Текст книги "The wolf and the crown of blood"

Автор книги: Elizabeth May

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Текущая страница: 19 (всего у книги 33 страниц)

Drawing out her pleasure is the sweetest torment. I crook my fingers just right and feel the tension singing through her, begging for release. But I’m patient. I take my time, memorizing which licks make her moan. What pace makes her shudder. The way I slide my tongue inside her pussy and her hand grips my hair hard enough to sting. I work her through it, letting her savor me on my knees for her. Worshipping her just like I promised.

“That’s it,” I murmur. “Ride that high for me.”

Her breathing is shaky. She lifts her hips, chasing my mouth, fucking herself on my tongue. I grip her thighs hard and shove them wider, ruthless now.

She climaxes with my name on her lips. Her nails dig into my nape as I give her a few more little licks, ending with one last tender kiss to her inner thigh.

“I love the sounds you make when you come,” I whisper, nipping up her body.

I pause to cup her breasts, flicking her nipple with my tongue. A gentle bite before licking a path to the other. She moans, fingers scrabbling against my shoulders.

“Fetch the dagger from my trousers.” I nudge my hips forward, letting the head of my cock drag against her. “Side pocket. Mind the spring-loaded hilt.”

She fumbles for my discarded clothes and drags the weapon free. Before I can blink, she has the point beneath my jaw. I have to bite back a groan. She’s so damn beautiful.

“Leave it there until I tell you otherwise,” I say.

Bryony lifts a brow, head tilting. “Does a knife at your throat turn you on, Wolf?”

“You with a knife at my throat turns me on. And it’s a reminder of what we are to each other. We’ll always exist on either side of this blade. No catching feelings, not even when I’m inside you.”

I surge forward in a rough thrust that has her head slamming back into the grass. The edge of the dagger kisses my neck as I set a relentless rhythm. She’s not pressing hard enough to cut me, but enough to remind me of the cost. Of the price I’ll have to have her.

“Come on,” she says between panting breaths. “I know you can fuck me better than that.”

My hands tighten on her hips. “You want harder?”

“As hard as you can give me. Make me feel it for days.”

A distant part of me knows I should stop before I’m past all saving. I could love her, I think. I could let her crack my ribcage and curl her fingers around the misshapen lump I call a heart, hold it gently. Sift through the scar tissue until she finds something worth salvaging.

But she won’t find it. Because anything worth holding got burned out of me long ago. So instead, I’ll give her everything else.

I fuck her harder. Mean. I want to make her hurt for me. My teeth find her breasts, her ribs, her stomach. Marking her up, branding her with the shape of my need. I chase our mutual destruction until everything narrows to ecstasy and pain.

“Evander,” she gasps out.

“Say it again.” I punctuate the words with a dirty grind. I hitch her legs higher around my waist, hitting that spot that makes her tremble. “I want to hear it.”

“Evander.”

“Louder. Scream it for me.”

“Evander!” Her nails draw blood. “Fuck, right there, don’t stop!”

“What would the people of Luceni think,” I rasp in her ear, never easing up, “of their princess begging a god to fuck her good?”

She whimpers when I slide my hand between us. Circling her clit, pushing her higher.

“You think they’d still bow if they knew?” I pant. “If they saw the marks on your thighs? The way you came apart for me? That their perfect, pure Princess of the Blood wanted it so hard she let me bend her over, lay her down, bite her, bruise her. Let me desecrate every fucking inch of her body. That her pussy gets wet for me before I even touch her. Come on, tell me. What would they think?”

Her nails dig into my shoulders. She doesn’t answer.

“Do you even care?” I press.

“No.” She locks her ankles around me to pull me deeper. “They didn’t treat me like I was real.”

She’s right. Because the woman writhing beneath me isn’t the one who stood before her subjects with that empty smile. This is Bryony—wild and demanding, the one who takes what she wants.

She’s the fierce creature demanding more, harder, now.

