Текст книги "The Ashes & the Star-Cursed King"

Автор книги: Carissa Broadbent

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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 37 страниц)

26

ORAYA

I forced my eyes open.

Pain shocked my body, but I couldn’t place where it was coming from, only that it was overwhelming.

It was dark. I struggled to make out forms in the shadows. The only light emanated from two Nightfire lanterns above an unlit hearth. It smelled like mold and dust and civilizations long dead. No windows, only stone. A few half-decayed pieces of broken furniture. A strong, cold draft from somewhere I couldn’t place.

Evelaena stood before me, holding the Taker of Hearts.

“I was wondering what had become of this,” she said.

Shit. She’d gone through my possessions. I cursed myself for bringing it at all—at the time, it had seemed much safer to keep it with me rather than leaving it unguarded in Sivrinaj. Now, it seemed foolish.

I tried to move and was rewarded with a stab of pain so sharp it left me breathless. I twisted my neck and drew in a strangled gasp.

My hands were tied together in front of me. But those weren’t the restraints that kept me immobile—no, those were the nails driven through my wings, which had been stretched out along the brick wall. My blood, bright crimson, ran down the leathery black in streaks that echoed my Heir-red marks.

Cold, unrelenting terror fell over me. I tried to spirit them away—but how did one do that? Raihn hadn’t told me. Wishing them away, even desperately, did nothing but make my heart race in panic.

I drew in a deep breath, trying to calm myself as my eyes continued to adjust to the darkness. Several of Evelaena’s child companions were scattered about the room, too, standing against the wall or curled up on the broken furniture. I jumped as I caught movement out of the corner of my eye, and turned my head to see one of the youngest-looking ones crawling on the ground near my feet, lapping at drips of blood falling from my wings.

“Get the fuck away from me,” I spat, kicking at the girl like a stray cat, and she gave me an appropriate hiss before skittering away.

“Don’t speak to my children that way.” Evelaena moved swiftly, with all of Vincent’s smooth grace. She still wore the bloody dress from our fight. She was close enough now that I could see the burns on her hand. When she carried the sword, she did so with a wad of fabric around it, now stained black with her blood. She couldn’t wield it, either.

Her lip curled as she glanced down at it. “I wondered where this had gone. If the usurper had taken it or managed to destroy it. Turns out, he just gave it to his wife.”

Something glinted in the darkness as she leaned closer to me—the pendant, now dangling around her neck. Her dress was open low, the mottled scar tissue forming a grotesque halo around the moon.

Her head cocked, eyes predator-sharp. “Can you wield it, cousin?”

“No one can wield it but him. You know that.”

Evelaena laughed, high and manic. She leapt closer still, her free hand coming to my throat, then sliding down—over the bare skin of my upper chest, where she’d opened up my leathers to reveal my Heir Mark.

“I had to see if this was real,” she said. “Tried to scrub it off you while you were out.”

If only it was so fucking easy.

“Get off of me,” I hissed, but she only pressed harder against my chest, making the nails tug at the delicate skin of my wings.

“I thought it would be me,” she said. “I was Vincent’s closest living relative. I spent my whole life training to be queen one day. Do you think it’s easy? Learning how to rule all by yourself?” She thrust the sword behind her, wildly gesturing to her child soldiers. “I needed subjects to rule! Do you know how hard it was to bring this damned place back from the dead? And I was all alone! All alone!”

Her voice cracked. The scent of something burning hit my nostrils. The dim cold light hit Evelaena’s chest, revealing that the pendant was burning her, too, where it lay against her skin. Every time it swung back against her, she winced.

“But then there was you. You, who he kept alive. You, who smell so—so human.” Her nostrils flared. She leaned closer still, our bodies now nearly flush.

Every muscle stiffened.

Too close. Too fucking close.

“Get off of me,” I snarled.

Nightfire. There was Nightfire in this room. I just had to reach for it, call to it. Even if my own refused to come to me. I’d done it before. I—

“Why do you deserve this? You, a human?”

