Текст книги "The wolf and the crown of blood"

Автор книги: Elizabeth May

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Текущая страница: 21 (всего у книги 33 страниц)

But he doesn’t say a word. Just turns and stalks toward the tower.

Fine.

I follow. He reaches his room first, shedding his trousers. Flawless skin and muscle and golden feathers gleam in the aetherlight slanting through the window.

“Well?” He spreads his arms. “Get on with it. I assume you didn’t drag me here to gawk.”

“On the bed.” I remove my chemise, baring myself completely. “On your back, arms above your head. Spread your wings.”

For a moment, I’m sure he’ll refuse. That he’ll lunge and tear me apart for the audacity.

But then he goes to the bed and settles against the sheets. His wings fan out wide until the tips brush the floor, and I forget how to breathe. He’s a decadent expanse of golden skin, his glowing eyes tracking my every move. Laid out like a sacrifice.

Only there’s nothing submissive in the way he watches me.

Come unravel me, that sinful sprawl sneers. Conquer me if you think you can weather the cost.

Slow and deliberate, I set one knee on the mattress. His fingers flex, digging into the sheets, and a breath hisses through his teeth. As if it’s taking everything in him not to lunge up and drag me under him.

I’ve never felt control like this. Towering over a god, bending him to my whims. It’s a rush I never want to come down from.

I crawl up his body in a slow slide of skin against skin. He shudders, his throat working around a swallow. I take my time touching him, tracing my fingers over his chest, brushing my lips over his stomach. I want to memorize this. Hoard it like an ill-gotten treasure before he rips it away.

This is power—the flutter of his pulse beneath my palms, the strain of his muscles as he fights to remain motionless, compliant. The way his breath hitches when I finally settle on top of him.

This god is mine. Mine to ruin. Mine to defile.

He’s a liar, but there’s no truth more honest than his heartbeat, and it just sped up for me.

“So what’ll it be, nemesis?” Evander sneers. “How will you make me sorry?”

I slap a palm over his mouth and settle my weight more firmly across his hips. “Shut the fuck up and be still. It’s my turn to use you. And the only words I want to hear out of that filthy mouth are my name and please.” I breathe the last word into the infinitesimal space between us. “Please is the only prayer I’ll accept from you, Wolf. It’s the price you pay to touch me again.”

I grind my pussy along the rigid length of his cock. Evander makes a choked sound, almost pained.

Then I reach between us, position him, and sink down. The stretch burns, but I don’t stop until I’ve taken all of him. Evander’s eyes slam shut as a low groan claws out of his throat. His hands grip the headboard, muscles straining as he fights to keep still, to let me set the pace.

“Eyes open,” I say, scratching my nails down his stomach. “Watch who’s fucking you.”

Those gold eyes snap to mine, and there’s fury there. Hunger. Something else I don’t want to name. I roll my hips, testing, taking him deeper.

“That’s it,” I gasp, working myself on the thick glide of his cock. “No more games, no more pretending. Tonight, I want you fully present. I want this burned into your memory. So when you finally put that blade in me, you’ll remember that once—just once—you were mine.”

Something crosses his face that I’ve never seen before, like I’ve shoved a knife between his ribs and twisted.

Good. I hope it hurts. I hope he carries this for eternity.

“Who’s fucking you?” I whisper.

“Bryony,” he gasps.

Good, I think. Shatter for me.

He meets me with hitches of his hips—half-thrusts quickly leashed, as if he can’t stop himself. As if he’s physically holding himself back from seizing me, from flipping me over and pounding into me until I scream.

“Say my name again.”

“Bryony.” It’s raw. Reverent and furious.

I rise on my knees before slamming back down, palms braced on his chest for leverage. His hands tighten on the headboard. The scent of scorched wood fills the room as his magic lashes out.

“Now say the word I want to hear,” I whisper. “One word, and I’m all yours.”

Darkness pools in Evander’s eyes, drowning amber in depthless black. Still, he doesn’t reach for me.

