Every grip and stroke seems to fill an empty well inside of me. Despite the fact that he knows what touching my bare skin can do, he never hesitates. It’s like he can’t help himself, like he needs to feel me.
Midas never touches me like that. His touches are always placating—a pat on my head, a tap on my jaw. Either that, or it’s possessive. But with Slade, it’s neither of those things. He touches me like he can’t resist, like he can’t go one more second without feeling me.
Resisting him is difficult. But somehow, I don’t let myself surrender to that heat he spreads, don’t give in to that aching feeling that thrums to life between my legs. Instead, I slap his hand off me.
He lets go, hand dropping down to his side, and I take a mental fist around my ribbons, stopping them from reaching out. This close to him, it’s too hard to curb my feelings. So I turn my cheek, because I don’t want to get caught in the trap of his eyes or taste the lure of his words.
But as soon as I turn my head, he goes utterly still.
It’s an unnatural stillness. The kind that makes my breath shrivel up while confusion and fear slithers through me.
Fury pumps into the air around us, and then, with a voice as dark as the pits of hell, Slade says something that makes my eyes go wide. “Why the fuck is there a bruise on your cheek?”
Chapter 25
AUREN
I have to hand it to him, the fact that Slade is even able to see the faded bruise in such terrible lighting is a credit to his fae eyesight.
My hand automatically goes up to the spot he’s staring at, fingers pressing against my cheek, but just like I did to him, Slade knocks my hand away so he can see it better.
Turning my face, featherlight fingertips graze over the spot of burnished gold, like he doesn’t want to put any pressure on it in case it hurts me.
It wouldn’t, not now. It’s a hell of a lot better than it was. A few hours after Midas first struck me, it swelled up pretty badly. I went to sleep that night with a cold compress resting on it, made from snow I collected off my balcony and stuffed into a rag. It reminded me of Hojat.
The bruise is barely showing anymore. My gold skin always marks up darker, bruising in shades of bronze and rust before it fades back to my usual gleam. But at least nearly all of the swelling is gone. The darkened mark can be mistaken for a shadow if you’re not really paying attention.
Clearly, Slade is paying attention.
His touch makes my nerve endings come alive, and it feels like my chest is swelling far more than my cheek did.
“It’s nothing,” I say with a hard swallow before jerking my head away from his scrutiny.
“That is not nothing. Did someone put their hands on you?”
I just look at him warily, which I guess is answer enough.
“Who?”
“Slade—”
“Who, Auren?” he demands, his dark, seductive voice so contradictory to the violence held in his tone.
Because he knows the answer. I can see it in his face.
“Midas,” he snarls, like a predator with its eyes trained on a trespassing hunter in the woods. He waits, looking at me to confirm, yet I don’t reply, don’t even nod my head.
But I don’t deny it either.
At my silent confirmation, Slade loses it.
All of a sudden, his eyes flare, going from startling green to a bleed of pure black. Spikes rip from his arms and pierce through the sleeves of his shirt, making a gasp fly out of my mouth.
I watch as he struggles, shifting back and forth between his forms with the click of his jaw, fury bunching his muscles. The lined power that marks his flesh writhes beneath his stubble, reaching, growing.
A cold sweat breaks out over me as I feel his power dominate the air. It thickens like syrup, and a wave of nauseating death ekes from his body.
“Slade…” The nervous plea falls from my lips as I move to back up, only to remember I can’t. I’m still pinned against the bookshelf, his presence blocking my front.
It’s a shock to see him like this, the way his body seems to be warring back and forth. But as his forms flicker, his essence does too—part corrupt magic, part comforting aura. Both of them beating like drums with a singular reaction.
Anger.
And just as quickly as the fear washed over me, it dissipates, like a burnt-up mist. Because his anger, it feels familiar.
The feathered creature in me, the one ruffling for a reckoning, she sits up and cocks her head. She pays attention.
Slade’s clash of manifestations stems from something dark and writhing. Something that’s cleaved the two halves of him, making him battle within himself. But that thing…it’s letting out a silent call, creating a palpable rhythm in the air. A strained song of discord that my bloomed anger can hear.