Chapter 22

CHAPTER 22

The following hours of the day were spent with councilors and foremen in private rooms and negotiations—which meant every councilor from every territory somehow ended up between those four cream-colored walls. Everyone except the party from Hazut. Not only would Hazut lose this election, but they would also be steps behind in economic negotiations at the end of this week. This strange alliance with Ton had assured that.

With a small chuckle, Vaasa thought that Reid had never needed her at all.

Isabel bought herself and Vaasa a way out in the early afternoon, about an hour before Vaasa was meant to report to the Library of Una, so she’d be able to change and enjoy a few quiet moments to herself. She didn’t know how to thank Isabel for not following Vaasa to her quarters or wanting to debrief the conversations they’d just been a part of and overheard, but she thought a smile and squeeze of the woman’s forearm said plenty.

Vaasa spent the evening at the Sodality of Una practicing for the coven’s display of magic at the final event tomorrow evening. Heart thudding against her chest, she anticipated what she would say and do when she finally saw Amalie again.

But Amalie didn’t show.

Melisina pursed her lips. “Give her another day or so. I think being here, having to face Ton and all those people from Wrultho is harder on her than she thought. She wasn’t going to come.”

Vaasa’s heart sank. “Then why did she?”

Melisina shrugged her left shoulder. “For you, Vaasa. She thought if you were brave enough to be here, she should be, too.”

Immediately, Vaasa hung her head. Brave was not the word she would use to describe herself.

Melisina didn’t mention it again.

There wasn’t a moment Vaasa didn’t think about it, though. Not even as Esoti escorted her back to the High Temple. She told her that Amalie was in her rooms and reiterated the same thing Melisina had said: time.

If Amalie wanted to talk, she would come.

So Vaasa left her alone.

At almost the stroke of midnight, Vaasa waited alone curled up on the plush red couch on the patio of their private quarters.

The extension off their first-floor room jutted out into the High Temple’s gardens, surrounded by flowering bushes that climbed glass walls, shielding the patio entirely from view. At the top, the glass ceiling kept the cold air in while giving her a clear view of the turquoise night sky. Moonlight bathed the marble floor and played upon the small glimmers of crimson threaded throughout it.

Notebook clenched in her hand, she reviewed the notes she’d copied the night prior—the ones detailing Zetyr lore that the coven had spent all day reading and learning about. Melisina had even tried to capitalize off Reid’s tenuous allyship with Ton, but to no avail. When her eyes glazed over, Vaasa switched focus and scanned the route she and Mathjin had discussed, considered which direction Dominik would travel. Without the ability to navigate the menagerie of rivers, Asterya was outplayed each and every time. It was the reason why Icruria had been impregnable for so many years.

The door opened, and upon seeing Reid amble through, thoughts of war and rivers and blood quieted in her mind.

Reid walked immediately to her, focused eyes on fire and inspecting her thoroughly. He caught the length of her legs across the settee, and the corners of his mouth lifted in a sultry expression. “You won us a nation, Wild One.”

Closing the notebook, she gazed at him. At the stunning purple jacket that sometimes strained with his movements. By now, his hair had almost completely rebelled against the leather band, so most of it fell to his shoulders and framed his face. More than a warrior , she thought. He looked like a headman of Icruria. It was impossible not to catch his pride and make it her own, or to ignore the thrum of happiness that blossomed when he looked at her like that. When she got to look at him like this. “You would have won regardless. You do know that, right?”

“Perhaps.”

She shook her head. Now he chose to be modest?

A little quietly, Reid asked, “What’s going on between you and Amalie?”

Vaasa gritted her teeth. Her hands tightened around the notebook in her lap. “Did she say something?”

He shook his head. “Mathjin mentioned that Amalie hadn’t come to dinner or to the sodality tonight.”

“It’s my fault,” she whispered. How could Vaasa have been so selfish? “I… I’ll fix it. I promise.”

Sauntering to the seat next to her, Reid leaned back against the velvet arm with more casual ease than anyone should ever be able to maintain. Her hands tightened on the book in her lap as she made room for him. Reid studied the movement, brow furrowing. He blinked as if surprised. “Where did you get that?”