I lean down until I can feel the uneven gusts of his breathing. Until we share the same air, the same agonized heartbeat. “You want me under you again? Screaming your name until my voice gives out? Fucking say it.”

And he does. His undoing, shaped into a single word.

“Please.”

A snarl. The Wolf snapping his jaws and admitting defeat.

I cradle his face between my palms and press a chaste, almost tender kiss to his lips. “Don’t you ever forget this. Don’t forget that I’m the only one who’s ever made you beg.”

With a growl, Evander surges up and flips us over, slamming me back into the mattress.

His weight settles over me—and then he’s on me, in me, fucking me. His mouth crashes over mine, swallowing my gasp as he notches my legs high around his waist and thrusts hard. He’s seizing control. Laying his claim just as thoroughly as I laid mine.

“Do you still hate me?” I pant, the words hitching on a brutal thrust.

“With every fucking breath,” he says.

Snarling, I reach up and sink my fingers into his hair. Wrench his head back until the cords of his neck strain. “Then fuck me like you hate me.”

He bares his teeth, and then his fingers wrap around my neck, squeezing. My pulse flutters against his palm, my lungs straining.

“Now it’s your turn to beg.” He slams hard into me. “Beg me for mercy. Go on, beg me real pretty.”

Dark spots dance at the edges of my vision, the air turning thin. I stare up at him through the asphyxiating haze—at the savage twist of his mouth. The depthless hunger in his eyes.

“Are you going to tap out?” he breathes into my ear.

No. Break me.

“I could make you pray to me.” He punctuates the filthy promise with a hard thrust, until I feel the stretch and burn with every breath. “I could make you pray every fucking night you have left.”

“I don’t pray,” I gasp. Constellations burst across my darkening vision.

Not to gods or kings or monsters.

The hand at my throat tightens. The air thins further, my head swimming, heat licking through my veins. Bright and cold and utterly ruthless.

Evander draws me into a brutal kiss, forcing my head back into the pillows. His teeth sink into my bottom lip.

“By the time I’m done with you, the only prayers you’ll remember will be the ones you scream for me.”

And I believe him.

I believe this beautiful, vicious creature will tear me apart and reshape me in his image, shatter me into a million pieces, and make me beg him to put me back together. And he’ll do it again and again, until nothing is left between us but worship and teeth, tongue and claws, ashes and blood and stardust.

There’s something severely wrong with me. Because the pressure around my throat and the brutal thrust of him inside me, stretching me past what I think I can take, is sending me careening toward a precipice I’m suddenly desperate to fling myself over.

I meet Evander’s feral, ravenous gaze through the smoldering black, and I am infinite. Incandescent.

I take everything he gives. All the hurt and hunger pouring out of us. Fucking like we’ll destroy each other. Like we already have. If he plans to be my end, then I’ll burrow into the darkest parts of him, scatter myself through his veins like broken glass. So that every time he draws breath after I’m gone, he’ll bleed. He will hurt.

Pleasure all but blacks my vision, violent and seemingly endless—the racking shudders of orgasm, the bliss. The wings at his back flare wide as he slams into me one final time, grinding against my center as he finds his release.

As the fog of climax recedes, awareness returns by degrees. I feel him everywhere—the drum of his heart, his warm skin against mine as he removes his hand from my throat and checks me over, his touch gentle as he uses his power to heal the bruises.

I should dislodge him. Roll him off me and stagger away to lick my wounds in private. Reestablish distance and lines of demarcation. But this moment, with sweat drying on our skin and his scent in my lungs, is a reprieve. I’m not ready to relinquish it yet.

So, I just breathe. And for a time, Evander allows it. His fingers card through my hair, soothing me like I’m precious. Something cherished.

But I’m not.

It was all a game she thought she could win.

I compose myself and push him off, not looking at him as I get out of bed. “If you need it again tonight, use your hand. I’m done being your toy.”

