by Elise Kova
“You shouldn’t concern yourself with me.” I shake my head.
“But I do.”
“But you won’t.” My words are as cold and icy as the air seeping through the window at my back. “Soon enough, I’ll be nothing to you. All of this, whatever this is, will be nothing. You’ll be king and I’ll just be a human living on your land across the Fade.”
“It’s your land now,” he insists.
“Stop being kind to me.” My voice raises a fraction. “Stop pretending like any of this is real.”
He staggers, almost as though I’ve struck him. Davien shakes his head slowly. “Every minute of this has been real for me. More real than I ever wanted or asked for it to be.”
“It’s not.” Maybe if I say it enough times, it will be true for both of us. “It can’t be. Not just because of what our futures hold. But because we never were even supposed to have met.”
“But we did. And despite all odds—”
“Don’t say it.” I know it’s coming. There is the same tone in his voice as there was when he was speaking to Shaye. “If we stop this now, we can pretend none of it has happened.”
“We are beyond pretending.”
I know what he says is true, but I continue anyway. I can’t stand idly by as he condemns us both. “Neither of us will have to be hurt more than we already will be, already are. We can—”
“Despite all odds, I love you, Katria.”
I can’t do anything but stare at him. I burn with anger, with frustration, with passion. No three words have ever made me happier, or cut me deeper. Nothing has ever meant more to me while simultaneously having to mean nothing at all.
“No you don’t,” I whisper.
“I do.” He takes a step forward. “I love you in a way that I never expected to love anyone. I have always been destined to be thrown into a marriage of convenience. I never expected to love.”
“And I don’t want it.” I shake my head. My eyes are burning, tears pricking at their edges. “I don’t want your love.”
His expression crumples. I’ve wounded him more with those words than I’ve ever seen him before. He hovers in limbo, mouth opening and closing, clearly unable to figure out what he wants to say next. I allow him to stew in the silence. I’ve made myself clear.
“Why?”
I shake my head at his question, glancing askance.
“Will you not even give me the kindness of knowing what I have done to wrong you? Was I just not the man for you? I will accept whatever it is you say, even if it is nothing more than that you simply don’t feel the same. But please, take pity on me, and tell me clearly, just this once, because I thought… I thought that you might—”
“It’s not you,” I confess, knowing that silence would be easier—better. But I don’t have it in me to wound him in the way I should. “I will never love anyone.”
“What?”
“I made that vow to myself long ago. I made it before you even bought my hand. The belief that I would not fall in love with you had nothing to do with you.”
“Why do you refuse love?” The question is earnest and filled with naivety.
I bark laughter, incredulous that he doesn’t know better. “To love is pain. Just look at us, here and now, only at the start of this infatuation—” I won’t dare call it love “—and it is already boring holes in us that can never be filled. And this is just the beginning. Soon it will be honeyed words that are poison in disguise. It will be obliviousness to the wounds we inflict on each other. It will be children, forgotten, locked in closets, and used like weapons against each other. And it will be that way until the day we die, driven into an early grave by the other, no doubt.”
He disrupts my tirade with another step forward; he’s now encroaching on my personal space. I should flee, but nervous energy has me frozen in place. I’m trembling all over but I don’t know why.
“None of that is love,” Davien says simply, sadly.
“My father loved Joyce. She loved him in return. And I watched as that love consumed him day after day, blinded him. I watched as my father became the husk of the man I knew. He stood by as Joyce and Helen abu—” The word sticks in my throat.
“As they what?” His voice is low, teeming with what I would dare say is anger. I shake my head. “As they what?” he repeats more firmly.
“As they abused me.” I’m truly trembling now. But I don’t think it’s fear. It is as if every year of my life I was ratcheted tighter and tighter by an unseen hand. By the world’s worst torture device that I never even realized was on me. There wasn’t a moment of relief. Wrenching. Tighter and tighter. Constant. Yet with that one word, the bonds that held me are fraying. It is if by acknowledging it, I can finally begin to find release. “My father loved me…but what good was that love in the wake of that woman?”
“None of that is love.” He scoops my face with both his hands. His thumbs run across my cheeks as angry tears spill over my lower lids. “To call it love is an insult to the greatest thing we have on this world—love, true love, is the only thing more powerful than magic itself.”
“Then why?” I ask even though there is no possible way he would know the answer. “Why would my father stand by, if not because he loved Joyce?”
Yet even as I ask I can hear the remnants of a conversation I tried to forget. One I was too young to have and that was too brief to seem important until now. We need her, Katria, she has the mines. The company is struggling…and she is the first thing to alleviate the darkness of your mother’s death. I draw a shuddering breath.
“I don’t know,” Davien admits.
“I wish I could ask him,” I whisper.
“I wish you could as well. But even if you had the time to ask all the questions you need answers to…only you will be able to come to terms with all you have endured. Only you can grant yourself peace now.” He presses his forehead lightly against mine. “And that peace will come from love—loving yourself.”
I push him away. “Enough with love!”
“What you’ve known has never been love.”