“This?” She looked down at the simple black leather thing and tried to think past the stirring of sadness she wondered if she could ever control. “I chose it a while ago. I’ve had it for months.”

A small, disbelieving sigh pushed out of him. “You chose it?”

She nodded. “It was one of Melisina’s tricks. I picked it out of hundreds. I think it was the first time in years I trusted my instinct.”

His demeanor changed as he paused, like he was considering. Tentatively, he ran a hand over his jaw and then dropped it to his lap. “I want you to stay past three years.”

Vaasa froze.

Dangerous happiness burst forth, replaced swiftly by roaring anger.

Anger, which of course was only a disguise for fear. She recognized that now. So she gritted her teeth and reined it in, reminding herself that she didn’t want to make the same mistake that she’d made with Amalie.

“I’m not going back on our deal,” Reid clarified, probably reading the look on her face. “I’m proposing a new one and hoping you’ll consider what I have to say.”

She held her composure as well as she could. “I’m listening.”

His throat bobbed but he relaxed his shoulders. Reaching for her legs and plopping them into his lap, he started that incessant movement of his finger on her leg. She let him, but only because she needed to pretend, too.

“I don’t know how long it’s going to take to maneuver your brother and remove him from the equation, but I suspect even if we managed to do that shortly after the election, the stabilizing of Asterya will take longer than three years. Even longer, to have enough influence that I could maintain claim to the throne if you and I were no longer married. So while I do believe myself capable of many things, I’m not stupid enough to think I could manage that situation better than you could.”

It didn’t matter what his reasons were. She’d gone into this knowing with certainty she never wanted to rule a nation. Never wanted to become what her father had been, what her mother had morphed into, what drove her brother to the point of murder.

So it made no sense, then, that when he asked, each piece of her soul reached for him.

“You want me to stay for political reasons?” she asked.

“Do you suspect it’s because of something else?”

“Is it because of something else?”

He shrugged with his usual nonchalance. “This has nothing to do with how much I’d like to have you in my bed, though I do hope you’ll find interest in that, too, Wild One.”

Her stomach curled in on itself, those words summoning the knots he so easily created. “And you think that’s a good idea?”

“I think it’s one of our best ideas, actually, which is saying something considering how fucking brilliant I find you.”

Vaasa’s lips curled up in defiance of everything else she felt. She knew her heart’s traitorous wants—that if it could be her choice, that if they could live more regular lives, it would be him. It would be this. So she couldn’t help herself from asking, “What is this deal you’re proposing?”

Reid adjusted his weight and sank further into the couch, hands still solidly upon her legs. “Stay until you feel Asterya is settled, however long that takes.”

“You’re removing the time frame?”

“Three years isn’t enough.”

“What is enough?”

Pausing, his lips pursed. But he never dropped his gaze. “I don’t know.”

It sounded as if those words held some profound meaning that could not be measured in breath.

“I don’t know what else to offer you,” he rambled on. “But as it stands, I would be amenable to just about anything you ask for. Give me your list of demands—your wildest dreams.”

What did she want, more than what he’d already given her? If she considered the extent of her most unutterable desire, it was exactly what he offered. But she knew him better than she knew herself, and he was lying. “You only do that with your hands when you’re trying to decide what to say.”

Reid paused the movement on her skin.

“And people who have to decide what to say are hardly ever telling the truth.”

Looking down at his hands, he seemed to consciously choose not to move them. Not to break their contact. “Tell me that isn’t the truth. Tell me you haven’t already discovered there is nothing I won’t do or give for you.”

All this dripping nonchalance and relaxed demeanor was exactly how he covered himself. It was the wall he put up, similar to her anger and poison.

He knew exactly how much time would be enough, because the answer was simple.

No amount of time would be enough.

She whispered, “And if the truth doesn’t matter?”

He looked at her like it was all an excuse. “What is it?” he asked, finally giving up the ruse. “You want to be missed more than you want to be loved?”

Those words tugged at her chest. She had shared more with him than she had with any other person, had given him far more than she had dared to give anyone else. “You know what you are to me.”

