Corrupted: An Epic Dragons and Immortals Romantic Fantasy (Fallen Emrys Chronicles Book 1)

by E E Everly

  “You’re infuriating.”

  “Another truth you’ve learned about me.”

  I clenched the bedpost, wrapping my hands around it, squeezing, imagining I was choking Caedryn for one dismal second. I dropped my hands. “Stop. I can’t deal with you like this. Don’t make a joke out of…” I didn’t know what I was trying to say. Our relationship? Us? My feelings? Was I having feelings?

  “We should go to sleep,” he said. “You might say something you regret.”

  Touch me, you stupid fool! He was lucky a bed stood between us. “I’d regret? And you’d regret nothing? Why should I go to sleep just to wake with you touching my finger the way you do?”

  “Niawen. What do you want?”

  He looked as though he didn’t know what I was talking about, but I knew well that he did. “How could you not know?”

  “You’re upset because I’m not doing something.”

  “You’re not touching me!” That sounded inane.

  He blinked. “You want me to touch you?”

  I almost jumped across the bed to jab him in the eye.

  Never had I begged someone to touch me. Everyone touched me. Strangers at the festival brushed my body so often I would have thought they were assaulting me. Some of them had, thinking I hadn’t noticed. Men always wanted to touch me, and here Caedryn was doing his best to touch only my accursed finger.

  “A touch must convey the right sentiment,” he said.

  “You’re not letting me in. I can’t read what this pinkie touch means. Please tell me. Open your mind to me so I don’t have to beg.”

  “You’re begging?”

  “You know I am.”

  “Niawen, it’s not a good idea.” His facial expression, the fervor in his eyes, the crease of his eyebrow, the almost indecipherable shake of his head pleaded with me not to make him open up.

  I didn’t soften. “You better have a good reason.”

  “You have no idea what you’re doing to me right now.” He paced on his side of the room, glancing at me and looking away again and again. “You can’t see the flush of your cheeks, the forceful way you hold yourself. The rise of your chest with each inhalation before you fire your words in my direction. The way your sleeve slips back from your delicate wrists as you gesture wildly at me. You carry so much fire, but your eyes are desperate.”

  “Do you want to see desperate?” I charged around the end of the bed.

  Caedryn backed away and lifted his hand. “Please, Niawen, stay back.”

  Frustrated, I bellowed, “I’m sleeping in my own room!”

  “Let me explain. You deserve an explanation. I just didn’t want to tell you.”

  “We couldn’t carry on like this forever.” Please, free me from purgatory.

  “No, we couldn’t. But I thought you’d be patient.”

  “I’ve never been patient.”

  He smiled. “I know, woman, I know. I was hoping you’d sense I needed your patience.”

  He needed me to be patient with him? Oh. Oh. Oh. I’m so foolish. I was pressuring him too much, too fast. “I’m so sorry.” I turned away, ashamed, and rubbed my forehead. Why was I determined to force his hand?

  “So how do I phrase this without horrifying you?” He stepped closer. I felt him—his heat, his emotion and waves of his essence.

  I urged myself to remain calm as I faced him. “You can’t horrify me. Just say it.”

  His eyes raged. I had cracked his control—the stoic, passive indifference he flung at me daily. “Fine! It’s just… I can’t believe you’re forcing the truth out of me!”

  What did I do?

  His words fell with panicked breaths. “This is a conversation for lovers, for those who’ve spoken for each other. For those who’ve bonded.”

  The heat in the room jumped several degrees.

  For lovers. I was deep in a dragon’s den filled with flaming hatchlings. Too late. I plowed ahead. “I don’t care. I don’t cower from intimate details.”

  “Yes, you aren’t delicate.”

  I stared Caedryn down. I forced light into my eyes until I was sure they burned like wicked embers.

  Caedryn’s mouth opened slowly after he tore his eyes away from mine. “You’ll abhor me when I tell you.”

  “Out with it! You are killing me.”

  He only nodded. Once. And then swallowed. “When I express love, it’s more forceful, more impassioned than I intend.” He took a breath. “Bordering on violent.”

