Kellee came down the corridor. He passed by Talen on his left, and they exchanged a silent, knowing glance.
Kellee stopped outside my room and dragged a hand across his chin. “May I?”
What was he asking here? Just to come in or more?
“Tell me to fuck off if you want.” He shrugged like it didn’t matter, but his skittering glances made it clear it did.
How could I let him leave when he looked like a lost puppy on my doorstep? “Come in, Marshal. I’m not sure what you and Talen have been planning, but I can—”
The kiss was there on my lips, a curious and wary thing, almost too fleeting to be one of Kellee’s demands, but I’d take it all the same. I folded my arms around his neck. I waited for his heat to kick in, for the vakaru to rise to the surface, and steeled myself against the threat of him, but it didn’t come. The kiss ended, and he pulled back, out of reach of my chasing mouth, his expression an odd muddle of doubt and wariness.
I hadn’t expected him to stop.
“Kellee—”
He pushed a finger to my lips and laughed softly at my scowl. He then led me to the bed. This wasn’t like him. Where was the heat, the rage, the fire from my vakaru?
“I feel like... we need to talk,” I spoke softly, carefully, watching him fiddle with my waistcoat laces, “there are things I want to tell you. So many things... and Sota, and Talen... The way it is with us, with them... I want to know you’re all right with us, all of us together, I mean. Because... you, more than the others, I need you to be okay.” Because you’re the one who holds us together. It’s you, Kellee. It was always you. The Messenger was your dream. But at the sight of his intense gaze those words stalled on my tongue.
After easing the laces open, he slipped the garment off my shoulders. I watched his face as he deliberately avoided my eyes and concentrated on the vest’s fastenings next.
“So much happened...” I added, but he still wasn’t speaking.
The vest went, leaving me standing in my breasts-strap and pants. I lifted my gaze again and finally met his. And then, with his face somewhere between curious and questioning, I realized this wasn’t sexual. A vakaru thing, maybe, or just a caring thing. I wasn’t sure, but as his fingers unbuttoned my pants, I had a hard time not grabbing for him despite my tiredness. He pushed my pants over my hips and let them pool at my feet.
His gaze burned, and his hands were steady on my hips. He fought the creature inside him, and my own needs fluttered awake. I stood on my tiptoes and kissed him, letting him know it was okay. That we were okay.
He broke away, tasting me on his lips.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, by cyn. Nothing is wrong…” He started on his shirt’s hook and eye fastenings, but when his fingers fumbled it, I took over. His gaze warmed my face as he watched me open one fastener at a time. “Will you let me lie with you?”
An odd phrasing. I was definitely missing something. “Is this a vakaru thing? Because you’re sending me mixed messages here, and if you don’t clarify what we’re doing, I’m just going to jump your bones and screw up whatever this is before it starts.”
He captured my hands, his gaze intense. “You’re exhausted, and don’t lie to me and tell me you’re fine. You’re not. None of us are. It killed me to be so far from you. Every day I died a little more. I haven’t felt that kind of fear in a long time. It’s…” He licked his lips. “I would like to lie with you, to be close... I just need to be close to you.”
Definitely a vakaru thing and a relief. I wasn’t sure I had the energy for anything more. “I’d like that.”
I pulled the sheets back and lay down on the bed, watching him undress. His movements seemed methodical and deliberate, likely because he had to concentrate to keep his mind from straying. My mind certainly wandered the second his pants came off. Maybe I did have the energy after all, because parts of him had more than platonic cuddling in mind.
“You’re making this much harder than it should be,” he grumbled.
“I can see that.”
Kellee’s face fell. “Kesh.”
“All right. Okay.” Rolling onto my back, I stared at the ceiling. “I can resist. It’s not like you’re anything special to look at.”
The bed dipped, and although Kellee didn’t touch me, he might as well have. The fact he was lying beside me, naked, not touching, set my blood racing. “This is a twisted vakaru thing, isn’t it? Some kind of torture?”
“It kinda is, yeah.”
“Why didn’t you just say so?”
“Because it’s a twisted vakaru thing and I wasn’t sure you’d go for it.”
“So, what are we doing exactly?”
“Right now, we’re not touching.”
I pressed my lips together. “I could think of more fun things to do.”
“That’s not the point.”
