Chapter 40

Breathless, I’m held captive by that bruising stare, like the man himself has my lungs in his ghostly fists—tightening his grip.

Tighter.

That sparkly fog I was inhaling must have built illusions in my mind. That’s the only way I can reason with … this.

Him.

Maybe I’m going mad?

Even so, I want to drop Cainon’s hand and run over there. Fall to my knees before that poor, wasted life hanging from the stone and beg for Rhordyn’s forgiveness. Tell him how stupid I was. How naïve.

Tell him I’m doing everything I can to atone.

Those beautiful eyes move, casting an icy trail over my lips … my chin …

Cainon threads his fingers through my hair and pins it back with a firm grip on the side of my head, baring my torn-up throat, showing more flesh to that charging gaze that slides across my neck like an avalanche.

A bolt of lightning snaps through the sky above, and I flinch.

“Don’t be afraid,” Cainon murmurs—a comforting coo I barely hear over the ringing in my throbbing ear. He points toward the swelling storm. “Jakar is showing his approval.”

My heart jumps into my throat as he tips forward, rumbling low, his lips almost brushing mine. Like he’s about to steal a spiked kiss.

Yes.

I arch forward, urging him on.

Do it.

Another head-splitting boom, the sky rattling its chains so hard the stone beneath us shakes.

Cainon’s breath skims my lips as he makes a chuffing sound, then pulls back, eyes glinting with a blaze of lust. “Patience, petal,” he says on a gravelly laugh, regarding me with such intense focus I feel pinned in place in more ways than one. “I want to savor your body before I taste those pretty lips.”

I don’t want that. Not one bit.

I want him to taste my poisonous lips, then fall in a heap so I never have to feel his breath on me again. Or his teeth in my flesh.

So I never have to know what it feels like to have him move inside me.

He shifts so fast the world blurs, and then I’m spread out on my back, all the breath knocked from my lungs as he brackets me in with his flexing might—stretched atop me in a way that makes me wither inside.

Makes that dome rattle and rumble, a scratch, scratch, scratch grinding beneath it.

He sinks his face into the crook of my neck. “You’re mine,” he growls, his words stained with his twisted, tainted affection. His too-hot touch skims down my leg, fingers tangling with the hem of my gown. He slides it up, and my entire body locks.

Another bolt of lightning scribbles across the sky, and desperation shakes me loose from the inside out.

If it rains, the poison will be washed from my lips. This will all be for nothing.

And I’ll have to … with …

No.

Cainon nibbles my jaw. Runs his tongue along the skin. I harden my spine—my heart—and grip both sides of his face, forcing him to meet my steely gaze. “Kiss me,” I command, my voice a husky groan.

Another violent boom rattles the walls as his eyes ignite, like I just sparked them with a match.

“Now.”

With a bone-rattling growl, he crushes our lips together.

I let my hands drop and open myself, a willing victim to his lashing tongue while he pours thick, throaty sounds past my poisonous lips.

But I don’t just need him to kiss me …

I need him to swallow.

He tips back for breath, his hands a cradling prison for my face, and I pull my lip between my teeth and bite so hard warmth dribbles all the way to my chin.

Releasing a sawing sound, he lunges forward again, digging his tongue so far into my mouth I can barely breathe. His hands maul my hair, like he’s purposely screwing it up so he can spend hours untangling it later.

Breaking the kiss, he leans back on his heels. “You’re a delicious creature,” he grinds out. His throat works, and I picture a mix of noxious blood slipping down into his belly as his eyes turn inky. “Mine.”

I battle the urge to flinch.

The word wounds—every time. Because I’m not his. Not anyone’s.

Not anymore.

I belong to the silver-licked shadows of my own mistakes.

He moves to grab my right ankle, but I shove the left one at his chest instead, stuffing the other beneath a pillow.

A hungry smile stretches across his face as his hand tightens around it, fingertips grazing up my calf. “Pushy tonight, aren’t we?”

I nod.

He releases a dark chuckle that rattles my bones, then plants a kiss on the arch of my foot. I want nothing more than to rip away from his touch as he pecks another upon the inside of my ankle …

Just above it …

My heart sits in my throat like a rock.