“Know what I think?” I find a merciless rhythm that has her gasping with each thrust. “I think they had it all wrong. You never needed to be protected. You need this. To be dirtied up. Fucked out. Screaming my name.”

She bites her lip. She’s close. I can feel it in how she tightens around me.

“You don’t belong on a pedestal,” I manage between breaths. “You belong right here. Getting fucked beneath the stars. In the wild. In the dark. With me.”

I grab her thigh and hitch it higher, watching her mouth fall open when I hit that perfect spot inside her. The knife digs in a little deeper. Climax hovers just out of reach, my veins heating. Sparks crackle along my skin. My wings ignite, and flames lick along my feathers.

Bryony’s grip on my shoulder tightens. “Evander!”

She comes with a strangled cry, her body arching off the ground. The blade slips, slicing burning lines into my throat, and the sting makes everything sharper. Brighter. Blood trickles down my chest, spattering onto her pale skin.

I’ve never seen a canvas so beautiful.

I follow her over the edge. My hands grip her tight as I spill inside her, thrusting shallowly. My magic explodes outward and slams into the earth around us. A concussive wave of flames that burns the grass beneath us.

Then there’s only silence. Just our breathing, the groan of branches around us, and the crackle of fire.

I tug the blade gently from Bryony’s slack fingers and toss it aside to lift her into my arms. She makes a soft, contented sound. Only then does she notice the surrounding foliage.

“You’ve singed your garden,” she says with a laugh.

I chuckle as I survey the damage. “I spared the roses.”

Her lips skim my neck, right over the thin lines where she’d marked me. Our breathing is harsh as I carry her inside.

“I can’t decide,” she finally says, “if I’m going to kiss you or kill you when this is through.”

“As long as you’re the last thing I see in this fucked-up eternity of mine, I don’t really care which one you pick.”

As we pass the door with the obsidian seal, I reach out and brush my fingers over the carvings in a familiar ritual—a habit as ingrained as the instinct to grab for a weapon when threatened.

“Are you ever going to tell me what’s behind that door?” she asks.

My jaw clenches. “No.”

“Gory trophies? Jars of viscera?” She’s prodding now, looking for weak points. Gaps in my armor she can worm her fingers into and pry apart.

I don’t smile, not even to maintain this delicate illusion of tenderness. That place is as sacred to me as this realm.

“That room is not up for discussion.”

I brace for her to argue. To pry and dig and excavate like she always does.

But Bryony just… settles. She rests her cheek against my shoulder and winds her arms loosely around my neck, a gesture so simple and sweet that it cracks my chest wide open.

I’ve murdered armies without blinking. Tortured enemies, ended bloodlines, and razed kingdoms to rubble and ash. But this? This is annihilating. This gesture of trust. Of softness.

Two things I sure as shit don’t deserve.

And this is why she can never know what’s in that room, I think as I shoulder into my bedchamber. All the dead things in there are for me, and they are the real dagger between us.

She’ll never look at what we are the same way again.

I gently lay her on my sheets. Bruises mottle her skin, vivid smudges blooming across her breasts, her belly, her legs. My marks.

Mine.

I trail my knuckles over a bite on her inner thigh. “I can heal these for you if you’d like.”

I’d rather lick them, I don’t say.

“I’ll wear them a bit longer,” Bryony decides with a secret smile, stretching languidly. “I’ve earned them.”

For a moment, I imagine keeping her like this—sprawled out in my bed. Well-fucked and satisfied, with my ownership unmistakable.

“Careful,” she murmurs, eyes fixed on my face. “You’re doing it again.”

“Doing what?”

“Scheming.”

I settle in bed next to her and pull her on top of me, groaning as she settles right over my cock. Right where she belongs. The rut-fever stirs again, demanding more.

“Just enjoying you while I can.” I grasp her hips and guide her down, shuddering as I slide into her. “Enjoying this pussy, too.”

“I suppose you’d better make the most of it, then,” she says, riding me slowly, drawing it out. “It’s temporary.”

