I didn’t. Because I couldn’t look away from him, watching him watching me, memorizing each other.
And gods, he was beautiful. More beautiful than his blood. More beautiful than his admiration. All of it was dwarfed by the way he looked slowly unraveling, losing himself in his pleasure the way I lost myself in mine, tethered only to each other.
I clutched his shoulder now, and his fingers were tight enough around my arm to leave marks on me. My legs folded around his hips, urging him into me faster, harder. The headboard banged against the wall, an increasing rhythm that echoed my heartbeat.
His lips found my cheek, my throat, my mouth, stifling my cries. And yet he pulled away again, right as he rushed to that pinnacle, his cock driving into me so hard that he had to clutch my waist to keep from sending me against the headboard.
He met my eyes. And I knew he wanted to see the conclusion of this experiment—as much as I did.
“Yes?”
His voice was strained, like it took a lot of concentration to form even that small word.
I took his next stroke with equal force, pushing against him, contracting around him.
“Yes,” I choked. “Yes.”
And he pinned my shoulders down as I lifted my hips to receive those final thrusts, and we watched each other’s faces as we came together. I had to fight to keep my eyes open through the explosion of pleasure that left sparks of white over my vision, that tore a cry from my throat that must have echoed down the ancient empty hallways of this house.
But gods, it was worth it to make sure I saw him, eyes both distant and sharp with ecstasy, looking as if he had seen his goddess herself.
He pushed deep as he came, and I wrung myself around him as if to make sure I gave and took every last shred of pleasure.
The world went quiet. Reality came back in blurry pieces.
Vale’s head dropped, his forehead pressing against mine. His muscles trembled a bit, which I noticed with a pang of guilt. He’d strained himself more than he should have so soon after his injuries, magical potions or no.
He rolled off me and, as if it was nothing other than instinct, his arms folded around me, pulling me onto his chest.
I had never liked being held much. I found it too hot and restrictive. But Vale’s body was just the right amount of warm and cool, just the right balance of soft and firm. It felt like it was built to accommodate the shape of my own.
I let him hold me, and as my eyelashes fluttered with a sudden wave of exhaustion, a terrible dread settled over me.
Vale had been my experiment, my question to be answered. I thought it would be easier to let go of him if I could understand his every unknown. But he was a question that had no answer. And every answer.
Vale wasn’t a cure for anything. He was a whole new disease, one I’d carry with me to my inevitable end.
I didn’t want to let him go. I didn’t like goodbyes. Easier to be the first one to go.
But they come for us all, anyway.
CHAPTER TWENTY
I really didn’t mean to sleep.
I didn’t have time for it. I never did—maybe that was why my body forced it upon me. One moment, I was allowing Vale to hold me. The next, I was blinking blearily into the shadows of his bedchamber. I hadn’t spent much time in this room. It was just as cluttered as all the others—full of books and weapons and mismatched artifacts, like he’d just run out of space to put the vast quantity of things he’d collected over his long life and just shoved them wherever he could.
The smile came without my permission.
Vale. Someone who collected knowledge just like I did. I felt like a failure of a scientist for not realizing what I was seeing the first time I came to this house. I thought it was just full of clutter. But no, all these things had touched him in some way. He was careful about what he kept.
He slept now.
I knew that before I even looked at him. I could feel the steady rise and fall of his chest beneath my head. It was a deep sleep. Good. He needed it.
I didn’t want this moment to pass.
I blinked away sleep and stared into the room. The blue light of white flames now flickered alongside a warmer accent. My eyes fell to the windows. Dim light seeped beneath the curtains. Daylight from an overcast sky.
Daylight.
“Shit,” I hissed.
How? How could I have slept so long?
When I pushed myself up, a wave of dizziness greeted me. My whole body protested. The hard realities of our situation crushed me one after the other.
The dead priests I had burned.
The medicine.
Vitarus.
Time. We didn’t have time.
And I had let myself fall asleep.
Shame flooded through me. Embarrassment, that I’d let myself be distracted for so long—that I’d let Vale see— I stood abruptly, ignoring my shaking knees and the sway to my step as I crossed the room.
I heard rustling fabric as Vale stirred behind me.
“Where are you going, mouse?”
His voice was weak and sleep-slurred, and I heard those things before I heard the joking lilt to his tone. He was still injured.
“I slept too long.”
He laughed. “I already know you well enough to know that is never true.”
It was true right now, when the world was falling apart. I went to the curtains and peered through them, careful not to let sunlight fall over Vale’s bed.
The window overlooked the back of Vale’s estate grounds. The charred remains of the bodies I had burned were a smear of ashy black bones.
I raised my gaze, and my throat closed.
No.
My knuckles trembled around the handful of velvet curtain.
Vale said, after a moment, “What is it?”
I didn’t even know how to answer him.
The end. That’s what it is.
I had seen once before what the sky looked like before a god appeared. I knew in that moment, all those years ago, that I would never forget the sight. And I knew it now, too, that I would never forget this one.
It wasn’t overcast, like I’d thought. The light had seemed strange because the sky was warped. Sunlight hit the ground in mottled, jerking flecks. Clouds circled in unnatural swirls in the distance, drawing tighter and tighter, and though the thickening mist at its center seemed like it should be dark, like storm clouds, instead it cradled distant fragments of bright yellow light—like little shards of lightning, floating suspended in the air, moving in slow ripples rather than jagged cracks.
The center of it was not over this estate.
No, it was miles away. One look, and I knew it hovered over the town of Adcova.
I couldn’t move. Panic settled deep in my bones.
“Lilith?”
Vale rose and approached me. I felt his warmth behind me, even though I couldn’t turn to look at him. He peered through the curtain, staying away from the light, and released a long exhale.
“I had hoped…” he murmured, and then let himself trail off. Because we had both hoped the same thing—that Vitarus had long ago decided he didn’t give any care to Adcova, and he’d continue to ignore us. Any encounter with the gods was a gambling game, and we had lost.
Of course he didn’t listen to decades of prayer and pleas for mercy. Of course he didn’t listen to dozens or hundreds or thousands of sacrifices in his honor.
This. This is the thing he would notice. What a cruel, ridiculous joke.
Our sins had not escaped Vitarus, and they would not go unpunished.