I hold the saliva pooling in my mouth, knowing where those kisses are heading. Knowing I’d rather swallow this poison than feel his lips there.

Watching me, he peppers a haunting trail all the way to my knee, my heartstrings fraying a little more with each too-hot peck upon my crawling skin.

I want him off me.

Want him off, want him off—

His next kiss wavers, and my stomach flips as his pupils swell. A black, bubbly froth leaks from the corner of his mouth, and the backs of my eyes sting, my face threatening to crumble. My knees wobble with the urge to squeeze together, like they’ve been released from a catatonic spell.

He drops my leg. Claws at his throat.

My entire body begins to tremble.

Blood rushes to his head, the veins in his temple and forehead swelling to the surface as his chest heaves deep, gurgling breaths—reminding me of the people he’s condemned to rot on the outskirts of his city.

A drop of satisfaction drips upon my chest.

A bubbling, choking cough, and something flashes in his widening eyes as he shreds at the skin around his neck—a mix of emotions too complex for me to trace. “You—poisoned me—”

Checkmate, asshole.

Lids drifting shut, his limp body sways forward, making my heart vault. I try to scramble backward—

Not fast enough.

His body lands upon me with such hefty force all the breath is punched from my lungs, my mouth gaping. A trickle of saliva slides across the back of my throat, making the muscles clamp down like a knee-jerk reaction.

Fuck.

I whimper, shoving at his body, trying to kick him off with my free leg. More saliva pools in the back of my throat. Lightning threatens to crack the sky into shards, and I hear the patter of raindrops before they batter my skin.

My movements become frantic, this trapped feeling inside me swelling.

Swelling.

Get him off—

Cainon’s ripped backward, plonked to the side in a heavy lump, revealing Kolden standing over me with a scarf wrapped around the lower half of his face. He yanks it down so it’s hanging around his neck, kneels, and pulls me into a seated position.

I dig my fingers down my throat. My stomach clenches, and a flaming surge of bile pours up and out of me in a gushing torrent. I spit, splutter, heave all over a pillow, feeling numerous celestial stares rake across my skin—like they’re watching this show unfold with rapt attention.

Gasping, I tip back, tears streaming down my cheeks, mixing with the rain now pounding upon the pure white pillows, drenching my hair and skin. I cut a glance at the red, slitted eyes as I wipe my lips with the back of my arm, painting it with a poisonous smear.

Call it intuition, but something about them makes me think that particular God wants me tochoke.

“Where did you put it?” Kolden barks, and I rip at the tiny braids around the crown of my head, hands trembling, hunting for the petals I stuffed beneath them. When I come up empty-handed, I get onto all fours and begin flipping pillows and throws while Kolden does the same.

A dark realization dawns.

They must have fallen out … Maybe blown away …

I look at Kolden sideways. “They’re not here.”

His eyes widen. “Did you swallow some?”

Maybe I got it out in time …

I nod.

“Fuck,” Kolden growls, pulling his scarf up. He whips another out from beneath his chest plate, wraps it around my face, then sweeps me into his arms.

He spins, and I catch sight of those chilling silver eyes boring through me like a savage pledge. A gaze that follows us until we slip out of sight.

* * *

“Ithink I’m okay,” I say, yanking the scarf off my face. I’m certain it’s making it harder for me to breathe. “You can put me dow—”

“No,” Kolden grinds out between muffled breaths as he powers through eerily quiet hallways with me tucked against his armor. “You’ll speed up your heart rate and pump the bane through your system faster.”

I go to argue, but a cough comes out instead, barking up my throat.

“Fuck,” Kolden hisses, then tucks into a cupboard, slapping a hand over my mouth.

I wrestle the urge to cough again, chest jerking as booted footsteps come, then go. Perhaps a guard making rounds.

Kolden pushes his head out and looks both ways before ripping down his scarf and charging on. I let the cough free—this one wetter than the last.

We make it all the way to the main lobby before my vision starts to split. By the time he’s sprinting toward the door where he usually stands guard, my breaths are gurgling, throat tightening with each restless draw.