And then the next thing I knew, Evelaena’s mouth was at my throat.

Pain, as her teeth dug into my skin.

A wave of sickening dizziness as her venom hit my veins.

I gasped, flailing out against her, my knee coming up to strike her and failing to make contact. Her grip on me was impossibly strong. With every gulp of blood she took from me, my vision blurred.

It was Evelaena’s mouth on my skin.

The Ministaer’s.

My old lover’s.

Panic set in, artificially dimmed by the venom. I was trapped. Helpless. Heir Mark or no. Wings or no.

Evelaena released me, throwing her head back and licking blood from the side of her mouth.

“You taste human,” she hissed. “You look human. You smell human.”

My head lolled. I forced myself back to consciousness through the fog of the venom.

Think. I had to think.

“And it was you.” She laughed, hoarse and raw. She straightened, and the pendant fell against her chest, and again, she flinched.

She froze, going abruptly still. Her eyes gleamed with tears.

“I always thought he meant to leave me alive,” she said, barely louder than a whisper. “Always thought it was his plan. That he chose me. But—”

Her hand clutched the pendant, white-knuckle tight, blood bubbling between her fingers.

Suddenly, I understood.

She didn’t just flinch because of the pain of the burns. But she had experienced what I did when she touched that thing. Pieces of Vincent. Distant shards of his memory.

His memory of the night he had tried to kill her, a five-year-old child. And had failed. Not because he intended to. Not because he meant to spare her. But because he had killed so many children that night that he was a little sloppy, and she wasn’t important enough to risk going back for.

And for an odd moment, I understood her so completely that it twisted a knife in my heart. She was obsessed with Vincent. She loved him because he was her only tenuous connection to power and hated him because of what he had put her through. She survived for centuries by building up fairy tales around him, around Lahor, around a crown she might wear one day.

And now she was realizing that she had meant nothing to him.

There was no plan. No secret. No fate.

Just a careless, bloodthirsty man and motives that did not make sense.

I saw myself in Evelaena as clearly as if I was looking into a mirror. Both of us built and broken by the same man. She had prayed for fate and gotten feckless luck. I had hinged my life on luck and gotten secrets.

I got power. She got nothing.

But at least she could get revenge.

You are not like them.

Vincent’s words echoed in my head. I hated him for them. And yet, in this moment, I latched onto them with ugly certainty.

He was right. I wasn’t.

I was one of the most powerful vampires in the House of Night. In all of Obitraes. I had that power, even if I didn’t know how to access it. It was in me.

This bitch did not get to be the one to kill me.

An idea solidified in this understanding—a risky one.

“You’re still his blood,” I whispered. “Whether he recognized that or not.”

She scoffed, but I went on, “I don’t want bad blood between us, cousin. You deserved more. And I—I would give you the sword. If you want it.”

She hesitated. One of the children, a little girl, stood, interest piqued, her fair gaze spearing me—like she saw what I was doing.

“You’re owed that much, don’t you think?” I said. “For what he did to you?”

Evelaena’s eyes fell to me, then the sword in her hands. And then back to me again.

They shone with lust. Evelaena was a creature driven wild with starvation—for blood, for power, for love, for validation. The only reason I was alive right now was because she had so gorged herself the night before, but the hint of blood lust still visible in her face right now was due to a much deeper hunger, one that had been following her, I suspected, for two hundred years.

She didn’t even know what she wanted to do with me. Love me, hate me, eat me, fuck me, kill me. Hell, all of those things, maybe.

This seemed like a revelation.

I’d spent my entire life fixated on all the ways vampires were different than me. I’d been so certain that all my confusion and frustration was because of my fragile human nature.

But Raihn was right. Vampires were every bit as fucked up.

I didn’t even need to be that good of an actress. Evelaena was desperate to believe me.

“You can’t wield it now,” I said, “because it’s mine. It belongs to the Hiaj Heir.”

