by Ella Fields
I fell back against the crumbling wall, my lungs emptying as the starless night bored down into our prison, exposing the tiny space for the moon to glow upon.
“What is that?” one of the males asked, his nose and lips twitching with distaste as he eyed the pieces of black stone.
“We need to leave. It absorbs magic and slowly ruins the mind,” Berron said as Zad unhooked him from the ceiling, then broke open the chains.
I went to the hole, staring up and out of it, already feeling some of the pain fade from my head. Then I was swept into strong arms and a hand was pressed to the burns on my face. “They will wish they never so much as laid eyes on you,” Zad said, his voice a feral rasp.
My head slumped to his shoulder as he climbed out of the ground. “I know.”
Zad had one of his friends, who I thought I heard him call Landen, hold me while he mounted his horse, and then I was situated in front of him.
He fiddled with my skirts, and I smiled as he ensured they covered as much of my legs as possible. “Modesty is the least of my concerns, Lord.”
“Hush and let me fuss.”
Then we were off, Corra and Cid bound and forced to walk or run to keep up with Zad’s friends’ horses.
Berron was having his arm strapped by Azela before they joined us. Within minutes, we slowly left the chamber of stones in the ground. “We need those rocks destroyed.”
Zad jerked his head, and then one of the males tossed his torch inside the crater. Too tired to look back, I wasn’t sure what he did to make it explode and then extinguish within seconds.
“How did you find me?” I asked when we neared the woods we’d been ambushed in. “Azela?”
“Wen raced back to my estate like his ass was on fire,” he said, voice gruff. I smiled, glad the clever beast was okay. “But yes, Azela and Ainx.” He paused. “I must warn you, your captain is in pretty bad shape.”
Images of Ridlow’s broken body lingered upon my lashes like dust unwilling to dissipate. I drew a scathing breath, exhaling the question. “How bad?”
“They slit his throat. Somehow, Azela managed to get him back to my estate, one hand on the reins, another holding him to the back of her horse.”
I closed my eyes, the disorientation and swelling inside my head retreating and resurfacing.
Then I forced them open, unwilling to be blindsided again, and kept them trained on the trees.
“Do you think he’ll survive?”
Zad’s chest rose and fell at my back, his steady words rustling my hair. “It’s hard to say, but he’s in good hands.”
“You have a healer?”
“One who lives locally with her two young children. When needed, they all come to the estate, or she leaves them with her mother.”
“She lost her spouse?”
“She killed him when he came home drunk one evening and punched her in the stomach, causing her to miscarry their third child.”
“How did she kill him?”
“A spork to the eyeball and a dagger to his groin. Simultaneously.”
My brows rose, and I gripped the roughened strands of River’s mane. “I should like to meet this warrior.”
I could hear his smile in his voice. “I thought you would.”
A pair of owls called to one another as we trekked beyond the shadows and rode single file down the rocky glen toward the neighboring forest.
I’d hesitated long enough in asking. “The rest of my guard?”
“Dead,” he said. “Though not for nothing. Those two were all who remained of their band of eight.”
“Some could have fled.”
The wind carried his next words. “You are a treasure no one runs from.”
“You did,” I reminded him, unsure why, or if it even mattered anymore.
His arm tightened around my waist. “I was being petulant. A fool.”
The admission soothed and surprised. Never had I heard him admit as much before.
Moonlight rippled over the banks and dipped inside the foliage to brush over our darkened path, and with every new rock, every new tree, and the kiss of the breeze on my face, I felt myself gradually return.
Like a storm rolling in, my blood began to churn and warm, and my heartbeat found its usual rhythm. Relief swamped me, and my head flopped against Zad’s chest, my eyes closing as his lips brushed my forehead.
I awoke in his arms some time later, heading for a sea of white feathered and furred bedding. “No,” I croaked. “I won’t touch anything until I get this filth off my skin.”
We turned for the bathing chamber, the door swinging open.
