

“Your back…you need…”

“I’ll be fine, Mila. I swear.” Angels be damned if I let these stupid wounds stand in the way of being with her. “You…you are what I need.”

And at the raw desperation in my voice, her eyes flared. Like that was exactly what she needed, too, but she hadn’t wanted to say it.

“I thought—” She whimpered, and the walls of her fortress came crashing down. “I thought you were going to die. When they kept—and there was so much blood—it wasn’t stopping.” She shook her head, tears slipping between her lashes.

The sight of them took me right back to the chamber, when she’d been assuring me I was going to be okay, and the words she’d claimed.

“In the manor,” I began, “you said I saved you. Did you mean in the Labyrinth?”

“No.” Mila took a deep breath. It rattled through my own chest, made me feel on the verge of a free fall I didn’t understand. Then, she added, “The reason I was freed during the war was because the war ended .”

Only our heavy breathing filled the air as I waited for her to continue. Did she mean…

“When you signed the treaty, Malakai, I was freed from my imprisonment. You saved me.”

I saved her. She’d never told me how her imprisonment ended, and I hadn’t pushed for details. She’d said she was released. But I had saved her.

Through a treaty I’d come to think meant nothing more than deceit.

But it had meant something to Mila. To others out there, I was sure, but to this woman before me who I fell for more and more every day.

I’d saved Mila when I signed that agreement, entered myself into torture…but she’d walked free. Somehow, knowing that cleared every sordid feeling I’d associated with that decision. Made every scar worth it because they kept more from her skin.

“I saved you.”

“You saved me,” she repeated, blinking away tears. When she looked at me again, an inferno burned behind her irises. “I think we’ve always been connected because of that. A part of me was always meant for you. And I’m tired of waiting for the future with you, too.”

Mila kissed me desperately, and I swept an arm around her waist to turn us, her back falling to the sheets. Ducking my head, I dragged my tongue along her bottom lip, nipping until she opened for me.

“Why didn’t you mention that before?” I asked against her mouth.

Her hands dug into my hair, pulling me closer as if she’d never let me go again. “I didn’t want you to think that’s why I’m here. As some twisted debt.”

“Even if it was,” I said, kissing along her jaw, “I’m not dumb enough to let you go because of it.”

Tiny tremors wracked her body. I grabbed one of her hands, locking our fingers, and her palm shook against mine.

“Relax, Mila,” I whispered with a kiss to her cheek, then one to her wrist. “I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere.”

“I know,” she breathed. And slowly her hands stopped shaking. “I know.”

Then, she leaned up to catch my lips, pulling me back down to her. We both grew more frantic, my cock aching. Her legs were braced on either side of my hips, and when I rocked against her, the most satisfying moan vibrated up her throat.

“Fuck, Mila,” I breathed, ripping my mouth from hers to explore her neck. I pressed her hand into the pillows beside her head and rolled my hips against her center once more, getting rewarded with another one of those needy moans. “If you already sound like that now, you’re going to ruin me when I’m inside you.”

Her laugh turned into a breathy gasp when I bit down on the skin of her neck, sucking gently. Even through her leathers, her heat taunted me. So much, I could barely feel the pain in my back.

“What are you waiting for?” she asked, and it was the only permission I needed.

Pulling her to her feet, I first unhooked the empty weapons belt slung across her hips. Carefully, I set it aside. Then, I moved to the many clasps adorning her leathers, stripping them off her in slow layers. I kissed across her chest as more skin was exposed, down her stomach and hips and thighs, not pausing where she wanted me, but keeping my eyes on hers the entire time.

The air in the room sizzled with each inch I lowered, and this waiting game almost felt symbolic, torturously so. Like all these weeks we’d been hiking the path of recovery together had finally led us to the summit.

And dammit if the view wasn’t spectacular as she stood before me in nothing but white lace undergarments and those gold cuffs.

I pressed a kiss to her hip, the bottom of her ribs, between her breasts, until I stood and skimmed my hand up her side. “You’re perfect,” I whispered, brushing my thumb across her peaked nipple, and I nearly groaned when she inhaled, arching into me.

I stepped closer, keeping that hand toying with her breast and cupping her cheek with the other, and kissed her with a searing intensity that said, we survived . The sound of the fire crackling through the room filled the space between our rushing breaths and her soft moans.

She writhed against me, and I was ready to sink into her, but there was one more thing we needed to discuss.

Pulling back, I lifted Mila’s hand and looked at her wrist. I wouldn’t push this. Not if she wasn’t ready. A nervous waver flickered across her face.

“You can keep them on. It doesn’t change anything,” I promised. “But when you’re ready, I want all of you.”

She swallowed, her pulse racing. “I know you’ve seen the scars, but I’ve never taken them off while sleeping with anyone.”