I nodded down—to my chest, and the tattoo pulsing across it.

“But,” I said. “I could transfer ownership to you.”

“I’m not foolish enough to let you hold that blade.”

“You don’t have to,” I said. “Just let me touch it. That’s all. And it’s yours.”

She went still—that unnatural vampire still. I could see the calculation behind her eyes.

She’d kill me anyway, of course. That was what she was thinking. She wanted it all—the companionship, the Heir Mark, the sword, the crown, my blood. She wasn’t willing to give up any of those things after centuries of constant sacrifice.

“Fine,” she said.

She brought the sword closer to me, holding it out, while maintaining a strong grip on it over the cloth.

“I need my hands,” I said.

Her mouth thinned. Still, she nodded to one of her children. The little girl, the one who had been watching me so warily, approached me with a little dagger. Her abrupt slice through the binding cut my wrist, too.

Hands free. That was something. Not enough. But something.

I gave her a weak smile and gingerly pulled back the cloth wrapped around the blade. The red glow seemed much stronger than usual now, warming my face and reflecting in Evelaena’s eyes, which were wide and unblinking.

I stared at it. My father’s blade, supposedly carrying a piece of his heart. Just being this close to it again made me feel as if Vincent was standing just over my shoulder, forever out of sight.

If you are, I thought, you’d better help me here. You owe me that.

That’s a rude way to speak to your father, Vincent replied, and I almost scoffed aloud.

I took a deep breath and opened my palms over the blade, just an inch or two from the surface. I closed my eyes and tried to look very, very serious.

I was bullshitting so fucking hard.

Use this moment, Vincent commanded in my ear. This may be an act, but it might be the only time you get to prepare yourself.

He had a good point. I used this moment to connect to the forces around me, feeling the room.

Feeling the Nightfire.

I was probably too weak to generate it myself right now, or at the very least too inconsistent to be certain I could, but… I could feel it pulsing in those torches, the energy familiar, if weak and distant.

I could work with that.

All I needed was a few seconds of distraction.

I opened my eyes to meet Evelaena’s.

“It’s done,” I said. “Try it.”

She looked wary. “Are you sure it worked?”

“This is powerful magic. It knew you were blood.”

Telling her what she so desperately wanted to believe. The flare of desire in her eyes showed me she’d bought it.

The little girl was still giving me that wary stare, and she tugged on Evelaena’s skirt, as if in silent protest.

Evelaena ignored her as she unwrapped the sword.

“Take its hilt,” I said. “It’s ready to accept you.”

She was definitely going to see through this. How could she not?

But hope was a strange, potent drug, and Evelaena was at its mercy. She took the hilt and drew the sword.

For a moment, nothing happened. The room was utterly silent. A slow smile of glee spread over her lips.

She started, “It’s—”

–And then she let out a shriek of pain.

The steady glow of the blade flickered in erratic spurts. The scent of burnt flesh filled the room. The sound Evelaena was making rose from a moan to a scream, but she wouldn’t release the sword—or maybe the sword refused to release her. Several of the children ran to her side, pulling at her in panic. The rest hugged the walls, watching wide-eyed.

Move, Vincent roared. Move now!

One chance. One opening.

Fear is the fucking key to it, Oraya, Raihn had screamed at me, during the Halfmoon trial.

He had been right. The key was all the ugliness, all the weakness I refused to look at. Everything the sword had pulled up in me. Everything that had hurt me.

I reached deep.

Deep into my heart and my past and the memories.

My rage, my grief, my confusion, my betrayal. I took all of it. I ripped it all open inside myself.

Beneath it all was sheer power.

The brightness of the Nightfire seared my vision. Evelaena’s screams were so loud, so constant, they faded to a distant din beneath the blood rushing in my ears. Her form was difficult to make out around the fire, but she was stumbling, unable to control herself, still clutching the sword.

I leaned forward, ignoring the pain as the nails tugged at my wings, and grabbed her.