“You’re lying.” I shake my head.
“I’m not. You just want me to be because it’s been easier to explain away the horrors you’ve endured.” He sees right through me. My tears fall more freely, pain escaping as sobs. Davien closes the rest of the gap between us. I don’t push him away again. One hand cradles the back of my head as he presses my cheek to his chest. The other hand wraps around my waist, holding me firmly.
“Why?” I don’t know what I’m asking. There’s so much wrapped up in that single why. Why was my family the way it was? Why was I never good enough for tenderness?
“There’s no reason for cruelty, no excuse.” He shakes his head and kisses my hair. I’ve never felt more protected than in this moment and it only makes me cry harder. “But I swear to you, Katria, with all I am and all I will be…as long as I draw breath, I will never let them, or anyone, hurt you again. You will never have to go back to that house. And should you ever wish to, because you feel that confronting them in the cruelty they have wrought will bring you some peace, I swear I will stand by your side if you need me.”
His words are sweeter than a song. I’ve never heard anything so lovely. There’s not even the slightest hint of smoke in the air around him. I pull my face away from his body to look up at him, tilting my head back as far as it will go to meet his eyes. His hair curtains around me like it did the first night I fell into his bed.
“Why would you do all that for me?” I whisper.
“You know why.” A sly smile plays at the corners of his mouth. “Because I love you, truly. I love you in a way that makes me want to sacrifice for you. That makes me want to move the mountains, or oceans, or stars, to merely see you smile.” He strokes my cheek again, looking down at me with all the wonder in the world. “That is what love is, Katria—what it should be. You are worthy of that love, from me, from others, and from yourself.”
I open
my mouth, but words don’t come. I want to tell him I love him. I want to so badly that my entire chest gets so tight that I can’t breathe. Yet wanting to tell him isn’t enough. There is still a block that I can’t overcome with words.
But maybe…
Maybe I can show him.
My hands slide up his sides, his chest, and wrap around his neck. I know his movements by now. I know the look of admiration and lust that he gives me as he stares through his lashes. It is always accompanied by kisses that taste of promises yet to be fulfilled.
Tonight, I will make good on those promises.
For one night, I will stop worrying about tomorrow. I will put aside all of the terrible ways that we might be hurt by this. I will ignore the oncoming fall from grace that we are destined for.
And instead, I will kiss him. I will know him. And I will regret nothing.
Chapter 27
He seems to know my mind and my heart before I do. Even as I’m still gathering my resolve and acknowledging my wants he kisses me fiercely. He makes wordless demands with his mouth that my body aches to oblige. I want to forget my pain and let it go. To give in to something for me, solely for me.
I grab his neck with fervent need, fingers knotting in his hair, pulling his mouth closer to mine even when there is no space left between us. Davien follows suit, hands coming alive. His palms and fingers are all over, from my face, to my breasts, to my hips. He draws hard circles with his thumbs, sending me into a frenzy with that movement alone.
We kiss deeper than we ever have before, as if we are trying to consume every last bit of doubt that could still linger between us. His teeth rake against my lower lip; I tilt my head back in tandem and release a moan. It’s met with a sharp inhale and a quiver on his breath.
“I want you,” I breathe.
“Tell me what you want.” He ducks his head, going for my exposed neck. I feel his teeth sink into my muscle, his lips close around.
“I want you,” I repeat. The world is spinning and I have to clutch on to him even tighter so my knees don’t give out from my light-headedness.
“Tell me what you want,” he growls as he pinches my flesh between his teeth.
Something within me breaks. Perhaps it is the last recesses of my self-control. But it feels as though a levy has been torn asunder by his thick and needy words.
“I want you to kiss me all over until there is not a part of my body that you don’t know. I want you to explore me with your tongue and fingers. I want you to make me yours as a man should make his wife. I want you to go slow until I am breathless and begging, and then I want you to go hard. I want to shatter together and fall like the silvery arcs of shooting stars as we descend from heaven of our making.”
He exhales a moan and retreats from my neck to return to my lips. He kisses me with rising intensity, each shift of his mouth messier and more sensual than the last. Without warning, Davien pulls away and presses his forehead into mine.
“I will do all of it…and then some,” he rasps. “And when I am done, when you are left aching, blissful, and yet still filled with desire, I will do it again. I will show you as best I am able just how loved you are.”
He holds me to him with a crushing grip and takes a step backwards. My knees nearly give out, forcing me to cling to him as the only stable thing in my world right now. Somewhere between the window and the table, his shirt is lost. I run my hands over the vast plane of his chest, bare to my touch, exposed only for me.
His skin is so hot in the cool night I’m surprised it doesn’t burn me. His hands bunch up my shirt, reaching for the hem. He pulls it over my head and I don’t stop him. Yet, as winter’s touch runs up my spine, sending a shiver through my body that has nothing to do with the tides of pleasure he’s already stirring within me, I pause.
Davien senses my hesitation, pulling away slightly. “Are you cold? Is it too much?”