“Can you explain this point to me? Because I think I lost it somewhere.”
He growled low, sending all kinds of lovely shivers through me and perking up my nipples, because this no-touching rule wasn’t hard enough already.
“When vakaru mate,” he said, “we endure a time together without sex. It’s a…” He struggled for the word. “It’s a commitment, a promise, a sign that we care for each other and that it’s not just about fucking each other blind.”
Fucking each other blind sounded amazing. My mouth twitched.
“Mate?” I snickered.
“Stop it.”
“Like… animals?”
“You’re impossible.”
“Are we allowed to touch or must we—”
“Yes, but right now, I’m—”
I rolled onto my side, tucked one leg over his, and pulled his thigh tight against the heat between my legs. To make it worse, I threw my arm over his chest and laid my head against his shoulder. He hadn’t moved an inch except for breathing, which he seemed to be struggling with.
“There,” I told him. “No more touching. If we can handle this, are we then married in Valand?”
He laughed, and the sound rumbled through his chest. “A vakaru marriage is something you don’t want to see.” He tucked his arm around me, holding me close, and gradually, Marshal Kellee thawed and his breathing slowed.
“Kesh?”
“Mm…” I could have stayed in his arms forever, but sleep was already tugging me under, and soon he’d be gone from my grasp.
“He’ll never hurt you or anyone else again.”
He spoke of Oberon, and he was right. We had done the right thing. The king wouldn’t have stopped. He couldn’t. And in the end, he’d grown too tired to keep fighting the dark. I knew that feeling, but it wasn’t over for us. There was a fight ahead, one larger and more dangerous than we’d ever faced before.
I closed my eyes and yawned. “I think I gave a lawman my heart.”
“There’s no safer place for it.”
“I love you, Kellee,” I whispered, falling away, falling deeper into the dark, into another’s waiting embrace. “And that’s the truth.”
I’d almost fallen too far to hear his whispered, “I love you too.” Almost.
Chapter 28
Marshal Kellee
We’d been through a lot, Kesh and I. Fought with each other a lot too, more than most folks survived. I’d tried to kill her a few times, and she’d paid me back in kind, yet somehow, here we were, alive and on the frontline of a war playing out between forces bigger than both of us.
I’d let her slip through my fingers on Hapters. That wouldn’t happen again. She had to know. I had to tell her that, when all was said and done, I’d always be by her side. I’d seen her stand up to Oberon and cast aside the hold he had over her. I knew that had been no easy thing to do. It had taken the death of an entire race for me to do the same. She was the brightest light among us, the star we all revolved around.
Yet here I was, lying awake beside her, with all the things I wanted to say lodged in my throat. I’d faced huma
n armies and enormous tek machines, and I’d fought in wars and slain warriors like they were nothing more than paper in the breeze, but none of that had struck fear in me like the thought that she might hear everything I had to say and laugh. Eledan was a fool for falling into her trap. But hadn’t I done the same?
I stroked her hair and listened to her soft breathing, relishing the feel of her soft skin against mine. This woman slayed me with her words, and with her body, every time she looked at me.
Twisting out from under her, I propped my head on my hand and watched her sleep. She was everything I’d dreamed she could be when I’d asked her to help me save people. And she was more. She was the myth, the heart of us and of the people who had pinned their hopes on her. I loved this stubborn, beautiful, strong woman.
Her lashes fluttered.
Dreaming.
Concern tightened my chest.
A dream meant nothing… or it would have meant nothing if I hadn’t heard the apology between her words every time she’d spoken last night.
“Kesh?”
Her eyes shifted behind closed eyelids but didn’t open. Eledan’s prophetic words sailed back to me. When the time comes, you’ll let her sleep.
Dread plummeted through me, taking my gut with it.
“Kesh?” I shook her shoulder, swept her hair back. She didn’t wake. She couldn’t wake.
“Eledan.” The name was a growl on my lips and a curse in my head. He had her.
I shot from the bed and tugged on my pants, struggling with my emerging claws. “You son of a sluagh, I’ll kill you…”
I’d find him and gut him. The laughter, I heard it then, distant as though he were in the next room.
“I’ll rip your fucking heart out, Dreamweaver!”
“Too late…” the voice purred. “I’ve already given it to her, and in exchange, the Messenger is mine.” He rippled into the room like a ghost.