I whimper, my stomach turning cold, then numb—the same numbness creeping up my throat much faster than I’d like it to.

Thoughts roll through my head like boulders …

What if I die? I didn’t tell Kolden I have people to save or my plan to free them. And now my breaths are so wet I doubt I’ll be able to get the words out before my last heave.

Shit.

“You’re okay,” he grinds out, shoving into the lobby as that numbness reaches the back of my tongue, making it feel floppy. I lose the ability to keep my head upright. “You’re going to be okay. Just hold on.”

He powers past the door into my moonlit suite, and I watch the world slip by upside down. He settles me on the ground, my limbs like felled branches.

Kolden stomps away with hurried steps, then tromps back again.

“Which one, Orlaith? Point.”

Wheezing, I look through slitted eyes at the four different-colored petals he’s waving at me, then let out a mangled groan when I fail to move my arm. I focus on the white one and try to jerk my chin at it. Guess I get the point across because he cranks my mouth open and lays it on my tongue.

“Chew!” he bellows, stamping my mouth closed, like he thinks I’ll spit it out and get straight back to dying.

I can’t die yet. I’ve got promises to keep.

That foreboding chill seeps further up my tongue, the deadly numb trailing just behind, and I grind my teeth against each other one slow, chattering chew at a time. The spicy petal mashes with the frothy stuff that was forming, setting fire to my taste buds and making the back of my nose burn.

“Swallow,” he orders, and I oblige, feeling it sear a path down my throat and pool in my belly, chasing away that numbing sensation with everything it touches.

Torches.

Relief weaves its roots through my chest.

Kolden opens my mouth and places another petal on my tongue. “Again.”

I want to tell him it’s unnecessary, that this stuff is so potent it could reignite a graveyard of poisoned folk, but it takes less energy to chew.

That burning sensation spreads, paving a fiery path through my veins, making my hands and feet tingle with the rush of warmth. I flap my floppy arm about until my hand connects with the golden urn, remove the lid, then wrap around. My entire body convulses with the force of a violent, lung-scraping cough.

Wet stuff loosens from my chest and splats out of me, dribbling down my chin.

Again.

Teeth chattering, I peek up from the urn, clinging to it like a lichen tethered to a rock. Kolden’s standing over me with his arms half crossed, right hand massaging his jaw as he watches me with stern eyes.

“Ships?” I ask.

“I haven’t heard yet, but no news is good news.”

I nod, then bark out another round of splattering coughs that echo through the urn, spitting more thick stuff free of my heavy chest.

That’s good.

I peer up again, feeling goo stringing from my chin like a sticky spider web, seeing the smear of blood on Kolden’s chestplate.

I frown, catching his stare.

He glances down, sees what I was looking at, and begins ripping at one of the leather straps on his shoulder that tethers the chestplate to his body. “One of the Elders stayed back and was lagging by the door, getting off on the sounds. You’d been in there too long. I got concerned,” he grinds out, his motions growing sharp and desperate, until the buckle finally pops loose. “I did what I had to do, then stuffed him in an urn before I charged in.”

My stomach roils.

Cainon could have still been awake. Somebody in the smoke pit could have clambered out and seen him—though I doubt it. They were pretty well occupied.

Even so …

“You”—I clear the tickle from my throat—“saved me.”

More than just me.

He tears at the strap on his other shoulder, jaw set as he unbuckles the sides and lifts the piece, then lumps it on the bed. He drags a hand down his face.

“Thank you, Kolden.”

He grabs a piece of tissue parchment from my vanity and hands it to me. “You can repay me by getting out of this city. Now.”

Oh dear.

“Slightproblem …”

A frown shadows his eyes as I swallow thickly, cutting him a cursory glance before I take the parchment and use it to wipe my chin. I toss the scrunched-up ball in the urn, then clonk the lid back into place, giving the thing a little pat before I push to a wobbly stand.

Wavering, I wait until I stop seeing doubles before I lift my chin. “There’s something I have to do first, and I’m not leaving until it’s done.”