And as if I had been there with him, I could hear it too, floating through the past to the present, as beautiful and terrible as funeral hymns.
“She said we were fools,” he spat, “to think that our ancestors’ disrespect could ever be forgiven. She left me with two gifts that night, and two commands. The first gift was the head of my prince, and the first command was to carry it back to the House of Blood to present to the king and queen. The second gift…”
His throat bobbed. His hand fell over mine, over his chest, where the curse pulsed.
He didn’t need to say it. I knew.
“And the second command?” I whispered.
A long pause. Like he couldn’t bring himself to say it.
“She wanted a new kingdom conquered in her name,” he said. “I offered that to her, with my own life as collateral.”
And suddenly, it all clicked together.
“My people would not be allowed back home after being scorned by Nyaxia. The king and queen saw us—all of us—as complicit in their son’s death. They still wanted to believe a prophecy existed. Still wanted to believe that their goddess could save us.” His face hardened, like cut stone. “They had followed me to the ends of time. They had nowhere left to go. I was desperate to save them, even if I couldn’t save myself. So I made a deal with the very goddess who had forsaken us.”
I swallowed past the lump in my throat. His pain surrounded us both, scalding, and I knew it had been burning for years, decades, centuries.
I understood it so painfully well. The desire to believe that something larger than you could save you, even after it struck you down again and again.
“And now here we are,” he ground out, lip curling. “The innocents I was trying to protect, slaughtered. The warriors I was trying to save, now dying at the hand of a human tyrant. All for a goddess who spited us already. All in the name of blind fucking hope.”
Another tear glided down his cheek, the silver damp pooling in all those stone-cut lines of utter fury.
His fingers tightened in my hair.
“Tell me I’m a fool.”
He was shaking with rage, so thick I could taste it in his exhale against my lips.
I shook my head. “No.”
He let out a choked breath, his forehead leaning against mine.
“Tell me to stop.”
Four words that could mean so much. Tell me to stop—stop this war, stop the search for redemption, stop the quest for vengeance, stop this, whatever dangerous thing was about to happen in this moment, inching to inevitability.
I didn’t want him to stop any of it.
I wanted Atrius to destroy the Pythora King. I wanted him to do it slowly, painfully, relishing revenge. I wanted him to let me help. I wanted him to save his people. I wanted him to earn Nyaxia’s respect.
I wanted to burn it all down with him.
I murmured, “No.”
Another wordless sound, a choked groan. “You shouldn’t be here.”
This time he spoke against my mouth—not quite a kiss, but the promise of one.
I whispered, “Why?”
“Because you make me ravenous.”
You make me ravenous.
Those words buried in my soul. I felt the truth of them. Felt, somewhere innately, that he had said them to me once before—in Obitraen, the night he kissed me.
And I understood it. The hunger for revenge, for salvation, for blood, for sex, for death, for life, for all the things we’d been denied.
I felt it all.
“Good,” I whispered.
And the word was swallowed up between us as his mouth crashed against mine.
35
The kiss was a seamless continuation of what we’d ended weeks ago, in his room. This was not the quiet, confusing safety of the nights we spent curled up in each other’s arms. This was not the stoic respect we’d built for each other over these last months.
This was a drawn blade, a battle, a fire. This was deadly.
I loved it.
My mouth opened against his immediately, accepting his breath, his tongue, his lips, and offering him my own. My hand slid from his chest to loop around his neck—his down my side, gripping tight where my waist met my hip.
My body arched against his, helpless with the desire to feel as much of him against me as I could. The threads caught fire the closer we were, the deeper I could fold myself into his presence. The sensations of him intoxicated me—his mouth, tongue sliding against mine in a way that felt like both an offering and a promise, his fingers clutching at me like he wanted to absorb me into himself.
We were warned of this, as young Arachessen. That sensations, physical connection, would be unusually powerful for us given the way we navigated the world. Like most things based in emotion, this was treated as a danger, a weakness to be culled.