She was half limp. She turned to me, wide-eyed, and in that split-second, I saw exactly what she must have looked like as a five-year-old child, the night that Vincent had driven his blade through her chest.

For a moment, she looked at me like I might save her.

I didn’t. I pried the sword from her hands.

The moment my own closed around its hilt, the pain took me. I thought I couldn’t feel pain anymore, compared to what had been done to my wings. I had been wrong. This was deeper than flesh. Deeper than nerves.

For a moment, I wasn’t here anymore. I was in a dozen different places at once.

I was in a ruined tower in Lahor.

I was in Sivrinaj, in a colosseum full of screaming spectators, kneeling before a goddess.

I was in the Nightborn castle, sitting at my desk.

I was in my private training arena in the castle, training with my daughter, my daughter who needed to be better than this if she was to have any hope of surviving this world.

I was lying in the sands, my daughter holding me, death looming over her shoulder.

Stop.

But the images kept coming—more than images, sensations. I lost my grip on the world around me. The tide swept me away.

STOP STOP STOP STOP—

Focus, Oraya.

It wasn’t Vincent’s voice in my head this time. It was my own.

You have one chance. Right now. Take it!

I barely managed to claw myself back to awareness. The sword hurt to hold, but I refused to let it go.

I cut through the ropes binding my legs and stumbled forward. Pain flooded me as my full weight pulled against my wings.

The Nightfire had overtaken the room. Several of the children now climbed up the debris on the side of the walls, trying to stay away from the flames. Evelaena had pushed herself to her hands and knees, crawling toward me, a sword clutched in her burned-up hands.

No time to figure out how to get rid of my wings.

I pushed off against the wall and screamed as the delicate flesh ripped free.

I flung myself at Evelaena, pinning her to the ground. Her sword went sliding across the floor.

She reached for me. “Cousin—”

I didn’t let her speak.

I drove Vincent’s sword into her chest, right through the scar he had left two hundred years ago—straight into her heart.

She went slack beneath me, her eyes filling with betrayal before going vacant.

My breath was labored. The Nightfire still clung to the corners of the room.

I tried to get up—

Someone struck me from behind. I went toppling to the ground. The little girl, the same one who had been staring at me, leaned over me, red dotting her face.

She lifted her knife in both hands over her head, ready to bring it down.

I tried to counter, tried to—

A blast rocked the room. My vision blurred, dimmed.

A moment or minutes or hours passed.

I forced my eyes open.

Raihn leaned over me, brow furrowed with concern.

I was hallucinating, clearly, or dreaming again. Someone pried my hands free and I let out a choked cry.

“It’s alright,” Raihn murmured, leaning close to me.

I hated these dreams, the ones where I dreamed of the way Raihn had once looked at me, when we fought together in the Kejari. Like his heart was outside his body.

Made it hard to reconcile all he had done to me, when he looked at me that way.

“You’re safe,” he whispered, as he gathered me in his arms, and I faded away.

27

ORAYA

I opened my eyes from a mercifully dreamless sleep. My head was throbbing, and my body hurt even worse.

Coarse linen rubbed against my cheek. I was in a plain little bedchamber. A desk, a chair, a crooked table. Behind me, someone was moving around. I could hear the snap of a fire, and the hiss of something boiling, and the smell of something delicious.

I tried to roll over and was met with a stab of pain so sharp I let out a little strangled sound that was intended to be a “fuck” but instead sounded more like “ffermmkk.”

Footsteps circled the room, approaching me.

“Well look at you,” Raihn said. “So bright and cheerful when you wake up.”

I tried to say, “Fuck you,” and coughed instead.

“Oh, I still heard that.”

He sat at the edge of my bed. It was so rickety that his considerable weight made the entire thing shift to one side.

I choked out, “Where are we?”

“One of the Crown homes in the east. It’s, uh… seen better days. But it’s safe. Quiet. And closer than Sivrinaj.”

“How long have we been here?”

“Little less than a week.”