“You don’t have to.” I kissed her and muttered against her lips, “One day, if you want, you can.”

Something in my words settled over her, and Mila studied the intricately carved ivy design. The gold shimmered in the firelight, such beautiful pieces to mark an ugly span of history.

Then, she looked squarely at me, cheeks flushed. “I’m ready.”

And somehow, those two words were more significant than any secret between us—than anything else we might do.

The heaviness of it settled on my chest. The audible click of Mila unlatching those cuffs and setting them delicately on the shelf beside the bed—her turning to me with her past on display—was a different level of vulnerability.

The scars along my back—both fresh and older—tingled as if in understanding.

As she stepped back to me, close enough that her lace-clad breasts brushed against my chest, she placed one hand on my shoulder. She looked right at the scars that would forever mar her skin and studied where they met mine.

After a moment she lifted her eyes to mine and said, “Thank you.”

My brows rose. “For what?”

“For making me feel safe.” My heart nearly cracked at the sincerity weighing those words. Like she’d needed that comfort but hadn’t realized it.

And a part of me thought I’d needed to be able to give that to someone again.

Gently, I brought her wrist to my lips and kissed her scars, holding her eyes as I did. Noting how her breath hitched.

“You’re so fucking strong, Mila.” I walked her back toward the bed, guiding her to the pillows, and her eyes sparkled. “So fucking strong for all you’ve survived.” I settled between her hips again, rocking against her core. Through the thin layers of her undergarments and my shorts, I could already feel how drenched she was, and fuck did I want her. But she deserved to be worshiped first. “Now—tonight—I want you to remember that.” I crawled back down her body. “And I want you to let go .”

I started with the scars on her legs and worked up. The large one around the back of her ankle, the ones peppering her calves and thighs, and a jagged one slicing down from her hip. I pressed kisses into them to remind her she was a damn survivor.

“Every one of these scars is a sign of what you endured,” I said. “I love them.”

As I finally settled between her legs, I pressed a languid kiss over the silk covering her center. Dragged the sensitive bud between my teeth and her back arched off the bed.

“Please, Malakai,” she said as I repeated that.

“What?” I asked, holding her hips still. “Eyes on me when you ask.”

She lifted her head, looking me directly in the eye, but she didn’t ask. “Touch me.”

I nearly exploded. Hooking my fingers into her waistband, I dragged the silk down her toned legs. I took in every inch of her, stroking myself through my shorts to alleviate the ache.

“Fucking Spirits,” I breathed.

I ducked my head, tongue exploring exactly where I’d dug my teeth in. I stroked up her center, learning what patterns made her squirm the most. What had her back arching and hands kneading her breasts—a damn beautiful sight. Pushing two fingers into her, I pumped in and out.

“So good, Mila,” I hummed against her. “Exactly as I knew you’d be.” She was every good and sinful thing I’d envisioned. Every damn dream I thought I’d never want or deserve again, and somehow more. “Better than anything I could have imagined.”

I crooked my fingers inside of her, and she cried out. But then she tangled a hand in my hair and tugged. When I looked up, she said, “I want to come with you,” and I almost lost it again.

Mila pushed onto her elbows, catching her breath as I discarded my shorts. The way she flushed as my cock bobbed free, taking in my length with an impressed look, was nothing short of satisfying. A sight I’d be committing to memory.

I stroked myself as I settled between her hips. “One day, I’m going to watch you ride me,” I said as I dragged the head of my cock up her center and she stifled a moan. “I’ve been imagining it for a while now.”

I pushed into her slowly, barely an inch. She was hot and tight, and I wanted nothing more than to see her unleashed like that, but even I wasn’t masochistic enough to try that with the fresh scars on my back, though I barely felt them as she consumed me.

“For now,” I panted, “I want to watch you unravel.”

To memorize every expression on her face as those walls came tumbling down.

“One day,” Mila answered on a gasp as I pushed in further, clutching my arm, “I want you to take me every way you can imagine.”

“Is that an order from my general?” Another slow inch. So slow, I wasn’t sure how I’d make it, but I wanted every second of pleasure to last for her. Wanted to erase every ghost haunting her.

Mila smirked, panting, “Spirits, yes, it is.”

And I slammed forward, making her cry out.

I kissed her as I pulled my hips back and sank forward again. “Relax,” I muttered against her lips, sweat already beading on our skin. “I’ve got you.”

Like my words unlocked something within her, she eased around me, and I sank to the hilt again. Mila gasped, but I swallowed the sound, moving slowly. Pulling back and plunging forward again to hit that spot deep within her that was making her moan.

“Just like that,” she said, knowing exactly what she wanted, and dammit if that wasn’t one of the most attractive things I’d ever heard. Her telling me she knew what she liked, she knew what she wanted me to do to her. It had me thrusting into her quicker, meeting every request she had, every angle she moved her hips to.