He shook his head. “I told you once that I don’t make assumptions when it comes to you.”

Her heart burned with bright fury at his audacity to approach the thing she thought they’d agreed not to approach. But they hadn’t agreed, not really. She’d just decided for them both. She knew from the moment she crawled into his bed that there would be a conversation such as this one eventually. And it didn’t seem justified to hold it against him for wanting.

Not when he wasn’t the only one.

“Dominik is—”

“If he is the only thing standing between you and me, I will go now. Give me the word and he will cease to pull breath.”

“It isn’t that easy.”

“It is.” He pointed to the notebook. “It was mine. I bought it a few years ago from one of the artisans in the Lower Garden.”

She sat a bit more upright. “It was yours?”

Reid nodded and looked out at the large gardenia bushes that covered their patio, clearly absorbed in whatever thoughts he dragged himself through over and over. “I am driving myself insane with wondering. With guessing. With hoping.”

You have grown my capacity for hope.

Had he meant more with those words than she’d let herself believe? Had it been her he hoped for, not just a nation or a title?

She knew him well enough now that the answer was obvious. He had hoped for her, and somewhere along the way she had let herself hope for him, too.

Lying felt like a death sentence. To allow him to go on thinking he would not be her greatest forfeiture was unconscionable. Her voice dropped to a secret’s tone. “I have collected a thousand words, and yet I cannot find a single one to tell you what comes alive inside of me when you are near.”

“Do you not know the words, or are you just afraid to say them?”

Tears welled in her eyes, and she squeezed them shut. Why was this so hard? She’d thought herself incapable. Thought herself broken. He saw her answer for what it was—a copout. Just another way to hide. “I don’t know how to give you what you’re asking for.”

A tear escaped from the side of her eyes, and even though she didn’t see him come closer, she felt him. Felt the soft tip of his thumb as he wiped the tear from her cheek and slid his hand into her hair. “Do you love me the way I love you?” he asked.

Her breath caught. Once again, his transparency pulled the world from beneath her feet. It wasn’t lost on her, what he’d just said.

That he loved her.

But they gave affection in two different ways—him with words, her with…

With what?

She didn’t think she had ever had the courage to look someone in the eye and show them how she felt. Suddenly, it was all the more obvious the mistake she had made with Amalie. The mistake she had been making for months now.

Even though she didn’t think for a moment she deserved such a thing as love, she couldn’t help herself from hoping .

His fingers in her hair tightened like desperation. “Say it for me, Wild One.”

Her eyes opened, and she became enraptured by the specks of orange and black in his. Fear lanced through her, the sort of disorienting terror that grabbed courage and snuffed it out. He must have seen her shudder, because he pressed his forehead to hers. “Say it for me and that will be enough.”

To say it was to feel it. To say it was to make it real. But she wondered then if silence was real, too. If something could be just as alive in the dark.

Instead of the angry, poisonous serpent she’d known it to be in moments when she was afraid, her magic shifted into that thing it had become recently: white eyes shining in smoky black. It rose in her, fueled her, pushed her forward. To not want him was a futile endeavor. To not need him was a ship that had already set sail.

“Of course I love you,” she whispered.

His hand trembled ever so lightly, and he let out a strong breath. “Then it’s enough.”

He looked at her now in a way no one else had ever looked at her, like all of her sharp edges just softened and glowed. Like to be loved by her was truly enough. And maybe she was destined to lose everything she’d ever loved, maybe it would shatter her into a thousand small pieces, but that single look felt worth breaking for.

So she whispered, “Remind me who I am. Where I am. Because I think you are the only one who really knows.”

Reid’s lips parted, then he lifted from where he sat to come closer. Assurance coated his stern eyes as he placed one knee on the couch, sinking his weight into the red velvet, looming above her. Gaze darting between her eyes and her lips, he might as well have consumed her. He lowered his mouth to her cheek. His words came soft. “You are here, with me.”

Her chest rose at the statement, especially as he sank further into the couch, hand snaking behind her back to lift her and adjust. He settled himself between her legs and lay her back into the cushions.

