“Your skin,” I murmured, pushing aside tendrils of wet hair to follow the strokes near his neck. “Your body. Your Mark.”
He didn’t say anything for a long moment. I was very conscious of the way goosebumps rose on his flesh beneath the trail of my touch.
“May I turn around, princess?” he asked.
The tone was teasing. The question was real.
The corner of my mouth twitched. “Queen. Remember?”
I could hear the smile. “Of course. My queen.”
The “my” made it something more than a joke.
“I’ll allow it,” I said.
He turned.
His gaze drank me in slowly, starting at my hair, my eyes, my face, and then trailing down over my shoulders—lingering at my breasts, peaked and wet, exposed above the water that pooled around my ribcage.
But he lifted his eyes to my Mark, over my throat, shoulders, and chest. He reached out to touch it, his fingertip tracing the lines just as mine had done to his. I wanted to hide the way it made my skin pebble—made my breath grow a little uneven.
His eyes were heavy lidded, unblinking. With the blue reflection of the water and the algae, they looked almost purple.
“Can’t imagine it looked this good on Vincent,” he murmured.
I wondered if he was seeing the same thing in my Mark that I had just seen in his—all the ways it complemented my specific form. I hadn’t noticed that before. Like Raihn, I had seen the Mark as something that belonged to someone else, superimposed onto my skin.
It wasn’t until right now, looking at it through the lens of Raihn’s, that I considered the differences. The way the wings across my chest were a little smaller, more delicate, than Vincent’s, following the shape of my clavicle. The way the smoke speared down between my breasts, following the lines of my body and mine alone.
“I never thought it looked right on me,” I admitted.
Like it was a costume. Something that never should have been given to me.
“I think it suits you perfectly.” His touch trailed down—down between my breasts, feather-light over the sensitive skin.
“You said it yourself. Your title. Queen. This Mark belongs to you.” His lips curled. “Your skin. Your body. Your Mark.”
Somehow, it didn’t sound like a platitude when Raihn said it. It sounded like the truth.
His gaze lifted, those deep red eyes piercing mine. His touch stalled, lingering on my chest.
“Did you mean it?” he said. “What you told Jesmine.”
He didn’t need to specify what he was talking about.
When we reclaim our kingdom, I intend to rule beside him as such.
I felt, all at once, much more naked than I had thirty seconds ago.
“I’m not going to risk my life and the lives of what little army I have left just to put your ass back on that throne without taking some of it for myself,” I said.
Somehow, I could tell he knew my dismissive tone was a little forced.
He rasped a low laugh.
“Good,” he said. “I’d be disappointed otherwise.”
“It has nothing to do with you,” I said, before I could stop myself.
An infuriating, stubborn smile clung to his mouth. “Mhm. Of course not.”
“I’m still not sure that you’re not going to fuck me over,” I grumbled—just because I felt like it was what I should say, even if the truth of it was now obvious, even to me.
But his thumb came to my chin, gently tipping my face back to him. His stare was steady, uncomfortably direct.
“I am not going to fuck you over,” he said.
Firmly. Like it was nothing more and nothing less than fact. It felt like fact, when he said it like that. And the truth was, I believed him.
I didn’t want to give him that satisfaction, though. So I narrowed my eyes.
“Again, you mean,” I said. “Fuck me over again.”
His lips twitched. “That face. There she is.”
Then the smirk faded, revealing something so much more serious, something I wanted to wriggle away from. I didn’t, though—I met his stare, let his thumb hold my chin.
It was frightening to give someone your trust.
More frightening still to give it for a second time, after they broke it the first.
“One honest thing,” I murmured.
And he didn’t hesitate as he said softly, “Never, Oraya. Never again. And not just because I don’t have a chance in hell of taking Sivrinaj back without you. But because I wouldn’t want to, anyway.”
I thought of what was ahead—two armies that hated each other now forced to work together to take on a greater evil. For a moment, I couldn’t help but consider what myself from a year ago would say if presented with all of this.