“Yeah, they do have that saying about mortal girls.”

“What saying?”

I curl my fingers against her skin, setting the pace, lifting her up and down my cock. “Not for a long time, just for a good time.”

The bed frame creaks as she rides me faster. “Know what humans say about gods?” She bites my earlobe, and I almost come right then. “That they’ll fuck you then forget you. But I won’t let you forget.”

“Oh really?”

“That’s right. When you take someone else into your bed in fifty, or a hundred, or a thousand years from now, all you’re going to see is me. My face, when you shut your eyes. My taste, when you’re kissing her. My voice, when you’re inside her. I’m going to wreck you for everyone else.” She rocks her hips in a slow grind that has me seeing stars. “I’m going to be your favorite memory.”

Something in my chest goes tight. I can’t look away from this fragile mortal woman who’s embedded herself beneath my skin. Because she’s right—I’m going to have to accept a world in which Bryony Devaliant no longer exists.

And I’ll be the one holding the blade that ends her. I have to be. Because anything else would be a betrayal.

I swallow hard. “You think so?”

“Yes.” She kisses me, soft and searching. “The most fun you’ll ever have.”

Maybe she’s my penance. My hamartia, as the Vartenans would say—the fatal flaw that will be my undoing. The price I pay for all my sins.

“You asked me if this was just the Aethertide,” I say, rolling us so I’m on top. Caging her beneath me, my wings flared. “A product of celestial meddling and biological imperative.”

“And?” Her fingers trace patterns on my chest, right over my thundering heart.

“I’d crave you in any lifetime. Across every eternity. Every version of me would want every version of you, whether I lived one day or ten thousand years,” I whisper against her mouth. “And damn me, you were a good time.”

I wonder if she’ll feel my touch for days. If she’ll ache with the memory of us. I wonder if the bruises I’ve put on her body will linger—a reminder of what we are. Of all the blasphemous, brutal things we’ve done.

I’m going to be your favorite memory.

No, I think as I kiss her. You’re going to be my cruelest one.

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35

ALEXIOS

A THOUSAND CLAIMED voices crash through me, screaming their feelings all at once.

Love. Hate. Need. Their whining never stops. Every breath I take pulls more of their chaos into my lungs. I breathe in, and they’re there. Breathe out, and they’re still there.

It’s unbearable.

Meanwhile, I’ve been fucking courtiers for thirty-five hours straight while Aethertide burns in my blood. I’d rather swallow broken glass than father a child with any of them, but my wants don’t matter.

Because the realm is screaming at me.

Three centuries since the first rut hit after the Devouring, and it’s only gotten worse. Back then, Scillari whispered and gave a gentle nudge. Now? It howls and forces gods together like rabid animals every hundred years.

But it won’t stay that way, not with so few demis powerful enough to ascend and replace the Eternals we lost in the war. The magical deficit leaves the realm vulnerable and unstable. If we don’t have more potential Eternals soon, Aethertide will be every damn year.

I shift uncomfortably on my throne. My cock is hard, and all I want to do is bite and tear and fuck until there’s nothing left of me. Maybe I should just walk to Asteria’s deepest ravine. See if even this immortal body can survive that fall. Because between the rut, holding the Shroud, and the voices…

I’m not going to last.

“Your Majesty?”

I look down at where a courtier kneels at the foot of the dais, another face I won’t remember tomorrow. I’ve seen a hundred just like her.

They blur together after a while. Pretty dolls with breakable bones, something to use up and throw away. Just vessels to pour my madness into.

“Strip,” I rasp. “Wait for me. Five minutes.”

I need her right now. Need to slam into her and make her cry, to bleed her until the hunger stops. But I need her to wait more. Need to know I can still tell myself no. That I haven’t completely lost my shit.

Five minutes. Three hundred seconds until I can forget, for a few moments, all the lives bound to mine. The needs that aren’t my own. I’ll drown them out, bury myself in sex until I can’t think or feel anything else but animal need.