Their bodies sank together, and the fractured pieces inside of her pulled. In that moment, it was enough to simply love and be loved. “And as for who you are…” He ran his lips along the curve of her jaw. The glass above let in just enough light for her to watch the way he moved his fingers over her throat and tilted her face back, his own mouth lingering just above hers.

“You are my wife, and everything begins and ends with that.”

Vaasa’s heart lurched, and Reid took that very moment to close any remaining space between them, his mouth taking hers. Months of wanting spilled into that kiss and she let it, honesty on her tongue as she swept into his mouth and tasted what those words felt like. He groaned. Tasted her back. They knew each other and the way their mouths moved, and yet it still felt new. Different. Like if she looked through his eyes she would see herself as something discoverable.

It was terrifying, and it drove her forward.

She tugged at the hem of his shirt, and he let her pull it off him, dropping it off the edge of the couch. His bare skin beneath her hands sent desire coursing down her hips. Her lips moved to his jaw. His neck. She remembered what she’d thought the first time they’d ever been close, that she wanted the rough grit of his beard against her skin. Now she passed her lips over it and sighed, her arms tugging him closer.

Reid untucked her white blouse from her olive breeches and pulled it up and over her head, letting it fall next to his own shirt on the floor. Hands lifting to the smooth silk that covered her breasts, he started to descend, his mouth leaving shivers in his wake. This was different from how he touched her before—less hurried and raw, more devastating. He looked up through his lashes and watched her while he pushed the strap off her shoulder, lowering the silk to expose her to the cool air. This time his eyes dropped, and he devoured the sight, pausing for a moment before he dipped his mouth and sucked upon the rosy bud of flesh.

Heat washed over her, and he kissed between her breasts as he moved to the other one, releasing the strap and then licking until she tipped her head back on a moan. More. She wanted more. His fingers found the button of her pants, her hips lifted with his instruction, and he slid the material down her legs, knees pressing into the couch.

Above her, he looked even more handsome than he had the first night they’d met. More handsome than maybe any other moment she’d gazed at him. Her eyes ran over the ink, but she had already memorized every line.

“These, too,” he said, dragging the last piece of fabric from her waist and tossing it mindlessly to the floor.

Then he lowered himself again and placed his mouth to her stomach, his hands pressing to her thighs. Curling behind them. Her heart started to race as he crept lower and lower with each press of his lips to her skin.

“You lied about having never been with a man, yes?”

Laughter bubbled in her and heat crawled up her neck. “Yes.”

Using one hand, he hooked her leg over his shoulder. “So I don’t need to be gentle with you?”

Desire shot down her spine. “No.”

“Good.”

He pressed a finger inside of her.

She bucked her hips out of instinct.

He only slid back and inserted another, watching how she tried to breathe. Tried to regain control of her hips. He pressed his other thumb to her center and began to circle gently at first, slowly increasing the pressure of his touch.

She started to breathe heavier.

Then he curled the fingers inside of her upward.

A moan broke through her lips. With the pounding need that curled in her stomach, Vaasa said, “Again.”

That wicked upturn of his smile could have lit her on fire. He curled his fingers again. She gasped. “Right there?” he said, again pressing to the spot inside of her that sent a wave up into her stomach.

“Yes,” she breathed. “Yes.”

“And how about here?” He lowered his head between her legs, eyes still locked with hers, his lips pressing to the inside of her thighs. He nipped at her, and her hands pushed into his hair. She felt his warm laughter against her exposed flesh and bumps rose along her stomach and breasts. He curled his fingers inside of her again. “Please,” she whimpered. “Please.”

The warmth of his breath traveled slowly along her hips and his tongue pressed tentatively against her.

He swiped up. Down.

She sank closer against it.

He licked her again, and again, and again, her legs parting wider as he pushed harder with his weight and his tongue. Every instinct she had bowed to his head between her legs. She couldn’t breathe right. Couldn’t help but tighten her hands and then raise one to her breast, curling around it herself as he flicked her rhythmically with his tongue.

His eyes darted up through his lashes and he groaned against her at the sight, tongue speeding up and lapping. Her hips started to rise and he used one arm to hold her down, refusing to slow or cede any space, the other still curling up to press against that spot inside of her. A whimper fell from her lips. “Reid,” she begged his name, hoping desperately she could hold off until he was inside of her.

