To Bleed a Crystal Bloom

by Sarah A. Parker

  My tongue sweeps across my lower lip as I slide forward one staggered step—

  “No,” he barks, and my gaze snaps up.

  He’s still, pointing at me, the muscles along his jaw popped and prominent.

  My head kicks back. “Stop talking to me like I’m some disobedient puppy!”

  “If you were simply disobedient, we wouldn’t be in this mess,” he states, launching into another barrage of back and forth.

  I sigh. “What mess, Rhordyn?”

  “How many days did he give you?” he asks, avoiding my question altogether.

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  He nails me with a glower that makes me feel naked despite the sheath of his top and the full-time mask I’m cursed to wear. “Days, Orlaith. How many?”

  Ah, right.

  I should have figured he’d be talking about Cainon. The only splashes of color in this entire room are the shreds of material lumped at my feet and the dark blue cupla shackling my wrist.

  That, and the blood we both wear.

  “He didn’t give me a time frame, you incredulous bastard.”

  He stalks toward me, chewing up the space between us in four powerful strides. “Two things,” he growls, ticking off his fingers. “Baze isn’t deaf, and unless you can learn to do it convincingly, stop fucking lying to me.”

  A test ...

  I should have known.

  I don’t waste time pretending to be remorseful. “Well, stop asking questions you already know the answer to!” I yell, cold, pissed, barely holding myself together, and so very ready to be done with this conversation. “And Cainon was just being dramatic, so let’s not jump to conclusions.”

  His eyes widen, that violent aura sizzles with an entirely new level of chill, and I find myself glancing around his den for anything I can use as a weapon—something to prod him with to let him know I’m not here to be pushed around.

  “No, he was being diplomatic. He’s had his eyes on Ocruth for years, and evidence suggests he’s simply been waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike.”

  The statement has me tripping internally. Outwardly, I try to show nothing but stark confidence.

  “You’re wrong.” I shake my head. “That’s not what this is about. He made a deal with you: use of his ships in exchange for me. He won’t back out of the trade and risk the cost of war with his two neighboring territories all for a couple days without his promised.”

  Rhordyn’s eyes seem to solidify, and I swear the temperature drops. “First rule of politics, Milaje. Never show your hand unless you know exactly what you’re up against.”

  I open my mouth to reply, realizing my mistake, but he’s already charging toward the far wall where a window resides. The glass is swung open, and he leans out, peering left and right ...

  My brow pinches. “What are you looking for?”

  He pulls back in, the dense coils of his hair now dripping fresh rivulets of water down his bare back, chest, and shoulders. “Support beams,” he mutters, storming down the line of the wall.

  My frown deepens. “You said that in a very accusatory tone ...”

  “Did I?”

  He opens another window and shoves his head outside, pulling back in a second later and lumbering toward the door wearing an expression hard as slate.

  “Woah, woah, woah ... where are you going?”

  “To slay a Vruk.”

  My stomach drops.

  “And ... and what about me?”

  He stops and gestures around the room with a sweep of his hand. “Make yourself at home. I’m going to suggest a nap. I could be awhile.”

  He continues toward the door, and I don’t think.

  I just act.

  I launch after him, grabbing his arm in a feeble attempt to keep him here. But he whirls in a riot of muscle and might, snatching my wrists and pinning them behind me before he slams me against the door like I’m just as sturdy as he is.

  All the breath pushes out of my lungs as his other hand wraps around my throat, tipping my head until I’m staring into wielded eyes that hold no mercy.

  One squeeze could end me. I can feel it in the strong muscles shielding my front—in his aura and his confidence and the breath so brazenly assaulting me.

  He tugs at my wrists, shoving my breasts forward, arching me against his form. My body responds to his nearness like I’m a shadow hinging off his motion. The puppet on a string he accused me of being.

  I hiss in his face, trying to jerk free. But he pushes closer, harder; making my heat rage and throb as if to battle his frosty strike.

