by Mima
Then he walked forward, pulling wrath around him like a cloak.
Chapter Seventeen
Dawn spread across the ocean in a wash of peach. Moriko stood on her balcony, not the least bit tired. The night had been horrific. By the time she’d ordered the guards to fetch more priests and seal off all exits to the compound, then fetched the small contingent of extremely haughty priests from the Royal Temple, hysteria ran rampant throughout the halls of the main Guild apartment building. Some were crying murder, some had turned against their neighbors, accusing them of collaboration if a body was found in their apartment. Some were awash in grief, devastated at finding loved ones stabbed through the heart. Bodymages worked over the bodies, trying to resuscitate them. Many had turned to her, begging her to stop Donte, unknowing she’d set him upon them. Standing at the entrance to the Guild apartments, her betrothal dress filthy, she’d been visited by Shebu in the middle of the chaos.
Shebu appeared in a shockingly plain gown, declaring the Queen furious at Donte for moving without support. “He will cease immediately and report to the Queen.”
Moriko stared at the woman, wiping tears from her face. “You are welcome to attempt that command, but I am not your messenger. Nor am I in control of him.”
Green light exploded from a window on the top floor. Shebu shuddered and burst into tears herself. She threw herself against Moriko and they held each other.
“Our own people, Moriko! But how do we know for sure he’s not just killing for pleasure’s sake?”
Moriko thrust the woman away. “How dare you!”
“I dare because he is monstrous. Who knows what they’ve made of him?”
She clenched her fists on her desire to punch her cousin. “I know! I’ve seen into his heart. There is no one more dedicated to stopping them.”
Shebu stared at her, silent, lips clamped. Moriko saw the thought pass through her eyes—that Moriko too was questionable, that the couple wasn’t to be trusted.
So she pulled out the final argument. “Do you go against your Queen?” It was Shebu’s ultimate answer.
“No,” she whispered, glancing toward the sea. “No. Idivay will save us all.”
“Then tell the Queen he will come to her when he is able.” Moriko lifted her chin at the outrageous retort.
Shebu only nodded and scurried away.
Avis hovered. “My Lady. The guards on the stairs report he calls for you.”
Moriko gathered her crushed skirts in both hands and sprinted down the hall, pounding up the stairs with burning thighs. Stopping next to the five guards poised on the top step, she surveyed the three halls. A body crumpled midway down the left hall, and on the right, a door angled across the floor, shattered.
“He’s down there, second door from the end.”
Recognizing the voice, she glanced over at Ty-lee, surprised to see him.
He nodded to her grimly. “Do you want me to go with you?”
She shook her head, touching his arm briefly in thanks. “Is he injured?”
“I don’t know. He moved too fast to see clearly.”
She glanced over their uniforms, then motioned for the bodymage. “You come with me.”
He stepped up next to her. She was so proud of her people. They did the best they could and usually that was brilliantly courageous.
She strode down the hall. “Donte! I’m here.”
“The other can leave. I don’t want him.” His voice was normally deep, but now it was rusty, strained.
She passed by an open doorway and froze in the process of telling the bodymage to return. Both of them choked at the sight inside. An elderly man’s head sat in the middle of a splatter of blood. She caught a glimpse of white bone and whirled away.
Tears poured down her cheeks. “Go back,” she whispered.
The man turned and left, but it took another several breaths before she went forward. Terrified for him, she turned into the room.
He sat in a straight back chair, arm on the table in front of him, sipping from a pretty red clay mug. His tattoos in the pre-dawn light were a shock again, a jagged line encroaching on his face, a huge mouth full of predator teeth about to close over him. She hadn’t known they were brown, instead of black. They matched his hair and eyes. Another jagged ring, thorns reaching up and down, circled his neck, and his bare arms in the vest clearly showed the wide bracelets and round bundle of marks on the backs of his hands, like a nettle embedded in his skin.
Walking behind him as she crossed to the other side of the room, she studied him critically. There was a cut on one forearm, and it was violently inflamed, oozing black pus. A scorch mark on his vest ringed a section of burned skin, red and puffy. His hands were crusted with dried, caked-on blood.
“How many did you kill?” The guards had held to guarding the stairwells, but hadn’t yet gone room to room.
“Nine, and one innocent died. Only one had any strength.”
She pulled out a chair and sat with him. The room was very dim, the faint magelight still on night mode.
He sipped from his cup. “Want some water?” He held it out to her.
She took it and found she was very thirsty indeed. She swallowed gratefully and handed it back. “You’re hurt. Why can’t the bodymage come help you?”
“I’m working on it.”
“I know you are, but you don’t have—”
“Leave it, mate.”
And his voice was so weary, she did.
“Thank you.” The feeling the words held meant he was glad for more than her restraint.
“Bear?”
He shook his head. “Every time you ask about him, I could almost fall. Please, stop.”
How could she? Bear being missing from Donte was like the moon being gone. “There must be something we can do.”
“I want to go rest in your room. How likely is it I’ll get there without a need for manners?”
“Aren’t you aware?” Her laugh was high and wild. “They’re all terrified of you. No one is going to make chit chat.”