  His words doused my fire. “What do you mean?”

  “Violent passion.” Caedryn kept his eyes on the thick carpet. “You couldn’t understand. No, you haven’t been with a man.” He swiped his brow. “Please, don’t make me tell you more. You shouldn’t hear this.”

  I sank onto the end of the bed. My fingers clutched the fabric. “In Gorlassar an emrys is intimate with only the one they’ve bonded to. Who’ve you been with? Who are you bonded to?”

  “I’ve bonded to no one.”

  “But you must have!”

  “I’ve shared a mutual seduction with one woman.”

  “Seduction?” I whispered. I crushed my hand to my heart, feeling the organ splintering one small shard at a time. Unbonded relationships were forbidden. A sin. Evil. The mortal world was just unveiled as the abyss it truly was. Men murdered. They died. They took intimacy when they desired, without eternal bonds. My admiration for Caedryn plummeted off a cliff into that sucking abyss.

  He must have sensed my emotions because he staggered, grabbing the bedpost. “Don’t wound me in such a way. Let me explain.”

  I nodded, fighting the instinct to recoil. He was too close.

  “I did love her. She was the only one, but our relationship wasn’t a love as you’ve witnessed between others in Gorlassar. I imagine when you discern their feelings they’re pure, sweet, beautiful. Our love, the love I had for this woman, was raw. Not tender. Untamed. Desperate. Sadistic.”

  My face pinched painfully.

  “Imagine a craving so intense, so insatiable, you’d do anything to satisfy it,” he said.

  Caedryn’s words came back to me. Not in me to be satisfied. “No,” I whispered. “No.”

  “That’s the truth.”

  “You’re trying to be careful with me.”

  Silence, while he gathered his words.

  I didn’t wait. “Are you saying you’d force yourself upon me if given the chance? If you couldn’t control yourself? This is why you won’t touch me.”

  “No. No! I’d never hurt you!” Caedryn pressed his fist to his mouth.

  “But you’ve thought about making love to me.”

  He dropped his fist and looked squarely at me. “Every day.”

  I fought to keep my breath steady. I could do nothing about my racing heart. “Your love was so perverse you cower at touch?” His twisted, human love. His dark mortal side. I felt sick.

  “Not exactly. After welcoming you in my arms when you arrived, the way you clung so despairingly, so injured, and yet so fragile and innocent, I knew I couldn’t offer you more than the touch of my hand. Your embrace was too consuming. You burned my soul and nearly broke me. I’ve tried to be so careful since then.”

  I smoothed my hand down my neck. And I had crawled into bed with him, not knowing how he had to work to restrain himself.

  Caedryn leaned around the bedpost, hovering above me. “What I feel for you is not what I felt for her.”

  “Who was it?”

  Caedryn only stared at me, reading my face, willing me to realize so he wouldn’t have to say her name.

  “It was her—the empress—Rhianu.” I’d betrayed the empress’s heart.

  “Yes,” he said softly.

  I hadn’t considered how a twisted past with another woman might affect Caedryn. My soul was fraught with worry. What did his revelation mean for me? What did it mean for us?

  “Niawen, did you hear what I said?”

  “Of course.”

  “Not a
bout the empress. About us. I said ‘I feel for you.’”

  “You feel for me?” I rose and closed the distance between us until I saw my reflection clearly in his eyes. “What do you feel for me?”

  He inhaled. “So many things. An ache. A want. A need.”

  Those were possessive things. I held my ground, not satisfied. “You’d rather possess me—own me.”

  “I’m saying everything incorrectly. What I’m trying to say is I see you. I know you. I understand what you’ve been through. I want to protect you. I want… to kiss away your sadness.”

  “But you don’t,” I whispered. He wants to kiss me.

  Did I want to kiss him?

  He whirled away, tensing, hesitating, but rounded back on me with fury. “By the light, Niawen! You won’t be satisfied until I do, will you?”

  Caedryn lifted his hand near my face but didn’t touch me.

  I held steady, waiting, hoping. Worrying. What if he couldn’t restrain himself? How would his kiss feel then? What did violent passion feel like?