He set me on the edge of a tub large enough to fit six grown males, and I watched with drooping eyes as he scattered bath salts and fussed with the temperature.
“She was lucky, you know,” I said, unable to curb my tongue. “To have you.”
Zad stiffened, then set the salts down in a wooden rack attached to the mosaic tiled wall. “Luck,” he finally said, “and love do not mix.”
I pondered that as he tied his hair back with a strip of leather, then helped me slide into the bubbling, warm water. He left me there but returned shortly after with a plate of fruit and buttered bread, setting it on the corner of the tub. He crouched down and retrieved a washcloth from a basket below the sink.
I plucked a few grapes from the plate, letting the sour-sweet taste soak my tongue as I bit into the tiny globes.
Zad had removed his coat, his cream tunic undone at the neck, displaying tiny chest hairs and a glimpse of his firm skin. He leaned over the tub, dunking the cloth into the water, and then he did something I never would’ve dreamed I’d allow him to, and washed me.
He started with my face, gently gliding the roughened material over it, his eyes following. When he neared my lips, he met my gaze. “Might sting.”
“Not half as bad as when it happened,” I whispered.
His throat dipped. He squeezed water over the burns, careful and attentive, to rid them of any dirt.
“You haven’t said much of it.”
“If you think a few scars will detract from your beauty, you’re more delusional than you are vain.”
I sent water into his face, laughing as he swiped it off. His unimpressed expression faded into a serene smile as he stared at me.
It felt good to use my magic, but it felt better to see him smile at me like that.
He continued to wash me, and I let him, surprised he’d kept it clinical, especially when he’d reached the apex of my legs.
“Eat,” he said, his voice rough as he scrubbed my legs.
I tore off a chunk of bread and nibbled at it, almost choking when he started cleaning my feet and wedged the cloth between my toes.
I kicked his hands away, and he chuckled. “Relax or I’ll make you.”
I laughed as he moved to the other foot and shoved his hand away as soon as I thought he’d tortured it enough. As my laughter faded, I sank back against the tub, my hands gliding through the water. Most of the bubbles had gone, leaving my body exposed.
“How did you do that?” I asked. “Cleave the ground apart like that?” With such force and swiftness, considering the power-draining stones beneath it.
“That,” he said, wringing out the cloth, “is a story for another day.” He hung it over the faucet before standing and leaving the room.
I watched him go, then let myself sink beneath the surface, my hands moving to my hair to rid it of days of dirt, blood, and perspiration.
A scream tore from me when a hand snuck beneath the water and pulled me up. “I was just cleaning my hair,” I gasped out.
Zad pushed some of it back from my face, fevered eyes searching mine. Swallowing, he stood and spread open a towel. “Come, you need to sleep.”
I let him dry me, then I let him carry me into his room and lay me on his bed. The bedding had already been peeled back, and he pulled it over my naked body. “I want to see Ainx.”
Zad tugged off his damp tunic
and draped it over one of the silver armchairs near a black fireplace. “There’s little anyone can do for him now but let him rest.” He turned to me as he undid his pants, the angles of his face stark in the moonlight. “I’ll take you to him as soon as you’ve done the same.”
I raised a brow but had little desire to argue the point as exhaustion rendered me limp over the feathered mattress. “Darkness, you’re bossy.”
He grinned and shook his head, and I wished I wasn’t so tired as I watched his perfect ass disappear inside the bathing room. I wished I could have summoned the energy to follow him and crawl atop him, have him sink inside me and fill me with enough euphoria to chase away the filth.
I was sound asleep by the time he crawled into bed behind me and pulled me flush with his warm body.
I woke a full day later, and Ainx followed shortly after, gasping and clutching at his throat.
It had scabbed over, but I daresay the pain and the horror would remain for some time to come.
Berron was staying in a guest room beside Ainx, his arm healing while Emmiline tended to the stubs of his lost fingers. Lotions and cleansing were needed frequently to rid the infection that’d begun to spread. To ensure he wouldn’t lose his hand.