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38

BRYONY

THE SKY IS the color of a fresh bruise as I step out into the garden.

I hug my arms tight around myself. It’s not just from the cold. Every brush of the breeze feels like Evander’s touch skimming along my skin—teasing, maddening, inescapable.

I hate that every little sensation reminds me of him. Every touch, every kiss, every whispered word of praise was just another weapon in his arsenal, designed to hurt me. And I let him. When I started trusting him, I might as well have given him the dagger and bared my throat.

I suppose I should be grateful. At least now, I know where I stand. The Blade drew a line in the sand, and it was a brutal reminder of my fate.

Four days now. Four measly sunrises until the hourglass runs out, and the Void comes calling. No more lies, no more pretending.

No more negotiation.

The familiar thrum of magic prickles along my nape a moment before wingbeats shatter the pre-dawn hush. Amara touches down in a flutter of dark feathers, her wings folding against her back.

She cocks her head, pale eyes studying me. Looking for blood, probably. Bruises. Bite marks. Any evidence that the Wolf used me too roughly. But he’d healed them all after that brutal fuck hours ago.

“Well,” she drawls, “you’re in one piece. That’s fortunate. Did he treat you well? Do I need to launch his eyeballs into the Osbu?”

Heat floods my cheeks as a wave of sense-memories bombard me. The exquisite stretch and ache of him inside me, hitting that spot that made stars burst behind my eyes. The weight of him between my thighs, pressing me down. The slick glide of his sweat-damp skin against mine. His nose buried in my hair as we panted our completion.

I could make you pray to me. I could make you pray every fucking night you have left.

No. Stop.

I shove the images down. Box them up with all the other treacherous things I can’t afford to want.

“I’m fine. Wasn’t anything I didn’t beg for.” I fold my arms over my chest. “But I don’t want to waste time talking about the Wolf. Tell me about Theo. Did you see her?”

Amara sighs. “I spied through the windows. The palace is crawling with Idris’ loyalists, and he’s keeping her confined to her chambers. Since he can’t exactly kill Alexios’ only other Anchor…”

Dread turns my blood to ice as I imagine my sister at my uncle’s mercy. Idris has been itching to put Theo in her place for years.

“Did they hurt her? When you found her, was she—”

“Nothing that won’t heal,” Amara says. “Some nasty bruising. Defensive wounds on her knuckles where she went scrapping. Looks like she gave as good as she got. Laid out one of Idris’ bootlickers cold, from what I heard.”

I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to breathe around the vice clamped over my lungs. My nails cut into my palms, and I relish the bright flare of pain. It gives me something to focus on.

“You couldn’t get her out?”

Amara scrubs a hand over her face. “Tried to. Almost fucked it all sideways, too. I remembered the bastards guarding her have Alexios’ Claim, and he’d feel it the second I made a move. Since I’m not an Eternal yet, I couldn’t survive the punishment. Having him splatter my brains across the palace corridor from a thousand miles away would defeat the purpose of a rescue.”

Still, letting Theodora stay locked up while I’m here with the Wolf is unthinkable. If I have four more days, I intend to make them count.

I exhale shakily. “I’m going to Hellevig.”

Amara’s eyebrows shoot up. “You want to run that by me again?”

“Theo needs me. So I’m going to get her.”

“Not alone, you aren’t. What exactly is the plan here? Storm the gates and fight your way to her royal chambers?”

I roll my eyes. “Please. I’m reckless, not suicidal.” I turn to pace along the garden path, restless energy buzzing beneath my skin. “There’s a network of old war tunnels under the palace—escape routes in case the enemy breached the walls. Theo had them cleared and fortified after she took the regency. No one will even know I’m there. You can fly her to my family’s old hunting cabin in the south. It’s isolated.”

She hums her approval. “Not a terrible plan. But I notice you’re not tripping over yourself to get the Wolf in on this mission.”

“That’s because I’m not.”