  He clicks his tongue. “Don’t come at me with that fire, Milaje. Not unless you’re ready to be torn to shreds. And I don’t mean your body—I mean your fucking soul,” he says through clenched teeth, squeezing just enough that I feel his fatal strength wrapped around my throat. He nuzzles his nose into the side of my neck and whispers, “I mean that pretty heart you think is so bruised.”

  “You know nothing.”

  “No ...” the word batters my ear, his hand slipping from my neck and trailing around my back, where it settles atop the ladder of bones curled around my lung and heart. “I know too much.”

  I freeze, all my fight dissipating as if one tiny movement could impale me with a deadly strike.

  “These right here?” he rumbles, tapping my ribs with the tips of his fingers. “We’re both tucked beneath them. Stuck in this fragile cage together.”

  “Then break out,” I plead. “Set me free, Rhordyn!”

  His body seems to calcify around me, and for a moment I think the man might have finally turned to granite. Until his grip on my wrists becomes bone-bruising, his other hand spearing up to coil my hair around his arm and pull.

  He tugs me taut like a loaded bow.

  My mouth pops open, chin tipping to the ceiling, and Rhordyn’s forehead connects with mine.

  The world around us stills, paling in significance to the mountain of man poured over me.

  We’re nose to nose. Eye to eye. Lips so close, his chilled breath is spilling into me. “I’ll give you anything, Orlaith. Anything but that. Don’t ask again.”

  The words are spoken hauntingly calm, as if his heart stopped beating a very long time ago.

  Another stunted response.

  Another dead end.

  The back of my eyes sting, a lump swells in my throat, and all I want to do is cry. But I can’t afford to spend more tears on him.

  Not now.

  Not ever again.

  “Why not?” I’m proud of myself when I manage to keep my voice steady. “Just answer me this one question, and don’t you dare answer with a grunt. After everything, I deserve a truth and you damn well fucking know it.”

  Nothing. He says nothing. Just murders me with his silence again.

  Which tells me everything—bleeding me in an entirely different way than the drops of blood I gift him nightly.

  I close my eyes, severing myself in a way I can’t physically achieve. But then his grip slips from my hair, driving up to support the back of my head. His fingers spread, lacing through my thick locks and making me gasp.

  He loosens a frosty breath that steals the fire from my cheeks. “Simple, Milaje. I refuse to live in a world where you don’t exist.”

  My eyes pop open. “Wha—”

  His lips bruise mine in an assault that steals my ability to speak.

  Breathe.

  Exist.

  He melds me to his rampant will, my fire swelling to meet his ice as I give myself to the clash of teeth and tongues and lips.

  We’re two oceans colliding in a battle for space. There are no winners; only chaos and desolation. Only blurred edges and the complete loss of one’s self. But at this moment ... I couldn’t care less.

  He may be kissing me like he hates me, but I was forged by his acrimony. This is the only language I know.

  He cleaves me apart with the spear of his tongue, spilling a heady rumble deep
down into me, drugging me with his raw, hungry sounds.

  I’m lost in a downward spiral of desperate, carnal need for the taste of him and the scrape of his teeth against my bottom lip, commanding me to surrender in a way that feels so basely primal.

  He drops my wrists, and my fingers dive into his curls as his hands skate past the hem of my shirt, bunching it up around my hips and baring my behind.

  Clawed fingers dig into the plump, prickled flesh, and he catches my bottom lip. Holds it between his teeth.

  Growls.

  I shiver from the base of my neck to the tips of my toes, hooked by his stare as I’m spread apart, his fingers skimming so close to that sensitive crease that’s immune to his lies. That remembers only the way his fingers swirled around my entrance, teasing ... coaxing ...

  My lids flutter closed.

  He snarls and takes my weight, wrapping my legs around his hips and slamming my back against the door.

  Heat spikes at the apex between my thighs. Delicious, surging heat that makes me grind and grind and—

  I groan, my mind a messy, instinctual thing that’s driven by one thing and one thing only ...