I hear her undressing—the soft rustle of fabric, the tiny nervous breaths she tries to hide.

Wait. Sixty seconds.

Wait. One hundred seconds.

Wait—

The chamber doors burst open. Bastien stalks in, shadow wings flaring, face remote and unreadable.

“Blade,” I say, sitting up straighter. “You have news?”

He inclines his head, a tightness to the set of his shoulders I don’t like. “The princess’ corpse is still unaccounted for. I don’t sense it anywhere in Vartena.”

For a disorienting second, the snarled threads of the Shroud constrict around my chest, compressing and compressing until I’m certain my ribs will buckle inward. Hellevig’s deficit left a gap in the veil’s magic I’m still burning myself alive to hold together—all caused by that damn princess’ flock.

“How difficult can it be,” I grind out, “to locate one dead human? I marked her. Felt the connection snap when she died. My power leaves traces, Bastien. You should be able to track it blindfolded.” I lift a hand to my temple, trying to massage away the ache. “Was there anything else? Or did you just come to tell me you can’t do your job?”

He doesn’t answer. Instead, his attention slides to the far wall where the naked courtier waits, her skin flushed, hair tumbling over her shoulders. His nostrils flare. Shadows curl around his boots.

I almost smile. We might be Eternals, but we’re not above the failings of biology.

“Let me off the leash,” he says, cold and flat, still staring at the demigoddess.

I study his face. Those black eyes that hold galaxies. Those shadow wings that never quite settle. Bastien without constraints isn’t a weapon you wield; he’s a natural disaster you point in a direction and hope to survive.

“Find another way to deal with rut.” I give him a thin smile. “Do it the old-fashioned way and fuck it out like the rest of us. Or use your hand if you’re still too disgusted by the idea of letting anyone touch you.”

Low blow. I see the hit land.

A muscle in his jaw tics. “Not an option. Seventeen hours.”

I rise to my feet, lightning dancing across my fingertips. “Seventeen hours,” I repeat softly. “Like the twelve you took last centennial that left the western coast of Vartena a smoking crater?” I close the distance between us. “How do I know you won’t slip up again and turn on my Claimed?”

“I’ve done the math.”

“Fuck your math. When the rut-fever takes over and the bloodlust hits, your calculations won’t mean shit. Try again.”

“I can track the girl’s corpse at full power.”

My anger pauses. Now that is interesting.

Bryony Devaliant’s missing corpse is becoming a problem. And problems make my head ache worse than it already does. I need Hellevig compliant, but I can’t have that if they keep wailing for her remains.

“Fifteen hours.” I seize his chin between my fingers, and a stillness goes through him at my touch. I know he hates this. “I’ll even throw in a village of oathbreakers you can tear apart. Consider it a gift.” My grip tightens. “But don’t go near my Claimed again. You remember where you ended up, don’t you, Blade?”

I feel that tiny flex in his jaw. The one that tells me he’d love to have his shadows tear me apart.

“All that dirt pressing down,” I whisper, my lips close to his ear. “The darkness so complete you forget what light looks like. Twelve years buried alive was a kind punishment for breaking the Accords. There’s a reason gods who want to die beg to be unmade and buried beneath the realm. They want to sleep. But you didn’t sleep, did you? Imagine a century with nothing but our dead for company.”

His pulse quickens beneath my fingertips. The only tell.

“I’ve lived it before, you know. When I was much younger than you are now, and still a demigod. My bones were so fragile. My father’s other punishments were too extreme for an object lesson, so when I tell you it could be worse, I mean it. I doubt I spent much of the first thousand years of my existence not disciplined for some slight, real or fictitious. Imagine the weight of rocks crushing your lungs, the soil filling your mouth when you finally broke enough to scream.” I drag my thumb along his jawline. “Your fingers bloody and broken, clawing upward through rock and dirt, inch by inch. Never knowing if you’d reach air. Never knowing if he’s buried you too deep this time. Do you remember what it felt like to go mad down there? Because I do.”