He nodded. “How much trouble am I in?”
“The Queen is furious. She wants to see you. I put Shebu off.”
“Would she use our marriage as leverage?”
“I’m sure she’d use anything as leverage.” She looked around the room, but didn’t notice anything. “Could she use our marriage? Do you even care about it?”
To her surprise, he leaned over and brushed one finger down her forearm. Her skin rippled in reaction. She stared at how the blood had darkened around and under his nail.
“Moriko, I care about you. There is no disguising the truth. You care about the marriage, and so I care about it.”
“You didn’t care to stay by me at the dance the last night, despite the cruel whispers I faced. You didn’t let me help you.” And she was still angry about that.
“Look at my hands. Honestly, now. Did you really want to help?”
She stared up into his eyes, holding his wounded gaze. “Not with the darkmages. Of course not. But on the beach, yes.” Bear … poor, sweet Bear. “I truly want to help you, Donte. You’re mine.”
He shook his head and finished his water.
“Why did you call me up here?”
His lips firmed. “To escort me out. I don’t trust the fear in this place. I’m less likely to get ambushed with a princess at my side.” He sighed. “If you’re willing to take me to your room, of course. I understand if you’d prefer I use another room to rest.”
“Don’t be silly.” She stood. “You’ll always come home with me, even when I think you’re incredibly wrong.” She tucked in the chair and held out her hand.
“Why?” He looked at her, big jaw tight.
“Because I love you.” She kept her hand out, steady, waiting.
She saw something flicker in his eyes, but it wasn’t Bear. “Moriko…”
“Take my hand, Donte.”
And to her surprise, he did.
Leaving the bui
lding, they were besieged by shouts of fear and anger. The guards wanted to question him. She told them the Queen waited and took him to the baths. It was still chaos with a hundred tasks to organize, but she flicked Avis a glance and left. How strangely easy it was to let the Chatelaine disappear when this man needed her. Watching him undress soothed the fear she’d held all night. A hundred questions trembled on the edge of her tongue, but none were important.
Gliding forward into the water, she took the sponge and said, “I will bathe you.”
“I’d—”
“I will bathe you.”
He sank down on one of the benches built into the large pool. “All right.”
She washed his shoulders, then his arms. The wound on his forearm was now merely angry red. The skin at his wrists she treated delicately, but at his hands she picked up a scrub brush. Working down his chest, she admired his strength, and on his back she noted with satisfaction his burn had already disappeared. His throat and face she worked across softly with a velvet scrap. He stayed immobile, expressionless, but she had to ask.
“Do they hurt?”
“No.”
But from the way he said that one small sound, she knew that it had, terribly so.
He bowed and dunked for her on command as she washed his hair, and then she told him to stand. Washing his hips and thighs stirred pride in her again at his strength.
“Valiant.”
“Pardon?”
“It is an old word. One of intense bravery in the face of overwhelming odds.”
“Ah. So valiant is stupidity.”
She smiled, happy to know this man. “The Queen waits. If you need to rest, it’s best if you do it here, so she thinks you came straight from the baths.”
“Will she torture me?”
Moriko jerked the sponge off his calf, shocked. “No! Of course not!”
“Well, will she send me to be tortured by someone else?”
“Donte! No!”
He shrugged. “Then I can see her without a nap.”
And like lightning, lust hit her. She needed him in her, his strength surging in the heat of life. His nostrils flared.
“You can smell my emotions, can’t you?”
He nodded. “Not that it helps me understand you. How can you want me now?”
“We were poor leaders tonight. But we did it out of your need to protect.”
He grunted. “Don’t lie to yourself, Moriko. You’re stronger than that. We did it out of a need to strike with our pain. It was selfish and satisfying and caused trouble.” He sat again, taking the sponge from her. “And that wasn’t what I meant. If it was only a matter of dealing with the fracas over killing the darkmages, I wouldn’t be confused. Women respond to warriors come home from battle. But when you know what I did on the beach tonight, how can you want me?”
“I’ve known you were a survivor from the first, Donte. I admire that in you, whether it’s survival against evil or cruel circumstance. Your own people attacked you. I assume they say it is right, but I consider them jealous and outright foolish. They say they’ll allow you to be their weapon and then they weaken you. It’s like they don’t want you to succeed. They’ve wounded Bear and—”
He splashed the water. His roar echoed over the water. “Don’t speak of him!”
“I will so!” She splashed back. “I will never turn my back on him, not for fear, and not for sorrow.” She stared him down. “He needs us now. Closing him out will only weaken him further.”
His jaw clenched, he gritted out, “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Clam scraps I don’t!”
“It was me!” His eyes narrowed to slits, hands in massive fists, he loomed before her. “My choices, my will, and yes, I have turned my back on him. I sat there and watched them wall him off and I did nothing.”
She didn’t have to be trux to sense the pain and rage radiating off of him. Wisps of steam rose off his shoulders. “You couldn’t have stopped them. But you could have sat with him, held him. He didn’t get caged alone. You’re right here with him. You should have reminded him of that.”
