Darius exhaled slowly, his gaze staying fixed on mine. “A man worthy of you,” he replied. “Or at least I hope it would. If I could claim vengeance for the suffering he’s forced upon you and everyone else. If I could turn the wrath he’s always offered me back on him and end him and his power for good, then I would like to think I might have done enough to make up for everything else.”
I moved towards him, reaching out to cup his cheek in my palm and feeling the intensity of our souls reaching out towards one another as the love between us crackled in the air.
“Killing him isn’t what makes you worthy of me,” I said, my thumb tracing over his cheekbone as I drank him in. “This love between us is what proves that. You’ve given me something I never dared hope for and I know you’re still not perfect, but I don’t want perfect. I want your flaws, your temper, your power, and your passion. I want you, Darius Acrux. Not a white knight who slayed a Dragon for me.”
A smile lifted his lips and he pushed to his feet so that he could kiss me with an intensity that made my pulse race and crash like thunder in my chest. Or at least it did until my stomach growled loudly and he broke away from me with a chuckle.
“Let’s go get you fed, baby,” he said seriously and I nodded as I finished up my clothes hunt, putting on a teal sweatpants and crop top set before tying my dark hair in a messy bun and pulling on some snuggly socks.
Darius dressed in a grey tank and black sweats too, dropping a huge arm around my shoulders as we headed for the door and leading me outside into the corridor.
“This way, my lady!” Geraldine cried and I turned, looking along the tunnel to her room where she stood in the doorway, waving me over. “Oh and you too, you dastardly Dragoon, I hadn’t noticed you there!” she added, though that made no sense because Darius had been standing between me and her and he was fucking huge, but I just smirked at him as I turned us her way and the scent of food filled the air.
An honest to shit moan escaped me as we reached her doorway and the scent grew stronger, my gaze falling on the table she’d cast in the middle of the room in place of her bed and the one beyond it which was laden with food. All the best, most unhealthy, greasy food and not a fucking mango in sight.
“Fuck me, Geraldine, you created heaven in here,” I groaned eagerly as I ditched Darius and headed straight for the food.
“No, my lady. I created a war council,” she replied triumphantly. “And we have been slaving away since the crack of dawn to prepare this feast for it.”
“We?” I asked in confusion before almost jumping out of my damn skin as Max stood from behind the table, a plate of pancakes in his hand which he placed down amongst the feast.
“It was three in the morning, not dawn,” he grumbled, wiping his cheek with the back of his hand to remove a smear of flour while only making it worse. “And you made me leave the party to do it. If I’d realised what you’d meant when you invited me back to your room to mix your muffins, I wouldn’t have come. I assumed you weren’t actually talking about muffins.”
“Whatever else would I have meant?” she asked him.
“Sex, Gerry. Sex.”
“Oh, you are so vulgar at times. Now don’t be a wet willy at the dining table, you will make the food all sombre,” Geraldine cried, flapping a washcloth at him like she was trying to waft the complaint away on the breeze.
“Well whatever it is, I’m here for it,” I said enthusiastically, piling my plate up with so much food that I knew I’d seriously struggle to eat all of it, but that was a challenge I was willing to take up.
I moved around the room to take a seat at Geraldine’s war table and she directed me into a chair with a high back and intricate carvings all over it of things like Phoenixes and crowns and a group of guys who looked suspiciously like the Heirs all bowing low to two queens.
Geraldine shrieked as Darius made a move to take the matching chair beside me and chased him away from it, directing him onto a three-legged stool on my other side which matched all the rest of the seats around the table in their plainness.
As I started to eat, Geraldine moved to take the metal tube which contained the map of espial from her nightstand and pulled the map out of it with a dramatic flourish, flicking her wrists so that it unfurled before her as she laid it in the centre of the table.
I paused with my fork halfway to my mouth as Geraldine reached out to place her finger on the map of Solaria, a beat of magic pulsing from her which seemed to activate the thing. My lips parted as mountains and forests grew from the page, rivers started to move, waves crested in the sea and clouds formed to hang in an imitation of the sky above it, some of them white and fluffy, others dark and spilling rain or flickering with lightning.