“Yes.” The answer is flat, emotionless.

“Then we understand each other.” I release him, returning to my throne. “Enjoy your village. Try not to make too much of a mess.”

He leaves, the door booming shut behind him.

As I settle back on my throne, the whining static gnaws at the edges of my control. So many voices battering the inside of my skull. I can’t think, I can’t breathe…

From the corner of my eye, I catch a flash of purple—a fevered illusion. A glimpse of my sister’s dress from the last day I saw her alive.

I squeeze my eyes shut. “Don’t,” I snarl at her. “Not now.”

You can’t keep going like this. My sister’s voice. As if she’s standing beside me and not a figment of my fracturing mind. You’re breaking yourself.

“Your Majesty?”

That gentle voice drags me back to the present.

I lift my gaze to the courtier. Her pale wings—dove gray, delicate—are tucked tight against her spine.

“Come here.” I pluck open the fastenings of my trousers and wrap my hand around my cock. “If you’ve changed your mind, now’s the time to run. I won’t punish you for refusing.”

She hesitates, breath quickening.

Honestly, she should be afraid. I am ancient and hungry and only half-sane.

“I won’t make this offer again.” My tone is sharp. I don’t have the time to soothe timid courtiers. “Decide.”

The sweet scent of her desire fills my lungs as she draws near, and beneath it all, the clarion call of her blood. “Take what you need,” she whispers, holding my gaze as she steps between my thighs. “My body is yours.”

Thank fuck.

I grasp her hips and haul her into my lap, positioning her above my straining cock. A shift, an angling of bodies as I take care not to touch her wings—because even rut-stupid and half out of my mind, I remember the sanctity of a demi’s wings. Then I bury myself inside her with a brutal thrust. She arches with a sharp cry.

I rock into her with ruthless, punishing strokes. Shoving deep, deeper, until my vision blurs and yes, more, harder.

Her pulse flutters against my fingertips where they cup her neck. I duck my head, lips brushing her skin.

“This is going to hurt,” I murmur against her throat. “Try to keep the screaming to a minimum.”

She swallows and nods.

And I rip into her jugular with my teeth.

Her blood floods my mouth, a rush of heat and copper tangling together on my tongue. I drink and drink, desperate and greedy. Losing myself in the wet heat of her, the drum of her heart, the sting of her nails sinking into my shoulders.

The Shroud’s threads loosen infinitesimally, the crushing pressure on my chest easing to a dull throb. Not gone, never gone—but muted. Manageable.

For a few moments, I drift. Insensate. Nothing exists beyond this—the flex of muscle under skin, the rhythmic slap of flesh, the warmth of her. Aethertide’s fever easing the more I fuck up into her.

Click-click-click.

Footsteps pierce the haze. I lift my head to see Zephyr framed in the doorway, arms crossed. Watching. Those black-and-silver mismatched eyes flick over the courtier, and something tightens in her features.

See anything of interest, Whisper? I keep moving, rolling my hips nice and slow now. Something you want? Something you like?

Zephyr unfolds her mind to me, the familiar walls and fortifications lowering. Her cool, collected thought patterns lap against my own, the only mind I know of that doesn’t feel like plunging a hand into a bucket of glass shards. But it’s not easy for her anymore; I sense the effort it takes, the strain to let me in.

After I sent her to Eternal Calder’s court three hundred years ago, she came back different. Still Zephyr, but… less. There are pieces missing.

I remember that night. She had stood in my chambers with blood still drying under her fingernails, and her eyes had been empty.

“He needs to be put down,” she’d said simply.

She told me enough—the bare minimum to justify killing Calder—but not what he’d done to put that look in her eyes. Still, I did what kings do and eliminated the threat. While humans raided our villages and the realm went to shit, I dropped everything to deliver that judgment.

I put an Eternal in the ground for her.

After that, Zephyr built walls around herself that no one could scale. She’d never been particularly warm, but this was different. This was ice—the kind that burns when you touch it.