  Him.

  “You’re staying right the fuck here, do you hear me?”

  His words pour between my lips like liquid chocolate, and I gobble them down, mind focused on my bare and exposed core flooding with another wave of hot want.

  I can smell it—my desire for him to sate my body and unbridled mind. To take my pain and cleave it apart with a plunge of rampant pleasure. Because this world is cold and cruel and callous, and I just want to feel good for a bit. Feel close to somebody.

  Close to him.

  He carries me to the bed, his demanding mouth eating up my hungry moans, and I’m punched into the mattress, a motion which would have felt violent if he hadn’t fallen with me like a landslide.

  I’m lost beneath him, entombed by his flexing might, drunk on his scent, his feel, his force ...

  I jerk my hips in invitation for the steel-like bulge pressing against my inner thigh, aching for him to push at my entrance.

  For him to dig into my body like he’s dug into my soul.

  I weave my hands between the press of our bodies ...

  Desperate.

  Seeking.

  My fingers barely brush his laces before he nips my lip and whips off the bed.

  “Be good,” he states, making for the door without looking back. He’s pulled it open before I’ve even had a chance to blink or lick at the sore on my lip, slamming it shut behind him, leaving me sprawled on his bed with my legs spread and the cloying bouquet of my arousal thick in the air.

  There’s the sound of a key sliding into place, and the clank that follows drops my heart into my stomach and rips me from the cloud he set me in.

  No.

  No, no, no ...

  I scramble up, clamber toward the door on legs that barely remember how to work, then grip the handle and twist.

  It doesn’t budge.

  “Rhordyn!” I slam my hand against the wood, then my foot when he doesn’t answer. “Rhordyn! If you leave me locked in here, I’ll never forgive you! Do you hear me?”

  No answer. Just the incriminating silence of an empty hallway. I can’t feel his presence near.

  He’s gone.

  It doesn’t stop me from screaming his name, over and over, until my throat is just as ruined as my pride. I punch the door until bone collides with wood and blood stains the grain.

  But it’s not enough.

  I keep going—fingernails gouging, foot swinging, hand slapping, shoulder barging until I’m empty and spent and the sutures of my sanity split.

  You’re staying right the fuck here ...

  Rhordyn’s haunting words ring like a bell in my ears, and my knees give out, colliding with the floor in a way that would probably hurt if I could feel.

  But I’m lost. Numb and broken. My entire awareness tunneled down to the failure gnawing at my insides ...

  He pillaged my weakness. Offered me a drink from his well and I gulped with greedy draws until I was intoxicated and mindless. Then, he tossed me down the hole and left me there with no way out.

  Now all I can do is drown.

  My knees are bunched against my chest while I cradle my corrupted head ...

  He locked me in his room.

  I could look through all his stuff, discern my own thoughts on him from his personal space, but I won’t.

  I’ve lost the will to care.

  Now that he’s gone, all I can see is Mishka’s flat, unseeing stare. All I can hear is that gasp of surprise as Rhordyn put a blade through her heart.

  The Vruk may have gotten to her first, but he took her final breath, as if he wanted to bear the brunt of her death.

  I wonder how much blood has wet his conscience over the years? I’ll probably never know because he gives me nothing but empty riddles.

  I refuse to live in a world where you don’t exist ...

  The skin on my neck blazes; a fiery stamp left from his firm grip that seemed to threaten me.

  In that moment, my life was in his hand—one capable of crushing me with a single squeeze. It both thrilled and shocked me, because part of me wanted him to grip a little tighter and shackle me with the emotions he hides so well.

  I wanted him to snap so I could prove just how resilient I really am. So I could prove that although I’ve hidden in his shadow all these years, I’m not some fragile flower who folds into herself after receiving a few bruised petals.