I started, and Raihn raised his hands. “We kept you sedated for a while. Trust me, that was for the best.”

I didn’t love the idea of Raihn’s men carting around my unconscious body for a week.

As if he could read my face, he said, “Don’t worry. It was just me.”

That did feel like a relief, though I didn’t want to examine too closely why.

“Where are the others?”

“Mische is here. The Bloodborn are in Lahor with Ketura and her guards, getting it under control.”

Lahor. It all came back with overwhelming detail. The fire and Evelaena and the sword and—

“I killed Evelaena,” I said, not quite intending to speak aloud. “She—”

“Strung you up in a basement. Yes. I know.”

The basement.

The tower. The sword. The—

Panic. I touched my chest, eyes going wide.

“I found something in the tower. I found—”

“This?”

He reached for the bedside table and withdrew a carefully wrapped object about the size of his hand, flat and circular. He opened the cloth covering, revealing the moon pendant. The last time I’d seen it, it had been covered in Evelaena’s blood, but now it was pristine.

“You were crawling for it when I found you. Even half-dead.” He quickly covered it and set it back on the table, wincing and rubbing his hand. “The minute I tried to touch it, I realized what it was.”

“I don’t know if I do know what it is. Just that it’s…”

“Special.”

“His. It was his. More than that. It was… It has to do with whatever Vincent was trying to hide.”

This certainty came to me with an unexpectedly strong flood of satisfaction. There was so little I understood about my father. Finding even one puzzle piece seemed like a triumphant victory, even if it only led to more questions.

“Probably,” Raihn said. “All the better that Septimus doesn’t know about it. I’m glad it’s here, with us, instead of with him.”

He seemed shockingly unconcerned with it. My eyes narrowed.

“I’m surprised it’s still here, and that you didn’t fly off to Sivrinaj with it. This was what you were looking for, wasn’t—”

“You were fucking dying,” he snapped. “I had more important things to worry about than your father’s games.”

He clamped his mouth shut, like he’d just said something he didn’t intend to. “That’ll burn,” he muttered, and rose to go stir the pot over the stove.

More important things.

He returned, carrying a plate piled with steaming meat and vegetables.

“Here. Eat.”

“I’m not hungry,” I said, even as my mouth watered.

“It’s delicious. You want it. Trust me.”

Arrogant.

But my stomach rumbled. I had to admit, the smell was… incredible.

I took a bite and almost melted back into the bed.

Mother fucking damn him.

I took another bite, and another.

“Was I right?” Raihn said, infuriatingly smugly.

“Mm,” I said, between bites.

“I’ll take that as, ‘Delicious, Raihn. Thank you for this meal cooked with love, and also for saving my life.’”

A joke. It was a joke.

Still, my chewing slowed. I set aside the plate—already almost half empty—and turned to Raihn with a hard stare.

He must have thought I ran away. It would’ve been a reasonable assumption.

“You came to find me,” I said.

His smile faded. “Is that really so surprising?”

“I thought you’d think I just—”

“Oh, I did think.”

“But you still came after me. Why?”

He let out a sound between an exhale and a scoff.

“What?” I said.

“I just—nothing. Just turn around so I can check your wings.”

My wings.

The thought made the blood drain from my face. Oh, Goddess. I’d been so disoriented, the pain so constant, that the terrible reality of what had happened to them hadn’t yet sunk in.

They had been nailed through. Many times.

He settled behind me. “Give me some room back here.”

I obeyed, wincing as I edged forward on the bed, my legs folded beneath me. He let out a breath through his teeth, and my stomach turned.

My new wings—the only gift of these last horrible months. Shredded.

I choked out, bracing myself for the answer, “How do they look?”

“I’m glad you killed that depraved bitch. If she’d been alive when I got there…”

He didn’t need to finish the sentence.

My throat was thick. “So it’s bad?”

“She nailed you to the fucking wall.”