  “The fear behind your eyes gives me pause,” he said.

  “I’m not afraid of you.” My words were an outright lie. I was afraid of how he could affect me. How he could itch under my skin, pushing… taunting.

  His hands became claws as he fought the urging in them—reach out or not?

  Reach out.

  His hands slid past my cheeks and into my hair. He leaned in close and pressed his forehead to mine.

  I held my breath. Pressing foreheads together was the customary emrys greeting. Family members embraced each other this way, but as they did, they expressed candid feelings for each other. Did Caedryn know about this tradition? Had Siana taught it to her posterity?

  Was he testing me?

  I should have given him the emotions I felt for him, but he wasn’t giving me any in return.

  I hesitated too long in my consideration.

  “See, touch makes you nervous, as it does me,” he whispered.

  “Has it been a while since you’ve touched another person?” My words were barely audible. “Besides me?”

  “I imagine intimacy among acquaintances is the same in your realm as it is in mine. We touch rarely. Half-emrys go about reading each other so often, understanding every single emotion, that touch becomes unnecessary. And when the opportunity arises, we can’t control it.”

  Violent passion.

  “Tell me, whose touch have you felt?” His breath kissed my cheek.

  That wasn’t enough.

  His fingers trembled against my face. “Tell me how and where. How did it make you feel? How do you want me to touch you?”

  “I don’t know.” I tried to look away, tried to conceal the lie on my lips. I knew exactly how I wanted Caedryn to touch me, and I knew that he knew.

  He was taunting me into madness.

  “Tell me,” he said.

  I should have been furious that he was demanding answers from me when he was still masking himself, but I was lost to his commanding presence. “I thought you were concerned about losing control.”

  “I am,” he whispered against my cheek.

  His lips rolled against mine. Carefully at first. As his mouth smothered every surface of my pout, his hands held me prisoner. He braced my head with one hand, and the other dropped to my lower back and pressed me firmly against his body.

  I whimpered with a breath. My legs weakened. If he released me, I’d crumple to the floor.

  Now he fed me his emotions. Now he willed them into me.

  Appetite for the pleasures of flesh. Sweetness.

  Demand for gratification he could not yet have.

  Itching for satiation.

  Deliciousness.

  Abandoning restraint.

  He couldn’t have meant for me to feel all this. I clutched his shirt with both hands for support while my forearms strained against his chest as I forced space between our bodies.

  He sensed my alarm. His control crept in, and Caedryn reluctantly, with great effort, released me.

  I shoved him in the chest, feeling violated, as I stumbled back, covering my mouth.

  “Niawen, forgive me.” He reached for me.

  I held my hand up to halt him as I edged away, clutching my stomach. I was dizzy with emotion.

  “I told you.” He cursed. “I’m sorry. Please, let me fix this. Give me time.”

  When I could stand upright, I turned and ran out the door.

  FIFTY-THREE

  I wasn’t sure where to go as distressed and panicked as I was. At first I returned to my room, but as I stared at my bed and the inviting covers, I couldn’t let them put me to rest. Caedryn would howl during the night. I’d resist going to him, but I’d fail.

  I rummaged for my fur boots and a heavy cloak. Soon I found my way out of the citadel. After winding through several alleys, I ended at the docks overlooking the river. The air was achingly chilled, and the night, stoic. I marched to the edge of a dock and plopped down.

  Ice edged the river’s banks. A slow current near the center kept the river from completely freezing. In the dark, the far bank was obscured.

  I tucked my head into my hands and debated bugging Seren. The truth was I didn’t want to tell her what had happened. I didn’t want her to read my feelings and know what kind of man Caedryn was.

  My heart was still splintering. The shards were cutting into the tissue of my lungs and making breathing laborious. I curled tightly, with my knees to my chest. What had I gotten myself into? Caedryn hadn’t harmed me, but he was forceful. Did I like the kiss? I chewed on my index finger. I wasn’t sure. Caedryn had tripped sensations deep inside me I didn’t know I could experience.

  Dangerous feelings.