“What, afraid he’ll swoop in and steal your shot at playing valiant rescuer?”

“He made it clear I’m free to go whenever I please. I negotiated the terms when I agreed to stay here.” I run a hand through my hair. “The Blade knows I’m alive. He gave the Wolf five days to end me before he finishes the job himself.”

Amara’s mouth falls open. “You’re shitting me.”

“Afraid not,” I say with a bitter laugh.

Something complicated moves across her face. “He could always Claim you, you know.” She says it gently. Like she’s trying to brace for impact.

And oh, there it is—that laughable suggestion. As if Evander would ever lower himself to Claim me. The only time he ever brings it up is when he’s trying to manipulate me.

If you’re lying to me, the Blade’s words to Evander whisper in my memories, if you Claim her, or worse, soulbond with her, I’ll dig my fingers into your chest and crush your traitorous heart in my fist.

“I’m disposable, remember? His entertainment.” Something squeezes in my chest. “The Wolf won’t Claim me. And I don’t want him to.”

I’m amazed my voice emerges steady. Level. Because even now, with fury simmering in my veins and his betrayal still fresh, some pathetic scrap of me hurts at the rejection—at how easily he played me.

“An Eternal’s Claim is ironclad,” Amara presses. “Not even Alexios can touch you if the Wolf lays one on you. It’s the oldest, most sacred law.”

I shake my head, throat closing up. “No. He doesn’t give a damn about me.”

I’m just having a bit of fun. It’s not like I’m keeping her.

“That’s not true. I’ve seen the way he looks at you—”

“Like he wants to fuck me,” I snap. I let out a shaky breath. “I’ve made my peace with it.” Liar, a small, treacherous voice whispers. “I’m not binding myself to another god.”

Especially not him, I don’t say. If he Claimed me, he’d sense how close sentiment has burrowed into me. I couldn’t tolerate the excruciating intimacy of his ownership.

“Wait here for me,” I tell Amara. “I’m going to go pack a few things, and we’ll go.”

She nods, her gaze searching mine. “Okay.”

I stride back into the tower. As I wind through corridors, my mind refuses to settle.

I’m done being used. I’m through with his secrets and games and manipulations. After everything, he deserves to have me pry his armor wide open.

I stop at the familiar door with the obsidian seal.

His secret. The one line I’m not meant to cross. My heart kicks behind my ribs as I stare at the mark carved into the center of the door. It’s pulsing red, like a fresh wound.

It’s fitting, in a vicious sort of way, that he’ll wake up and find his precious door open. One final “fuck you” to the god who unmade me.

So I twist the handle. Power crackles along my skin as I step over the threshold.

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39

EVANDER

THE SUNLIGHT SLANTING across the sheets wakes me—or maybe it’s the silence where Bryony’s heartbeat should be.

I was so wrong. When I said you were just like Alexios? Turns out, you’re actually worse.

I’m proud of her, honestly. I could have given excuses about lying to my brother. That I was only trying to sell him on my typical depravity, my well-documented history of impulsivity and immortal boredom. Dressed it up in pretty words and reassurances like I wasn’t still planning to shove the knife into her.

But I am, and she deserved the opportunity to scream at me and remind me what a greedy fuck I am. And when she made me beg for it, I deserved that, too. That pointed reminder that I might be the god, but she holds the real power here.

I stare up at the roses stretching along the ceiling, studying the pulsing, vibrant color of their blooms. The roses have been whispering about her all week. Their thorns stretch toward her whenever she passes, like they’re trying to snare her, keep her. She babies them like my mother did, and now the realm is showing me how pleased it is.

Go to her, you idiot.

I shove into a pair of loose trousers, not bothering with a shirt. Her scent pulls me down the corridor like an invisible chain, but it doesn’t lead me to her room. Not where I expect her to be.

The door at the end of the hall is open, and the obsidian seal is pulsing red against the dark wood.

She didn’t. She wouldn’t.

But she did.