“It’s not that. And no.” I want to cover my increasingly exposed flesh, but that want competes against my desire to continue running my hands up and down his arms. “I’ve never—”
“I haven’t either.” His mouth quirks into a relieved smile. “We will be each other’s teacher tonight, and eager student.” He bends down to brush his lips against mine.
“What if you don’t like me once you really see me?” I ask between quivering lips. I have yet to show him the scar on my back. He has only caught glimpses of the wounds I still carry with me.
“I really saw you in the first moment you walked in my door. I have seen your soul, and I have fallen in love with it. So there’s nothing about the mortal casing it’s housed within that could make me love you less.” He is so sure, so confident, the grip I have on myself relaxes. My hands return to his hips. “Trust in my love, in me. I will never break that trust.”
The next kiss he gives me is deeper than any of the others, slower and more confident. He inhales as I exhale, stealing my breath and my doubts with it. I give myself further to him.
I want him. I want all of him. If tonight is the last real night that we have with each other then I’m determined to set aside my doubts and enjoy him while I have him.
Davien’s hands leave my body. I let out a low whine. He chuckles. “I don’t want you to be colder than you already are.” He rummages in the saddlebags, pulling out a blanket and tossing it across the table.
“I am on fire,” I whisper.
He grabs my hips, pushing me up onto the table. My legs wrap around him on instinct. The feeling is glorious. My heart is a pulsing beat that begins to guide the melody that only we can sing.
He’s on top of me, his presence demanding every inch of my attention, as if he did not already have it. I shift as I lie back, allowing him space on the large stone table with me. Davien snakes his fingers through my hair, brushing it away, looking down at me between kisses as though I am a goddess incarnate.
Then, with a look that promises a thousand desires—the kind that are unspeakable in the light of day—he moves down my body, removing the remaining garments that keep us apart one by one and replacing them with kisses. Propping myself up on my elbows, I stare down at him as he nips lightly at each of my hip bones. He looks up at me with glassy eyes and heavy lids. Then slowly, deliberately, he works himself between my legs.
Before I can speak a word of shy protest, he reminds me that the time for modesty has long gone with a kiss that takes my breath away and I inhale it back as a moan. My toes curl. He holds me in a limbo of ecstasy that I have never felt before. Hot. Building. It can only escape with cries of pleasure.
This is what I wanted. This was the release I was looking for. This is why all of our other stolen kisses were never enough. Could never be enough.
I arch off the table, fists knotted in the blanket. At once, I come crashing down with a cry. I break in a way I never thought possible, and I land in a bliss so consuming that it seems as if it is the first real thing I’ve ever felt.
Davien straightens away, licking his lips with a grin. He moves to hover back over me. Positioned between my thighs. Our eyes meet. I see excitement, hesitation, nervousness—all emotions that I share.
“Are you sure?” he asks. “If you have any doubts we will stop.”
“I have many doubts…about everything but this moment. I want you, Davien,” I echo myself from earlier.
He presses himself forward. There’s tension, aching, a sudden snap of pain. I wince and he freezes.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” I reassure him.
Luckily he takes my word and does not stop. We inhale in tandem as his hips are flush against mine. My breath is thin and shallow as I grow accustomed to the feeling of him. And, when I am ready, he moves. I have never been more aware of his strong, sure presence than in those first few movements. Neither was I aware of just how hot the rolling core in the pit of my stomach could become.
We move together, breathlessly building our desire as one. This time, when the crash comes,
we fall together. He lands in my arms and we are a tangle of ecstasy and delight. Pure joy escapes as laughter as he pulls away and we share a smile—an intimate understanding that is only possible for lovers to comprehend.
“That was… That was…” I struggle to form words.
A sensual smirk slowly spreads across his lips. “That was merely round one.”
Davien claims my mouth once more and we tumble back into the throes of bliss.
Chapter 28
I am awake well before the dawn, so I get to watch sunlight creep across the room and warm Davien’s cheeks. We’re bundled tightly in the blankets and each other’s arms, warded against the chill. I slept harder than I have in a long time and woke with the thin sheen of bliss still coating me from last night’s affairs.
But rather than going back into that deep and dreamless rest, I chose to stay awake so that I could imprint this image of him onto my memory. This is our first and only morning together. It is likely the only morning I will ever wake up in a man’s arms. Even if Davien is right and love is not the wicked poison that was fed to me by Joyce, I still don’t think I will ever seek it out.
Partly because I’m still afraid of falling in love. But now, also, because I will never find a man who knows me as Davien has come to know me. Who sees me for all I am and wants me despite my scars. Who makes me smile with his sheer existence in an utterly illogical, impossible, and yet wonderful way.
He stirs and I can feel the peaceful spell that had been woven over us unraveling. Soon, we will get up. There’ll be clothes, and breakfast, and planning of rituals. I will give the magic that I’ve been carrying to him. And then the only way I will exist in this world is in the memory of a fae king.
Davien’s eyes crack open. He blinks sleepily, and then turns his head to face me. “Good morning,” he mumbles, rubbing his nose against mine before giving me a peck on the lips.