He lifted at her wanting and her hands found the buckle and buttons of his pants, ripping them down to his knees before he pushed her back into the pillows and settled himself between her legs. As if he’d already been unleashed and could not breathe until he finally had her. He buried himself inside of her in one thrust of his hips.

She cried out and pleasure spiked within her. He caught her mouth with his and held himself there, kissing her until he slowly lifted his hips. Her fingers pressed into his bare back as she tried to pull him closer. To drag him deeper.

“Fuck,” he rasped, and thrust forward again—hard.

Carnal rawness filled them both, and the next time he slid back, she lifted her leg so he could tuck it behind his elbow and thrust deeper. Vaasa moaned as his tongue swept against hers. He pulled back and thrust again. Again. She could feel every inch of him each time he pushed himself forward. She was lost in the moment of watching him—of seeing the moonlight on his brown skin and the way his shoulders tensed with each thrust forward. How his long hair clung to the sides of his face. Desire pooled in her core, and she lifted her hips to his, matching his movements. He slammed into her and pleasure shot up her spine, coiling as he pulled back, then spiking when he filled her again.

Head tilting back, she lost all semblance of the world around her. Of where she ended and he began. All she knew was the depth to which she wanted to take him and the warmth of his breath as he leaned forward and wrapped his mouth around her breast.

He flicked his tongue. Thrust deep inside her.

“Faster,” she begged.

His hips pressed to hers quicker this time, sweeping into her and then out. Again. Again. Again. She met his pace with each thrust of his hips and her voice grew louder while he maintained exactly the rhythm and angle that stole all the air from the world.

The muscles in her core tightened ruthlessly.

Pleasure barreled down her spine and through her hips. Her fingers wrapped into his hair and he kept pushing, carrying her through the orgasm, dragging each bit of satisfaction from her that he could.

The muscles in his chest went rigid and he groaned against her skin.

He pulled away at the last moment, finding his release with a string of moans that lit up her chest and made her want to rise again and again and again.

Her head was pressed to his shoulder, and long breaths plagued her while she tried to regain control of her senses, to focus on something more than her longing. Eventually she did, as he rose on his strong legs. Her own couldn’t match that stability; she knew that if she stood she would stumble. But it didn’t matter because he settled himself behind her, pulling her body up against his chest and saving her from the need to go anywhere.

“We made a mess of this couch,” she whispered.

“I’ll have Koen send me the bill.”

A small, embarrassed chuckle flitted out of her. They lay there for a moment quietly, but the cords tying them together tightened. Against her hair, he whispered, “Will you say it for me again?”

It made no difference if she let herself have him or not. Not in the things that mattered. To not want him would not stop the world from taking him, would not stop the way she would inevitably shatter when the sky righted itself and left her unlucky.

So she turned in his arms, looking him directly in the eye as she told him the truth. “I love you. That will never be untrue.”

He shuddered softly at the words, tightening the arms that held her. She looked down at the ink along his shoulder, following the dark lines that depicted a Mirehan pauldron, as if he carried his armor wherever he went.

Reid’s voice broke the silence. “I know you don’t want a nation or a throne, I know you don’t want this life. So if I have to wait until the end of this decade, I will. I will find you and then you can choose what life we live. Any life you want.”

All the things he knew she didn’t want… they were exactly what she wanted, so long as they were with him.

But she could never tell him that. Could never give him that hope and salvation. For if she did, it would be the cruelest thing she had ever done to him. She would turn him into an accomplice of her shattering, and she would break him right along with herself.

Because she did not believe for a moment that the world would ever be safe for her.

For them.

“Shower with me,” she whispered, brushing her lips against his. “I want you to have me everywhere in this room, and everywhere when we return to Mireh.”

She’d said what he asked of her—that she loved him. That she knew she always would.

And he said it was enough.

But perhaps he saw it in her eyes, though, just as she felt it in her bones.

The thing she did not say. The thing that would actually be enough.

She never told him that she would stay.