I shoulder into the chamber, incandescent with fury. With old hurts wrenched viciously into the light.

She stands beneath the twisting canopy of the chamber’s ancient tree. The black branches rise thirty feet toward the domed skylight, covered with leaves the color of dried blood. The thick trunk is carved with the deep gouges of my dagger.

And wrapped around the tree are roses. Winding up the trunk and every branch, crawling along the walls. I stopped coming in here when they began to overtake the tree, a pointed message from the realm to its chosen king.

This grief is making you waste away. You’re squandering your power.

Bryony turns. The stained glass above paints her in shades of violet and cobalt, catching on her opalescent skin and silver-white hair. Her expression shifts—an apology and something softer. Something that hooks into my withered excuse for a heart and twists until I’m carved open, and the only word between my teeth is please.

“You had no right,” I snarl. “I made one rule—one damn rule in this tower.”

She flinches, but she doesn’t retreat. Running would be too easy, too simple for a woman who seems determined to court destruction.

“I know. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have…” She swallows hard. “But why hide this? It’s… beautiful. I thought I’d find—”

“What?” I snap, stalking closer. My bare feet sink into the packed earth I’d gathered from Turpori’s wreckage. “Preserved corpses? Trophy rooms filled with the remains of my enemies? Some sick collection to confirm what a monster I am?” A laugh scrapes out of me. “Sorry to shatter your illusions, Princess, but even I’m not that predictable.”

“That’s not what I—”

“Save it.” Power crackles beneath my skin. She has to feel it—the static charge, the sting of barely leashed magic—but she doesn’t back down. “You wanted to see the darkest parts of me? Fine. Let me give you the grand tour.”

I drag my knuckles down the pitted trunk. “This is a griefwood. They’re grown in Scillarian households as an extension of the mourning process. Watered by the tears and blood of the bereaved, fed by the corpses tangled in its roots. They’re living headstones. This one once sat in the courtyard of my mother’s palace. I carved every mark myself in the days after her court fell. Each one symbolizes someone I lost.”

And each gouge is a wound that will never heal.

“There are so many.” A broken whisper.

A tightness spreads through my chest. “What did you expect? You’re standing on a mass grave.”

I watch the knowledge settle in her expression—the parting of her lips, the clench of her fingers.

“You asked me once how humans managed to kill so many gods,” I say. “Well, Devaliant, here are the mechanics of deicide. Pay attention because I’m only going to say this once.”

I crook my finger beneath her chin, tilting her face to meet my stare. She shivers but doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t look away as the air thickens with the rising swell of my power, the electric thrum of it.

“First,” I say softly, “you take a very special blade. A godkiller forged by an Eternal gifted with the power of metallurgy and imbued with their magic. Then, you set it right between our wings, where the skin is soft. Where we’re weak.”

Her breathing goes ragged and her pulse flutters against my fingertips, but she holds my gaze as I lean in and breathe my next words into the charged space between our mouths.

“And then you start sawing.”

She makes a noise like I’ve struck her.

“Shh, don’t flinch now. You wanted this, remember?” My lips brush the shell of her ear. “Let me tell you what your sick fucking family did to my brother. His wings were kissed by starlight once. Our mother used to say that the realm had taken its time crafting them. And your ancestors pinned him to a table and laughed while they carved him up.”

I swallow past the lump in my throat. Force myself to keep going. “Wings are the one thing even an Eternal can’t regenerate. Did you know that? It nearly killed me to craft him a replacement out of shadows. There’s a deadland a hundred miles wide in the Duehavn from the power it took to make my brother whole again. But do you want to know the real reason your family mutilated him?”

I pull back just far enough to search her stricken face. To watch the awful knowledge bleed into her expression. “Consumption, sweetheart,” I say. “When humans ingest our flesh, they steal our magic for a little while. They take what we have because they want it for themselves.”

Her hands cover her mouth. Bryony makes a wounded sound, fresh tears spilling over.