Someone had retrieved my sword, for when I woke, there it was in its scabbard attached to my belt, lying across an armchair.
On the second night, I woke alone at midnight with my face throbbing, visions of Ridlow trying to talk to me through mangled lips and a dislodged jaw.
After draining a glass of water left by the bed, I dressed in a cream nightgown that seemed freshly spun and traipsed downstairs. I refused to fall back asleep until the gruesome images had faded from my mind.
“If you wake from a nightmare, awake wholly before you let yourself drift back to sleep,” my mother had said, her fingers like feathers as they’d danced over my damp hairline. “It is the only way to be sure the same nightmare cannot haunt you again.”
I’d swallowed over the boulder in my throat, my voice weak as I’d asked, “But what if I have a different one?”
She’d smiled, though her eyes were sad. “Then you wake and escape that one too, and try again.”
A deep voice startled me from the dark corner of the kitchen. “Good evening, Queen.”
I forced my heartbeat to slow and nodded as shadows faded from the white-haired male. One of Zad’s friends who’d helped rescue us. “And you are?”
He bit into an apple, then set the fruit basket he’d clearly been rummaging through back in the center of the wooden island. “Dace.” That was all he said. No surname given. He just stood there, chomping away as his amber eyes coasted over me.
I moved to the exit, not because I was afraid, but because I didn’t care to drum up small talk with a stranger. I merely wanted to change the direction of my thoughts and head back to bed.
“He worries for you,” Dace said.
I paused in the entry but didn’t turn around. “Who?”
A gravel-coated laugh reached me. “Zadicus, but you already knew that.”
His actions proved that to be true, but I wasn’t ready to digest them too much. “Why are you telling me?”
Dace stalked by me, carrying with him the scent of something sweet and spiced. “Because queen or not, he’s not a toy to be discarded.” He turned on me, eyes flashing. “He cannot handle another—”
“Audra,” Zad said from the opposite end of the hall.
I peeked around Dace, who’d tensed, and found Zad walking toward us with a leather-bound journal in hand. “Dace, do not attempt to rattle the queen. She’ll gut you and decorate her castle with your innards.”
Dace raised a brow at me. “So I’ve heard.” With a long sweep of my frame, he thumped Zad on the shoulder and stalked upstairs.
“Your friends have high opinions of me,” I said.
“The highest.” Zad grinned, but then his wolfish smile drooped. “Don’t tell me your reputation actually bothers you?”
I sniffed, tipping a shoulder. “Of course not.” I eyed the journal. “What’s that for?”
“Tell me why you’re out of bed, and I might just tell you.”
I gave him a flat look. “Liar.”
With a hand at my back, he led me back upstairs. “You need to rest.”
“I have been.” I kept my voice low as we traversed the halls. Zad had told me the rooms were crafted to keep unwanted noise out, but old habits die hard.
“You had a bad dream?” he asked, closing the door behind us.
I pulled off the nightgown, then rolled my lips between my teeth. “I did.” I padded over to him, my toes curling over the soft rug. “Maybe a little play will help ensure I’m so exhausted that I don’t dream at all.” My finger untied the neck of his tunic to trace the skin inside.
Zad’s chest rose sharply, and then fell as he released a breath through his nostrils, causing them to flare. “I’m not fucking you.”
Shocked, I met his eyes, searching the resolute orbs for an answer as to why. I found nothing. “Suit yourself,” I said, then made a point to sway my hips as I crossed the room and climbed into bed.
With a sigh, he turned for the door.
“Will you at least stay with me?” I hated the question. Hated the way it crept out without permission. Hated the way it sounded. “It is your room, after all.”
After a momentary pause that tripped something in my chest, Zad stripped out of his clothes. He tossed them to the rug, the few burning candles winking out.
The bed dipped and the bedding swished, caressing my skin to the point of torture as I felt the heat of him so close to my back. He’d held me the night before, though I wasn’t sure if he’d do it again.