He shook his head, his slicked hair looking boyish as it flopped to the side. And boyish didn’t fit on that face.
Stretching out her hand, she placed it in the center of his thick chest. “I’m right here with both of you. Bear is down, but he’s still here. We’ll get him back.”
Shudders ran through him. His jaw tight, nose wrinkled, eyes narrowed, cheeks stark enough to lift his scars, and throat corded with muscle. It was easy to envision him smashing her arm away, or spinning away to surge out of the bath. She waited one more breath, feeling his energy gather.
“I’m right here with you.” Flattening her palm, she pressed against his rejection. “Through ten, no—eleven bodies, and more to come. Through your people’s cruelty and mine. I won’t be able to use the power of Chatelaine for long, but you’ll be with me.”
His eyes flickered.
She stepped closer. “I am right here.”
His energy faded, but still roiled through him. So she gave him another hug. Once again, he didn’t seem to know what to do. It didn’t matter. He was alive, he was real, here in her arms. He’d come for her, to forge through whatever her Queen and the darkmages threw at them. His skin was firemage warm and his stance earth steady.
“Now I’ll bathe you.”
“The Queen did not ask for me. You should go.”
His hand coasted down over her head, around her shoulder and drew her arm from around him. He took the sponge. “Sit.”
She sat. By the time he’d washed her, firm and brisk as any attendant, she thrummed with the need for sex. By the time he’d rinsed her hair, she was primed, taut and aching. The night’s stress swirled through her and she wanted to get rid of it. “I need to tell you something.”
He moved to the edge of the bath, tucking the soap, cloth, and sponge away. “I’m listening.”
“I need sex.”
He examined the bottles, placing the shampoo among them. “I know you are ready.”
“Yes. I mean, not just now. A lot.”
He opened a bottle, sniffed, and capped it. “I’ll try to keep up.”
She laughed. Moving up next to him, she picked up the pot he’d want. “Use this in your hair. Not much or it will stink in the sun.”
He sniffed it and nodded. “Do you want me to go to your Queen, or do you want to have sex?” He took a small dollop on his fingers and worked it across his palms. Shoving them into his hair, he scissored his fingers through the strands, drawing them up again and again until he had added another fingerlength to his height in ragged peaks.
“Well, the thing is, I need sex so much that I kind of have options. But I don’t know what you expect of me.”
He turned, leaning back against the carved edge of the pool, arms outstretched. He took her breath away. “I expect you to tell me when you want it.”
“But what if you aren’t here?” She surged forward, her hands stroking over his chest, petting down his ribs. There was no give anywhere on him. Finding his flesh already mostly swollen, it took only a few soft pulls to bring him to his full length. “Most of my people do not limit themselves to one partner.”
“Even when they’re mated?” He watched her out of those deep brown eyes, his lashes still spiked with wetness.
She stretched up to his shoulders, and laid her body along his. “Well, marriage isn’t like a mating. I can tell you that yes, it’s very hypocritical. There is no touching between fiancés and a pregnancy will ruin an unmarried woman.”
“You will not get pregnant.”
She spread her legs around his hips, heart pounding in anticipation. “Is that why you did not come inside me? I’m protected. All the Royals are protected against pregnancy by our bodymages.”
“It was my understanding that was forbidden and that unwed women are expected to be chaste.” He stayed very still while she rubbed herself along him.
“Royals follow many different rules, especially in private. Please, Donte, may I take you?” Her open hips hovered over the tip of him. The metal threaded through his tip was hard and exciting.
Lifting his hands from where they dangled in the water, he covered each of hers where they latched onto his shoulders. “You never need to ask me.” He thrust up with his hips, pushing the tip of him into her. “And you will never fuck anyone but me.”
She bit off the moan. “That’s what I thought you’d say.” Setting her knees tight to his ribs, she pressed down on his shaft, working him in with awful increments. The metal knobs inside her ground tightly, her channel driven taut from his girth. “But yesterday morning, when I didn’t know how long it would be before I met you, I thought I was going to explode. From one morning. And last night, all those hours of worrying… I ached.”
“So you’re asking me to share this pleasure with other men. Because you’re horny and distracted.” He snapped his hips forward enough to jam himself deep.
She sighed at the wonderful pressure. “Yes.”
“No.”
She stroked up on him, pulling her flesh in a slow glide up the length of him. “I don’t love them.”
He stroked forward again, thrusting deep and hard even when her skin resisted in the water. “You are my mate. I said no. Besides I think you’ll soon discover you will desire no one else.”
Oh, dear. How to tell him that despite the incredible sex they’d shared in the afternoon, by the time she’d sat down beside him at the betrothal, she was on fire from imagining sex with half a dozen men in the room. While Donte watched. “I appreciate the human body in many forms. I find touching the human body grounds me, and an orgasm triggered by someone else is the way I control myself.” She swiveled on him, clenching and releasing her inner muscles in a masterful internal massage.
“I look at you, bare against me.” His voice rumbled against her tummy. “Your face looks different with your hair pushed back like that. Your eyes have no make-up, your breasts chafe my skin. You work your body on mine, and yet I hear you talk about wanting more, wanting other men.”