“When Bas and I made it back to Turpori, it was just smoking rubble and rotting bodies. Your family and their legion used Bas’ power to put down our people like animals. We found what was left of our mother scattered through the throne room.” I choke out a broken laugh. “I’m sure Vartena spun it real nice in the history books. The Godkiller Crusades, right? That’s what they call it? But here in Scillari, it’s the Devouring. And that’s what it was. Our bodies consumed until the dead outnumbered the living.”

I’m breathing hard, panting. The words spill faster, harsher. Tumbling over each other. “That kind of loss destroys you,” I rasp. “It fills you up with poison until all you know how to do is spread it.” I drag in a shuddering breath, and it hurts. Fuck, it hurts. “Bas and I almost destroyed half of Scillari in our grief. Alexios had to bind our power—but he promised us justice. At that point, I didn’t care who handed me the knife, as long as it wound up in a Devaliant’s ribs.”

The memories rise in a hungry tide. I take her hand, marveling at the contrast between our skin. At the glitter of mine against her pale luminance. “You wanted to know why you shine like this. The real reason you Devaliants are so damned pretty.” I graze my fingers over her cheek, whispering, “There’s no demi in your lineage. None of you is special. It’s tainted blood, vicious girl. Your ancestors devoured so much immortal flesh that it changed them. Polluted your bloodline. And they passed it down to you.”

My hand slides to the nape of her neck, twisting into her hair. A few rough tugs, and her head tips back, baring her throat. “All this exquisite skin I love marking up? It’s born from atrocity. Every time I look at you, it reminds me of the dead.”

A small sound escapes her. A tear trails down her cheek, and I watch its progress in mute fascination. I want to chase it with my tongue, lick into her mouth, and swallow down the broken sounds she makes until she understands that this is how it’s always going to end.

“Can you even imagine the violence it took to make me this monstrous?” I ask her. “And I’m monstrous down to my fucking soul, Devaliant. Your family made me this way. I want you to know that when I rip out your heart, it won’t be personal. Just prophecy. There’s an old saying in Scillari, Drevikt, vahn nevikt. In vengeance, rebirth.”

I bring her closer, until my lips brush her jaw on every word. “We’ll always rise from the ashes. And when we do, we’ll drag our enemies into the dark. We all pay for the sins of our ancestors in the end. You’ll just pay in blood instead of gold. And there’s a vicious sort of symmetry in that, isn’t there? The daughter of a house built on dead gods and devoured magic, destined to die and die and die again. Atoning for the crimes of history with the only coin we monsters trade in: suffering.”

I nip at her earlobe, swiping my tongue over the slight sting. Gratified when she shivers against me, hands coming up to clutch at my shoulders.

“If there’s any mercy to be found in this ugly world, it’s that mortal lives are so fleeting. Not like us, cursed to carry our hurts through the ages. It lingers and festers and eats us alive.”

I gentle my grip on her wrists. “Listen very carefully,” I say, cold and clipped. “You do not step over this threshold again, or I’ll strip the flesh from your body and use it to bind the histories of everything your bloodline has taken from me. You Devaliants and your wars and your bottomless fucking entitlement. Say you understand.”

I wonder if she can feel the animal snarl building in me, rabid and aching to fight. Because she just detonated a bomb in the no-man’s-land between us, and now I’ve been left to bleed out.

She only stares at me, her face full of an emotion I can’t name.

“Say something,” I snarl.

But she doesn’t. She just leans forward and slowly presses her cheek into the crook of my shoulder.

Stop. Stop. Fucking stop.

I don’t want this from her. I don’t want her to show me all the broken parts of her and remind me that, in another life, I could have loved her so damn much I bled with it.

Tough shit, Wolf. We don’t always get what we want.

I dig my fingers into her nape. “Say you hate me.”

Her lips are unbearably soft as they graze my jaw. She remains silent, just touching me. Getting up close, where I can still smell myself on her.