As though he’d been telling himself not to, he snarled softly before gathering me to him, aligning every soft part of me with every very hard part of him.
I hid my smile in my pillow and tried not to nudge my ass into his hardness.
A growl tore through the silent room, and then his hand was coasting down my side, pebbling my skin as it pulled my leg back and over his to reach between. “You’ll be my end, Audra.” His breath heated my skin as he inhaled my scent and rubbed his lips over the back of my shoulder. When his fingers found me wet and wanting, I moaned.
He cursed, dipping one inside and removing it to stroke me until I saw nothing but bright sparks, and I could do nothing but mewl and whimper as he held me still. With his other arm beneath my head, he held me against him. Two fingers plunged back inside me.
My breathing grew ragged, sharp sounds as he tortured me in every way I’d needed since I left here last week. “Inside me,” I panted. “Please.”
“I know you’re still hungry,” he rasped to my ear, his teeth grazing the curve of my throat, “but I want you starving. So slick and swollen that I can barely fit my cock inside.”
I moaned, louder than I’d have liked from his words and the way his thumb brushed over me. I came apart once more. “Lord,” I said, my voice scraped raw and my body seeking his even as it tried to move away from the mess he was making between my legs. “Zad, please.”
“You do not beg.” He eased his fingers out and then pushed them back inside.
“For you,” I whispered, high on his touch and his scent and his voice—all that he was and was not. “I would.”
He stilled, his voice hoarse when he finally spoke. “You are a queen, Audra. Take what you want.”
Shifting my leg higher, I reached between us, desperate and shaking as I wrapped my hand around his cock. It was throbbing, a pulsing beat against my hand.
He hissed through his teeth, then groaned when I directed him to where I needed him most. “Holy goddess of fuck,” he said, breathless and seated deep, holding me against him so tight.
For long minutes, he fucked me hard and slow, and then his seed was coating my walls as his lips traveled over my clammy skin. “So fucking beautiful,” he murmured to it.
I moved my hair above my hea
d for his lips to roam farther over my neck and shoulder.
His fingers gripped my chin, turning it for his mouth to capture mine, but he didn’t devour it. No, he licked every inch of my lips as his cock thickened again.
Then, he began to move, slower this time, as he kissed the puckered skin upon my lips. So soft it was barely a touch at all, yet I felt it reach the marrow of my bones, igniting something I’d long ignored.
My fingers floated over his jaw, the coarse hair that’d sprouted, and then to his nose, tracing the tiny bump in the center. His cheekbones to his thick brows, perfect auburn arches above two of the brightest eyes I’d ever seen. Not due to their color, but due to the unique soul behind them.
Our breaths mixed, his forehead resting aside mine as the wet sound of our pleasure and the enraged tempo of our hearts cocooned us in a tiny world where anything but us, but this, ceased to exist.
We trembled and cried out together, then laid there for long moments, tangled in new ruins.
And as the stars began to flicker out of the night sky, sleep pulling us into its unpredictable grasp, he rolled me to my back, spread my legs wide, and stretched over top of me with his arms braced by my head. “I want you filled with so much of my seed, you won’t just feel me leaking out of your beautiful cunt for days, you’ll feel me wherever you go, eternally.” He pushed my hair away and sank inside as he whispered against my cheek, “So I’m far from done with you yet.”
The wind howled through the mountain range, bending the blades of grass and wildflowers and curling my hair around my face.
I leaned back against Van and closed my eyes as flakes of snow began to fall. They dusted my lips and melted into the fabric of my burgundy coat, seeping through to the long sleeves of my gown beneath.
Home.
A place I’d lived all my life, yet as I’d seen it upon the horizon that evening, its cream turrets soaked in the last rays of daylight, blending into the white-capped mountains beyond, my heart hadn’t warmed.
Every thunderous mile covered beneath our horses’ hooves as Azela, Berron, and I raced away from Zad’s manor felt as if I was running away from dry land to immerse myself in muck-filled waters.