“I couldn’t spirit them away. I couldn’t—”

“It’s hard to do. Harder than getting them out, and nearly impossible if they’re injured, even for those who were born with them. I should have made sure I taught you that before I left you. That was stupid of me.”

His voice softened at that, and I winced at it.

“I don’t need pity. Tell me the truth.” My words wavered a little, despite my best efforts. “They’re ruined, right?”

Silence.

Horrible silence.

The bed shifted. Raihn leaned around me, turning my head by my chin so I was looking into his face.

“That’s what you think? That you’ll never fly again?”

My face must have said enough.

I might’ve expected his expression to soften, but instead, it grew harder, like I’d offended him.

“You’re made for the sky, Oraya. Never let anyone take that away from you. Of course you’ll fly again.” He released me and returned to my back. Under his breath, he muttered, “Like I’d ever let that happen.”

My exhale was shaky with relief.

“So they’ll heal?”

“It’ll take some time, but they will heal. They already look a hell of a lot better than they did.”

They will heal. I had never heard three more beautiful words. Raihn said them like he’d will it into truth if he had to.

I heard rummaging behind me, and the sound of something unscrewing—a jar, maybe? I tried to look over my shoulder with limited success.

“What’s that?”

“Medicine. You’re due.”

I couldn’t turn enough to see what Raihn held—at least not without more pain than I was interested in—but I eyed the slight glow against the bedside table. It was good stuff, whatever he’d gotten.

There was a long, awkward silence.

“Do you mind if I—?” he asked.

Touch me. He’d have to touch me.

“I could get Mische if you want,” he said, “She’s out right now, but—”

“No,” I said curtly. “It’s fine. You’ve already been doing it, anyway.”

“It’s going to hurt, probably.”

“It’s fi—”

My body seized. My vision went white.

“Fuck,” I breathed.

“Thought it would be better if you didn’t have warning.”

Oh, I recognized that line. I half-smiled, half-grimaced as he moved on to another cut.

“So this is revenge,” I said. “I understand now.”

“Got me. You did a good job patching up my back, though. I’ll return the favor. Promise.”

A lump rose in my throat as I thought about that night for the first time in months—the night Jesmine had tortured Raihn for hours in the wake of the attack against the Moon Palace. So much about the memory now felt… different. More complicated.

“Must have been hard for you that night,” I said.

“Getting stitched up or getting tortured?”

“The questioning. You didn’t break.”

Jesmine’s methods were… thorough. Honed to perfection for their intended purpose, and that purpose was getting information out of unwilling participants.

“I wasn’t lying,” he said. “I wasn’t responsible for the attack on the Moon Palace.”

I peered over my shoulder and shot him a flat look.

He huffed a laugh. “I guess I’ve earned that face. But I’d come too far to let one woman with a knife bring me down.” Then, after a pause, “Well. That woman with a knife. Met another one who was a whole different story.”

I bit my lip as he applied another well-timed dab of medicine, but the pain was a welcome distraction.

“So has it been worth it?” I asked. “Being the Nightborn King.”

His hands paused. Then resumed.

“Does it count as bad bedside manner if you’re the one in bed? Trying to make us both equally uncomfortable?”

I shrugged and immediately regretted the way the movement jostled my wings.

“Fine,” he said. “I’ll keep it interesting for you, since I know you need the distraction. Was it worth it? I saved the Rishan people from two centuries of subjugation. I took back what was rightfully mine. I got revenge upon the man who killed thousands of my people. I even get to wear a crown in front of the pricks who once treated me as a slave.”

All things I expected him to say. All things that I knew were true.

“That’s what I would say to anyone else who asked,” he said. “But it’s not anyone asking. It’s you. And you deserve the truth, if you want it.”

He moved on to another wound. I barely felt it.

I’d regret it if I let him keep going. I knew that whatever he said to me would hurt. Would be complicated.

And yet, I said, “One honest thing.”