“I could make it happen,” I tell her. “I could make you hate me so much you’ll claw out your own heart just to be free of me.” I’m breathing hard, fighting for control. Losing. “Say it. Remind me what we are to each other.”

Her knuckles brush over my cheek. Her lips part on a gasp, and I’m lost. I slant my mouth over hers, swallowing down the startled moan. She opens for me, desperate. She tastes like rain and destruction. Like the end of worlds.

“Nothing’s changed.” I’m shaking, I realize. Trembling against her. “We’re just fucking each other. That’s all this is. Understand? It means nothing.”

She wraps her arms around me, and my chest heaves as she holds me close. “It’s okay,” she whispers. “Evander. It’s okay.”

I can’t breathe. I can’t think. I let her hug me like she’s trying to hold all my splintered pieces together.

“Let me have you,” I say, grasping at her clothes. What am I doing? What am I doing? “Forget everything I said before. Just let me have you again.”

“Ishkah,” she whispers against my lips.

I go still at the word, tempted to pretend I didn’t hear it. That’s her line written in the sand, but she’s already scuffed mine out, and why should I listen? She wants me; I can smell it on her. I can make her yield. Make her mindless.

But then she speaks again, and it’s barely louder than an exhale. But I feel it like a knife to my heart.

“I’m leaving.”

The words drop like a stone into water, rippling out and out. Because contained in them are so many things left unspoken.

“Amara’s waiting for me,” she continues, like she’s not gutting me alive. “After I left you last night, I wrote down everything I remembered in Caelestis about Rhosyn and left it on my desk. It… It’s an anagram. Onrhys is the word for ‘serpent’ in Lybräian. It’s a symbol of House Devaliant.” She wipes a tear away. “You mentioned black market parts to Amara, so it’s probably another reason for you to hate my family. But you deserve to know.”

My chest constricts. “Bryony,” I breathe.

“Let me say this. I owe you a truth before I go. My only non-negotiable.”

She reaches for my hand. Takes it between her own, and slowly, slowly, she pushes up her sleeve to reveal the neat row of scars along her inner arm.

“You asked about these. I want you to understand what they mean.” She guides my finger to the topmost mark, a jagged line of silver. “I once told you that after the Void, nothing feels real. Everything is fog and static. So I have a ritual.”

I frown, uncomprehending. Her smile is terribly gentle. Sad in a way I can’t bear.

“One,” she says softly. “Breathe. It’s always the first thing when I wake up on that altar. I force the air in and out of my lungs until I remember how they work.”

My throat closes up as understanding dawns. As the pieces slot into place, ugly and aching.

“Two. Feel.” Another scar, a second rung on the ladder. “Sensation, texture. The grit of stone, the chill of the altar.” She looks up at me through her lashes, and it’s like a punch to the sternum. “The brush of your hands on my skin.”

She traces the third mark, and I can’t look away. Can’t speak.

“Three. Name,” she continues. “They can take everything else, but they can’t have this. I am Bryony. I am my own, no matter how many times I die.”

The next scar is larger. Angrier. “Four. Present. When and where, even if I’m not sure I want to be there. The temple, the palace.” Her breath hitches. “This room. Your bed. With you so deep in me, I can’t tell where I end and you begin.”

I want to wrench my hand away. I want to lace our fingers together and never let her go.

“Five.” The last one. “Real. This moment, right here. You and me and the blood in our veins. Your heart against mine.” She laughs a little, but it sounds like a sob. “Us. This. It’s the realest thing I know, even if…”

Even if it has to end.

I squeeze my eyes shut. Try to breathe around the fist in my chest, the crush of it. Because this shouldn’t hurt so much.

“I’m so sorry for what they did to you.” Her voice is low. “And that’s not enough. I know it isn’t.”

There’s only the cadence of our breathing in the silence, the splintered pieces of us. She brings my palm to her cheek. Nuzzles into the contact, and I feel the wet slide of tears against my skin. The delicate flutter of her lashes.