  Perhaps that’s what he was waiting for when he pulled that sword from Mishka’s heart. For the pain to make me wither. But death plants a seed in you, and my insides are already littered with shoots I can’t seem to hide from.

  I lift my head, fingers sliding through my hair and gripping hard, staring at the opposite wall blank of anything other than a few tall windows reaching for the high roof and looking out across Vateshram Forest.

  There’s nothing decorating Rhordyn’s room; the only softness being his lush four-poster bed and a black comforter that now reeks of the cloying scent of my arousal.

  My gaze lands on the easel, on the delicate sketch no more finished than it was when I was here last.

  I sigh, tipping my head against the door ... studying.

  Wondering where he learned to draw like that, trying to picture him doing it. Jealous of that stretched piece of cloth for the careful attention it’s received ... for the way he’s left his mark upon its surface.

  If he were drawing me, I would imagine him digging the coal into canvas—gouging through it in places—ripping cloth from the wooden frame, screwing the picture up, flattening it out again, forcing it to yield to his will.

  It’s tempting to stalk over there and destroy the art out of spite. But then I realize that it, too, is locked in this room. Stashed away like some cloistered treasure.

  I look to the door that leads to his personal bathing chamber, and my heart skips a beat, eyes widening ...

  Breath catching.

  A soft laugh bubbles in the back of my throat, growing into something manic and twisted. The seed of realization blooms into a surging wave that promises to blow apart Rhordyn’s firm-handed control.

  Leaping up, I jog to the door, but seize the doorframe as I pass, slamming to a halt ...

  I groan and jerk back into the room, dashing to the small table parked beside the easel. A bowl is tipped, the bits of coal scattered, and I use the hem of Rhordyn’s shirt to wipe the inside clean.

  My gaze flicks to my wrist—to the blue lines webbed beneath the delicate, translucent skin.

  I take a moment to consider the possibility that I’ve gone terribly mad before I snarl, picturing my arm as his own damn neck and sinking my teeth in.

  Deep.

  The agony is instant, but I just dig further, imagining him trying to shake out of my hold. Or perhaps yielding to me for a change.

  Warm liquid swells against my lips, and I release
my wrist with a gasp, suspending it above the bowl and watching blood fill it in dribbling increments.

  Hating it. Loving it just as much.

  This sadistic parting gift is as much for me as it is for him.

  After a while, the flow of blood slows, but there’s enough collected for him to do whatever the hell he does with it. Hopefully he knows how to ration himself to make this last for the rest of his life, because this toxic thing between us is over.

  If he wants more, he’ll have to bleed it from my slit throat.

  I bind the wound with a strip of blue material, tightening the knot with my teeth.

  Leaving the bowl on Rhordyn’s bed where he won’t miss the damn thing, I turn my attention to his dresser ...

  If I can find his caspun stash, my life over the next month will be significantly less complicated.

  I yank the drawers out and scatter their contents, rifling through his clothes.

  “Come on ...”

  I’m starting on his bedside table, tossing his personal items in the same disrespectful manner as he tossed mine, when a thought has me flattening to the ground, searching for a loose stone beneath his bed.

  It doesn’t take me long to find. It’s in the exact same place as the one in my tower; five stones back from the wall.

  “How original of you,” I mutter, lifting it to reveal a cavity beneath the floor. Reaching in, I pull out a fist-sized package wrapped in calico and secured with a long piece of string. One sniff tells me I’ve found what I need, and I don’t bother moving the stone back into place or cleaning up my mess before starting down the stairs, heading to Rhordyn’s personal thermal spring.

  He left my room in shambles, it’s only fair I repay the favor.

  The air becomes thick and warm as the tunnel opens into a domed cavern, stairs descending beneath the surface of water that’s reminiscent of swirling, liquid gold in this low light.

  The stalactites clinging to the roof look like the fangs of a hungry beast ready to chomp down, and the stark silence reminds me just how secluded this place is. I try not to let that thought sink too deep as I consider what it is I’m about to do.