  My first kiss with Kelyn had started vastly different. A simple innocent kiss that inspired so much bliss had me drifting on a cloud. I had wanted Kelyn to enjoy the kiss with me. But as the feelings drove deeper into me, it translated to a carnal appetite.

  A human pleasure of the flesh.

  Exactly what Caedryn had expressed.

  I hadn’t been ready for such sensuality with Kelyn. I wasn’t sure I was ready for it with Caedryn.

  But what was my relationship with Caedryn?

  Heat crept into my face. I wanted to say I liked the kiss, but once again, I felt dirty. Was every experience in the mortal world going to mark me in some way? I understood why the emrys were told to never leave Gorlassar. Humanity’s corruption stained every soul and the misdeeds of its people were so commonplace that many didn’t care if they were immoral.

  Siana should have taught her children better.

  Emrys are guardians. Emrys are beings of light. Emrys are pure. Uncorrupted. Undefiled.

  Deian, I’m defiled.

  But Caedryn doesn’t want to hurt me. He’s trying to control himself. Surely that revealed hints of the depths of his feelings.

  He still wouldn’t show me them. His mental block was so frustrating.

  Respect his privacy. He’s half-human. Half of him remains hidden. Half of him is darkness.

  But half of him is light. He’s immortal. He wants to share things with me, but he’s afraid. The first morning at breakfast he told me having another emrys around was refreshing, so he could be understood more, but he has remained closed off.

  Old habits were difficult to break. I resolved to force him to open up. He had to. If he felt something for me, then he’d have to learn how to express it with words and thoughts.

  Not violent actions.

  I could bond with him mentally. He’d have to open up then.

  That was a major commitment. One that wasn’t broken easily if a relationship didn’t develop.

  Did I want a relationship with Caedryn? A niggling told me I was settling for the one immortal on this side of the world. If I lined up the men, mortal or immortal, whom I had feelings for or who had expressed feelings for me in return, would I pick Caedryn?

  No. Even out of all the mortals—no.
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  My options were limited. I could do what Siana had done and marry a mortal. When her husband died, did his death crush her? Did she move on and marry another? I wished I could speak with her.

  But I couldn’t. And I couldn’t settle for the three men I considered to be my favorite humans.

  I was going to settle. My heart told me I would. I wouldn’t settle for living alone either. Emrys were made to be together. Two people united as one. The feeling wasn’t something I could fight against. Yes, there was a pull. A deep part of my soul called for another, even though I told myself I didn’t come to Bryn to marry anyone. Did I honestly think I could marry a human? That was ridiculous. I came to the mortal world, hoping to escape that feeling—to turn marriage into an impossibility.

  I’d always feel the need to be with another.

  Once again I cursed the emrys and all we were.

  After considering every angle, I decided to pursue Caedryn.

  He wasn’t without charm. I didn’t find him unattractive.

  I did like his smile, and the fact that he wasn’t formed from an emrys mold.

  I’d have to develop our relationship slowly and consider how I’d react to his past and his advances as he revealed them.

  Was I tough enough to handle his love?

  I had no doubt. My fear had been an automatic reaction, but as I thought about the revelation he’d shared with me, I shouldn’t have been afraid and reacted the way I did. I should have shown my support. I shouldn’t have egged him further by demanding more from him either.

  Develop our friendship. Encourage him to open up. Share his nightmares. Reveal his prior deceptions.

  He calls himself master of deception. His self-proclaimed title bothered me. Could he still deceive me if we shared a mental bond? A bond like that was akin to a dragon bond. We could keep secrets from each other. We would still have privacy, but only if we erected a barrier in our minds.

  Like the barrier I had with Seren. I was so ashamed by the way my life was going that I didn’t want to open my heart and my mind to my dragon.

  I’m failing as a guardian. The only remaining benefit of having my dragon stone was Seren had her unending life as long as we were linked.

  I rubbed my eyes. The sun was breaking over the horizon. I had stewed throughout the night, sitting so still I felt frozen to the dock. I didn’t want to return home yet. Caedryn needed to fret all day. I’d make my rounds and enjoy a day of work.