“You know how to ruin me,” he says quietly, a hint of amusement in his tone. “And entrap me. That’s no small feat.”
“Corvan…” My cheeks heat up as I feel a flicker of irritation. “We are trapped in a wooden, er, morphology of my own making. I fear that if I don’t try and get a hold of this thing, it’s going to get us in trouble sooner or later.”
Corvan’s lazy smile turns a little wicked. “My dear, we’re already in trouble. I’m intoxicated by you, and you seem to manifest power every time you take a bite of me. So just stop biting me… or learn to control it.”
“C-control it?”
“It seems like you have too much magic at times. That you don’t know how to contain it nor release it. You don’t even know what it feels like. So these things occur at certain moments—when your threshold for control is lowered. You melt the arm of a chair. Get stuck in the ground. It seems ingesting my magic sets it off. So you could just stop doing that for the foreseeable future.”
“The second time it happened—when I was tethered to the earth—I didn’t taste your magic.”
“No, but the effect lessened after I drank from you—when I took your magic. And the only thing that happened to me was that I felt invigorated beyond belief.”
“So I make you strong, and you restrain me?” I stare at him in disbelief. “We’re a likely pair, aren’t we?”
“I wouldn’t have to restrain you, as you put it, if you could control your power.” Corvan reaches up and caresses my cheek, barely able to move through the tangle of deformed wood. “But that will come with time. You’ve only just come into this, Finley. It’s incomprehensible and frightening, I know. You’ll probably lose control time and time again before you can master it, to the point where you’ll feel like you’re going insane. But don’t worry, because I’m here, and I’m not going to let you slip. And I suspect that when you’re done, you’ll be immensely powerful.”
“I don’t want to be powerful,” I grumble. “All I ever wanted was to…”
“Was to what?” his touch becomes achingly gentle. At least the rogue wooden tendrils haven’t restrained his hands.
Corvan’s simple question floors me. I close my eyes and take a deep breath, trying to think beyond the cold walls of Ruen castle and the faint hopes of my previous existence.
“What I want…” I inhale his delicious scent; I savor the feeling of his warm body welded against mine. Spent, he’s still inside me.
I want you to stay with me, always.
I open my eyes again. “I want my life to be my own. I want you to be mine and mine only. I want those I cherish to be protected. I want to know my mother’s truth; whether she’s truly alive. I want those who hurt her to be punished. And if she is alive, I want her to… to…”
A trickle of wetness slips down my cheek.
Am I… crying?
I didn’t expect to…
Corvan doesn’t say anything. He just waits, giving me time to gather my thoughts.
And in the space between us, I find my yearning.
“If it came to pass that my mother were alive, and I was somehow able to meet her, I would understand if she were to harbor resentment in her heart, and yet… I wouldn’t want for her to despise me.”
“Finley.” Corvan’s voice is impossibly tender. “How could anyone despise you?”
“I carry my father’s tainted blood. The harsh light of reality makes the truth obvious to me now. That he’s a cruel man, of feeble character, opportunistic and vain; wantonly ambitious. She had no choice in my conception.”
Corvan’s gentle fingers brush a tendril of stray hair away from my cheek. “Finley, our blood doesn’t define us.”
The tenderness in his face leaves me breathless. My thoughts are a visceral mess of desperate wanting and dread. “How could you of all people say that?”
His expression turns achingly bittersweet. “An apt question, considering that all I own and command has come to me through birthright, not hard work and merit. I’m ashamed to say that when I was younger, I was mostly indifferent to the gravity of the situation— to what it truly means to be my father’s son. It was only when I went into the military—when I traveled across countries and fought battles against ordinary men who march beneath other flags—that I began to understand.” His lips twist with dark amusement and sorrow. “I take no pride in being the once-heir to a genocidal maniac, Finley. And I have spent the latter part of my life quietly fighting against everything that my father represents. It’s a cruel trick of fate that the gods, in all their bloody mystery, have chosen to grant me the power to take everything in one fell swoop if I choose. So you see, Finley, my father is no better than yours, and if I were to give in to all I’ve learned from him, I would be a hundred times worse. But somehow, there’s enough in this world to keep me from turning into some kind of monster, and now that I’ve found you…” He goes quiet, studying me, his eyes ablaze. “It makes it all worthwhile. Everything. I shouldn’t even have to say this, but you’re nothing at all like your father, Finley, and if we happen to find your mother, I have no doubt she’ll see beyond the wrongs that were done to her.”
I cling to his words desperately. The supple wood cage encasing us tightens ever further, as if it were my heart itself, greedily holding onto this man, who makes me more than myself.
Because I never want to let him go.
“You will learn to control it, Finley. You will overcome yourself, because the sum of us is far greater than the parts.” His smile turns a little bit wicked. Fangs gleam in the ever-brightening sunlight. “Until that happens, I can, of course, volunteer to absorb your excess magic.”
I’m still caught up in the heat of his desire.
I can never escape, nor do I want to.
I can’t take this anymore; this pressure, this uncertainty.
He’s the only one that’s ever made me feel perfectly whole.
“Fine, Corvan.” As magic crackles and seethes in my veins, I tip my head back and offer him my neck—again. It’s just too maddening—the thought that he’ll drink from me again and again, and he gets terribly aroused by it. “Just… fine.”
“Hmm,” he rumbles, managing to look both supremely satisfied and terribly thirsty. Hasn’t he just had my blood? He’s already wanting more?
And he’s hard again, and he’s still inside me. I never knew a man could become aroused again so quickly, but then again, he isn’t an ordinary man.
I close my eyes and tremble as he kisses my neck with such tender intensity. His lips form delicious imprints against my skin—as if I’m being branded with his wanting.
And it occurs to me that as much as he gives succour to me, this man needs me too.
Not just for my blood.
This man has been teetering on the edge. For all his outward perfection and natural ease at command, he’s been a little bit… lost.
Maybe I could be the very thing that stops him from becoming what he despises.
As his fangs pierce my skin, I shudder in awe and delight. Realization unfurls like a cautious bloom.