Her hands dragged so gently over my back, like she wanted to feel my scars but didn’t want to hurt me.

“Your scars are beautiful, too.” She exhaled as I brought one of her knees to her chest and sank into her.

Breathing heavily, I told her, “We wouldn’t be here together without them.”

Maybe it was true, maybe it wasn’t, but as I watched Mila’s eyes cloud with a dazed lust and felt the beginnings of her orgasm fluttering around my cock, it felt like the most promised thing in any realm. This. Us. Like we were those constellations she loved and had always been connected, even if the map of our scars traced them.

“Promise me,” I grunted as I picked up into a punishing pace. As I knew I was hitting that edge and felt her careening toward it, too.

“Anything,” she gasped.

“You always said tomorrow.” I captured her lips, a kiss too sloppy and desperate and needy. “Promise me all your tomorrows, Mila. Because you have every one of mine.”

“I promise,” she said. “Every tomorrow is yours.”

And then she clenched tighter around my cock, and with only a few more strokes we came together.

And those constellations I thought had written us? I was damn wrong.

We wrote them .

Forged them out of the fires we’d walked through, remapped their paths through the scars etched into our flesh as our own courses had changed.

We weren’t just two warriors who’d stumbled upon this earth. In this moment, with every damn tomorrow sworn between us, we were as fated as the stars.

“Vale had this?” I repeated, holding Valyrie’s heart before the flickering flames and watching how the light shone through the shades of blue.

Ophelia and Tolek sat in chairs beside the fire in my room in the inn. Mila was at the foot of my bed beside me. We’d barely left the room since I woke up yesterday.

“She did,” Ophelia confirmed.

That’s what she’d been clinging to in the seeing chamber.

“Do you feel anything from it?” Tolek asked.

“Yeah.” I nodded. “Yeah, it feels like all the others. Warm and…a bit alive.”

Unhooking her necklace, Ophelia strode across the room and held it out to me. “This, too?”

I grabbed Damien’s emblem, and that familiar, faint beat pulsed through it. “Yes, but I never felt it in the spear before. When it was mine.”

“How is that possible?” Mila asked me, then turned to Tolek. “You don’t feel anything?”

“Nothing.”

“Interesting,” Mila mused.

“Very interesting.” Ophelia reclasped her necklace. “You said they feel alive?” I nodded. “I have a theory.”

Tolek’s eyes were trained on her as she strode toward the fire. “Enlighten us, Alabath.”

Ophelia watched the flames flicker. “What if the Angels’ spirits are in the emblems, and that’s what we feel pulsing in there?”

“Bant’s was in the queen, though?” Mila asked.

“We know he shed it. Perhaps he somehow found a way to get it from the ring—which was already in her possession—into her body.” Ophelia rubbed at the dark webbing on her wrist, her original Curse mark.

I shifted on the bed, the wrap around my wounds itching. “You think this whole thing—the hunt for the emblems—could be to set their spirits free?”

“It’s not a bad theory,” Tolek said, crossing an ankle over his knee. “But it still doesn’t answer how or why.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Ophelia answered, shoulders slumping, and Tolek rose to mutter something to her.

“You really feel something in there?” Mila whispered to me.

I nodded, evaluating Valyrie’s heart in my palm. A stone carved to vaguely resemble two entwined figures. “Not sure why.”

When Mila said nothing, I lifted my gaze to find her eyes narrowed. “What’s wrong?” I asked.

She shook her head. “It makes me uneasy. All of this.”

“Me, too,” I admitted on a groan. “A part of me wishes we could forget it. That I didn’t drag you into this.”

“If you’re part of it, I want to be, too, Warrior Prince.”

At the name, I kissed her wrist then turned back to Ophelia and Tolek. “When are we getting the final emblem?”

Tolek laughed as I tossed the heart back. “Someone’s eager.”

The words he wasn’t saying were abundantly clear: He’d missed this ambitious side of me. I did, too. And a big reason it returned was the woman sitting beside me.

At the thought, I wrapped an arm around Mila’s waist.

Ophelia rolled her eyes at Tolek’s comment. “The storm looks like it’s clearing. We’ll leave tomorrow, Angels willing. Cyren went to Titus’s manor and is going to work with Harlen to cover for everything that happened here.”

For explaining the dead chancellor and the instatement of a new one.

“All right,” I said, tightening my arm around Mila. She squirmed. “Is there anything you two need from us before we go?”

Tolek fought a smile at my question and ushered Ophelia toward the door. “Not a thing. We’re taking care of all the plans and correspondence.”

“Terrific,” I said.

And as the door clicked shut behind them, I flipped Mila onto her back and spent the rest of our time in Valyn in that room.