“I don’t know if it was worth it.” The words came fast, low, in a rough exhale, like they’d been pressing on the backs of his teeth for far too long. “The night Neculai lost his throne, I just wanted to burn it all down. I never wanted... this. Feels like it’s all cursed. This crown. Maybe the only way to survive as a ruler of this place is to become just like the ones who came before you. And that—that terrifies me. I’d kill myself before I let that happen, and I hope that if I couldn’t, you’d do it instead.”

It was more of a confession than I expected. I had to force the lightness into my voice as I said, “I already did that, remember?”

He laughed humorlessly. “I told you that you should have let me stay dead.”

“And what about that? Would that have been worth it?”

Another question I immediately knew I shouldn’t have asked. Another wound, another stab of pain.

“To die, rather than killing you?” he said quietly. “Yes. That would have been worth it. Even I had to draw a line somewhere. And you’re the line, Oraya.”

Mother, I was a fucking masochist. Asking questions with answers I didn’t know what to do with.

He cleared his throat, as if to scrape away the uncomfortable sincerity of those confessions. “I need to adjust your wings. Can you lift them a little?”

I tried to do so, wincing. What I’d intended to be a stretch became an awkward lurch, and the bed creaked as Raihn’s weight fell back.

“Careful, princess. You’re going to take my eye out.”

“They don’t listen to me,” I snapped.

“You’re just adjusting to having two new, giant limbs stuck to your back. When I first got mine, I could barely even walk properly. Just kept drifting to the sides because the weight threw me off.”

I couldn’t help it. That image made me chuckle.

“Sure, laugh,” he grumbled. “We’ll see what your walking looks like soon. Here. Alright if I help?”

I hesitated, then nodded.

“It’s hard at first to figure out how to isolate the right muscles. But…” Gently, so gently, his hands moved to the underside of my wings, where they met my back. “You’re stiff. If you relax your muscles, they won’t fall off. I know it feels like they will.”

His hands slid up, applying gentle pressure along the way, coaxing them to spread. My instinct was to move them myself, but Raihn said, “Don’t you dare. I don’t want to get stabbed in the eye again. Just… relax.”

Another stroke, at that tight knot of muscle. I twitched as his thumb ghosted over my skin.

He stopped immediately.

“Did that hurt?”

I didn’t answer right away. “No.”

No. It was the opposite of hurt. Awkwardly so.

“Do you want me to stop?”

Say yes.

But it had been more than a month since I had felt safe. Longer than that since a touch had felt… comforting.

I found myself answering, “No.”

He resumed, slow, running along the muscle. Even through the thin layer of my shirt, I could feel the warmth of his hands. The roughness of his callouses.

“Just let go of it,” he said softly. “Let me support the weight of them. I’ve got you.”

As if he could hear the inner fight I was having with my subconscious. And slowly, slowly, with the help of his hands braced beneath my wings, the muscles relaxed.

“There you go,” he said. “Not so hard.”

I didn’t speak, mostly because I didn’t have words for how good it felt to have someone else bear some of that burden. I hadn’t realized how heavy it was until the weight was lessened.

Suddenly, I was exhausted.

Raihn’s touch traveled farther up—where the limb gave way to the delicate, softer skin of the wing.

I stiffened. Right away, he withdrew his hands. “Did I hurt you?”

I was so grateful he couldn’t see my face. It felt hot.

“No. It—it’s fine.”

He hesitated. Then his hands fell back to my wings, light and gentle.

“Open for me,” he said.

I didn’t even have to tell my body to obey. They just… unfolded beneath that barely-there touch, like flower petals.

“Beautiful,” Raihn murmured, as his fingertips ran all the way up the soft, sensitive underside.

This time, the pleasure was unmistakable. No longer hidden beneath the surface, no longer ignorable. This was intense, a shiver that ran up my spine—up my inner thighs, into my core. Like his mouth had once felt on my throat or my earlobe.

Like desire incarnate, echoing in my entire being.

My exhale trembled.

Touch had become something consistently violent, consistently painful.