But on days like today, she keeps her headspace soft for me. Sanded down, nothing serrated to slice me open when I inevitably bleed into the secret spaces of her.

I’m making sure she’ll survive your attentions mostly intact, Zephyr says. You’re not blessed with an endless supply of demis willing to play donor and bedmate.

She’ll live. Report.

You have a situation.

I give her a sharp smile. Just one? Must be a slow day.

She glares, motioning toward the exit. Get rid of her. I’ve got news out of the Dark Court and I’m not giving it while you’re balls deep. Finish up.

Finish up? Hmm. I lean back and watch Zephyr as the demigoddess bounces on my cock, letting my gaze trail over her and imagine how my spymaster’s glittering, light brown skin would look against my sheets. That long black hair undone and spread across my pillow. Her long legs would fit so nicely around my hips—that’s one memory I’ve indulged in weak moments. She and I fit.

I imagine her glowing like starlight when I make her come.

You’re staring, she murmurs.

You’re letting me, I say back.

Her mismatched eyes flare. Does she like it? Does she hate it? She’s not looking away.

I grip the courtier’s hips harder, driving deeper. The demigoddess moans, but I barely hear her. Suddenly she’s the best fuck I’ve had in a while, because I’m picturing Zephyr writhing against me. Zephyr’s ragged breaths in my ear. Zephyr’s pretty noises.

When I come, I make damn sure she sees my face and watches me spill with her name burning in my throat.

I want her to know.

Let her chalk this unforgivable slip in control up to the fever. Let her believe it’s only the mindless sex, the madness of Aethertide that pushes even kings to their knees, and not the truth that’s been eating me alive since before she built those walls around her mind.

I let her believe the biggest lie I’ve ever told.

The courtier slumps forward against my chest. I hitch my hips up and ease her off me, ignoring her moan of protest as I set her carefully on her feet. Her pupils are blown wide. Blood still pours from the ragged wound in her neck, soaking the tops of her breasts. There’s something vacant in her expression. Something I put there.

“Get yourself to a healer,” I tell her. It’s as close to gentle as I know how to be. “Take the rest of the day to recuperate. You’ve earned it.”

She bobs an unsteady curtsy and mumbles words that might be yes, my king, or thank you, my king.

Once Zephyr and I are alone, I allow my shoulders to slump. The lightning that’s been dancing along my skin all day fades to sparks.

“Go on, then,” I say roughly. “Don’t leave me in suspense. You didn’t come here to watch me fuck.”

Her lips tighten. For a moment, I think she might actually say something about what just happened between us.

She doesn’t.

“Missing demis.” Zephyr’s all business now. “I have confirmed disappearances in Nyholm aside from our own here in Asteria. Wraith is trying to manage the situation.”

I scrape my palm down my face. “Wonderful. So the fleshtrade is slipping through wards all along the Shroud.”

“They say the king’s secrets say something about the king.” Zephyr folds her arms across her chest.

“Then they say I’m falling apart, don’t they, Whisper?” I give her a bleak smile. “There’s still time to turn this to our advantage. After I killed Calder, Severin wasn’t exactly feeling charitable. He only agreed to peace with Vartena if I took on the Shroud and the Claimed alone.”

“You punched him in the face, Storm.”

“He touched what wasn’t his to touch,” I remind her. “I wasn’t concerned with pleasantries. But the cracks in the veil make my position clear.”

It galls me to admit to weakness, but Zephyr’s seen me at my lowest. If I can’t be honest with her, who’s left?

Her eyes sharpen, that keen strategist’s brain working. “You think this crisis will bring Wraith back to negotiate?”

“Depends on how desperate he is. Missing demis across the realm changes things. Makes for good leverage.” I pause, watching her face carefully. “Especially if I told him the truth about his brother.”

She yanks at her jacket collar like it’s suddenly too tight. “If any part of you still values what you once had with Severin, you won’t use that information. He loved his brother. It’s not something you can take back.”