I lunged at him. The Dreamweaver dissolved beneath my claws, and the laughter started up again behind me. He stood by her bedside, hands clasped behind his back as he leaned over to admire Kesh’s sleeping face. I wanted to strike again, to tear through him, but he wasn’t really here. This was all an illusion.
When I got my hands on him, I’d tear out his throat with my teeth and see how he laughed then. “You’re a fool if you think you can have her.”
“A fool, a prince no more, my Queen of Hearts has opened a door.”
The illusion of Eledan straightened. His smirk, his sly eyes, it all made my hatred burn inside. Somewhere, he was real. But this was Faerie. He drew his power from everywhere. I couldn’t fight this illusion and win.
“Go, take your fallen Nightshade far from Faerie,” he said, voice swimming in the air around us. “I’ll warn you, only this once. Try to stop me and I’ll bring all of Faerie’s nightmares down upon you and yours, vakaru. You’ll lose, like you did the last time you denied Faerie Her hold over you.”
“Your threats are empty, Eledan. You’re a forgotten prince on a dying world. And now the Hunt is free. How will you control that?”
He laughed again, summoning my growl.
“Bring me the polestar pieces—an acorn, a thimble, and Kesh’s sleeping body—and I’ll petition my queen, even beg her, to return to your side, if you wish it.” His gaze turned cruel and sharp. “But I can’t guarantee she’ll accept. She made a deal, her life in my service for the freedom of her people, who now love her. Is your love worth more to her than her beloved saru?”
No, it wasn’t, and it shouldn’t be. She’d sacrificed herself to save the saru, something I’d wished a thousand times I could have done for my own people. Oh Kesh, it didn’t have to be this way.
“The Hunt, now free of my brother’s control, will gladly take her, and all her saru with her, should she renege on our deal. There’s nothing it likes more than oathbreakers.”
“Why do you want the polestar? Don’t you have everything already?”
“The Light and Dark must be balanced, or Faerie and her worlds will descend into mayhem. You’re a reasonable creature. Can’t you see we’re both on the same side?”
I lashed at him again. His image flickered out and blinked back to my right.
I would never be on the same side as the fae or bow to them again. I’d see every last one of them dead and dust before I stood alongside Eledan. “You mentioned a thimble. What thimble?”
“Talen has it. Didn’t he tell you?” Eledan chuckled. “Hmm, the Nightshade is keeping secrets from his vakaru pet soldier?”
Every word he spewed was poison. “Do you know the location of the last piece?”
The prince smirked. “I keep its location close to my chest.”
Then I couldn’t give Eledan the pieces. He couldn’t be the one to control the polestar and the Hunt. Both needed to be destroyed. I had to find a way to do that, to stop him and all of Faerie for good. But Kesh… Kesh was at the heart of this.
She dreamed on, her face serene.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “How can you save them all from me? But consider this: what if Kesh doesn’t want to be saved? I helped her become something more, and I helped her saru see the truth of her. Together, we will bring Faerie to her knees. What have you done for her? Locked her in a cage and fought her at every turn? You caught the Wraithmaker, and I set her free—”
“Don’t waste your breath, prince. I know Kesh. Whatever you think you have on her is a lie.”
“She survived Faerie. She has the saru bowing down to her. She has the Nightshade and the last vakaru. She has the last prince. And inside her soul, a star shines. So ask yourself, vakaru, do any of us know her, really? Humor me and consider this: what if Mylana is exactly where she’s always wanted to be? Not a slave to Faerie, but its queen. Think about that… vakaru. Think about every word she has spoken to you and her every deed. Was it genuine, or was it all in pursuit of power? Which one of us is truly naïve? Do you think she’d give all that up for you?”
Screw him and his mind games. I knew Kesh. “Kesh will never let you win. Whatever game you’re playing, she’s already won it. I’m coming for you, Eledan, and don’t think I won’t tear Faerie apart to stop you.”
“It’s not me you should stop. Bring me her body and let’s see whose side she is on. Let us see if she will wake as the people’s Messenger or Faerie’s queen.”
To be continued in the Messenger Chronicles finalé, Her Dark Legion, Messenger Chronicles #5 ~ coming April 2019.
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Prince of Dreams (Messenger Chronicles Book 4) Page 32