I hate that damn uniform. The buttons up to her neck, sleeves hiding all of her skin. I remember her that night at the Court of Illusions—the green dress that clung to her curves, the bare shoulders I couldn’t stop staring at. Couldn’t stop touching. And she’d let me. For one night, she’d let me put my hands on her.

Now, every inch of her is hidden away. From everyone. From me.

It’s not just a uniform; it’s a wall.

“Look at me.”

She does.

“I know why Calder had to die. What I don’t know is what he did to you after the winter ball.”

Her nostrils flare slightly. “He found out what I am.”

My fingers curl into the throne’s armrests. No one knows what Zephyr is except me. She’d never be safe. Any sick fuck who wanted power would be after her.

“Whisper.” My voice goes soft, tender. Only for her. “I need to know what he did to you, sweet girl.”

The endearment slips out before I can stop it. It’s been three hundred years since I last called her that. Since Calder.

I hear her breath stutter. Her lips part.

Then she tugs on that jacket again and straightens. “What happened in the Court of Illusions stays buried with Calder,” she says flatly. “My trauma isn’t currency for your political games. Let Wraith believe whatever the fuck he wants about his brother. I won’t relive it just so you can have leverage.”

Every time I press, she builds her walls higher. Already, I can feel her mind pulling back, some of those sanded edges sharpening in defense. Telling me to back off.

So I do.

“All right. Then I need intelligence. Find out how severe the situation is with the demis in the Dark Court. I need to know what I’m dealing with before I make my move.”

Zephyr’s mouth thins, but she jerks her chin in grudging assent. “Fine. But a word of caution, if I may be so bold—”

“You may not.”

“—strong-arming Wraith strikes me as unwise.”

“Objection noted.”

For a small eternity, she just looks at me in that unflinching way she’s done for thousands of years. No doubt marking every cracked, battered piece of me. We go too far back for pretenses. She knew me before my ascension. Before death and duty broke me open and stitched me together wrong.

“Understood,” she says. “In the meantime…”

She arches a pointed brow at me. At my disheveled state. My skin is heating with another wave of rut-fever, and my cock’s already hardening.

I groan. “Don’t start.”

“You need to finish out Aethertide—uninterrupted—before doing any complex diplomacy. Get your head out of your ass. This is a shit time for politics.”

“You’re overstepping,” I say mildly.

“I’m worried.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not.”

“You’re within smiting range,” I remind her.

“Please. In your current state? I’d like to see you try.”

A rough chuckle claws its way out of me. “Bold words for the female who interrupted my other business.” I stretch my wings wide and relax against the throne, letting my thighs fall open. “Unless you’re volunteering to pick up where the other one left off?”

Zephyr’s mouth parts, a brief tell in an otherwise flawless facade. Her stare snags on my bare skin, trailing over my tattoos to my hard cock. Aethertide might not slam into the females as viciously, but she’s not immune. And as far as I know, there’s no one warming her bed.

I wonder who’s ever earned that particular privilege. If she’s as wound tight in private. If she lets another male see what’s beneath that high collar.

She shakes her head. “You already know the answer to that.”

I pause, weighing my next words. Tasting their shape, their vulnerability. “It doesn’t have to change anything, Whisper. Not with us.”

Empires have risen and fallen in all the time I’ve wanted Zephyr. I waited nearly seven thousand years just to kiss her, and never again had the privilege. The first and last time was at Calder’s winter ball—and then she’d retreated behind ice and distance.

For an instant, her composure slips. “I won’t complicate my duties with intimacy, not even for celestial events. If you need release and a blood donor to find supplementary power to hold the Shroud, find it between a courtier’s thighs. They’re gagging for it.”

“I’d never feed from you, Whisper.” I give her a small smile. “What if I just wanted you this one centennial?”

Zephyr’s expression darkens. The air goes charged with tension as she closes the distance between us on silent feet, black wings flaring. The flat of her blade kisses my neck, its edge dimpling my skin.