Текст книги "The wolf and the crown of blood"

Автор книги: Elizabeth May

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Текущая страница: 27 (всего у книги 33 страниц)

Her brows shoot up, eyes wide. “Wait. Are you telling me that mind-melting orgasm was you at ten percent?”

“Mmhm. You have no idea the things I’m going to do to you when I have access to all of me.”

Desire floods the bond, hot and hungry. “When these chains come off,” she says, “you won’t leave our bed for a week. I have plans.”

Our bed.

Two words said so simply. As if it’s already an inevitability, the pair of us tangled up in each other long after the dust of this ordeal settles. An unthinking promise of a shared after.

Something squeezes in my chest, too big to be contained even in the body of a god. I need her. I need to be inside her.

“Go.” I jerk my chin toward the bathing chamber. “Get yourself cleaned up. Then you’re going to come back to this bed and let me fuck you until we break it.”

A little shiver goes through her. She slides off my lap and pads into the adjoining room, leaving the door open—because of course she does. My Chosen delights in tormenting me.

She’s barely over the threshold before she’s shucking off her torn clothes. My breath catches at the sight of her. The elegant taper of her waist, her gorgeous tits, those long legs. She turns the tap for the tub, and steaming water pours forth, and she gives me a view of that luscious ass, and it’s…

It’s the kind of sight that could bring a god to his knees.

Suddenly, I understand the appeal of worship. The base, primitive urge to prostrate myself at her feet and serve her pleasure until she forgets everything but me. My cock. My touch. My mouth.

The metal edges of the shackles dig into my wrists as I flex my hands, nearly driven out of my mind with the visceral need to feel all that wet, warm skin and lay my claim a thousand different ways. I want to map her body. Learn every scar and blemish and perfect imperfection until I can trace them from memory.

In the bath, Bryony tips her head back with a sigh, rubbing soap into a lather on a washcloth and washing herself with economical motions. Somehow, that makes it worse—the complete lack of artifice, the unselfconscious way she touches herself. How she erases the remnants of the night’s brutality, like she hadn’t bled out a piece of her soul for me during that test.

It is, bar none, the loveliest sight in both realms.

Bryony’s eyes stay closed as she runs the washcloth lower, dipping between her legs to clean in firm circles. “You watching?”

“I’m appreciating,” I correct.

“Is there a difference?”

“Watching implies a certain distance.” I shift against the headboard, chains clinking. “What I’m feeling for you right now borders on the religious, except less holy.”

Her violet gaze finds mine across the steam-hazed distance. “Less holy. That’s interesting, coming from a god.”

“Even gods can be brought to their knees by the right kind of temptation.”

“Is that so?” She bites her lip. “What does it take to tempt a god?”

You, I want to say. Just you, existing in the same room as me.

But the words that emerge are different, darker: “Right now? The sight of you touching yourself while I can’t.”

A delicate shiver rolls through her, but she just drops the washcloth and starts rubbing her cunt in firmer circles. “I’m enjoying you like this. All chained up and desperate for it. Maybe I won’t let you touch me at all.”

I lean forward, pulling against my chains. “Do it harder. Pinch your nipple with your other hand.”

A shuddering inhale, and then she’s obeying, cupping her breast and rolling her nipple between her fingers.

“Good. Now get those fingers nice and deep in your pussy. Show me how you fuck yourself when I’m not there to do it for you.”

Her eyes stay on mine as she plunges two fingers in, head thrown back as she works herself.

I let out a sigh. “You’re so pretty when you do that.”

It’s the biggest tease, being forced to sit here and watch her take her pleasure while I’m chained up. She rides her hand in a slow, sinuous roll of her hips. I feel the echoes of her building release through the bond, each spark of heat. Feel her climbing higher, chasing relief—

“Come,” I tell her, lacing my voice with the dregs of my power and shoving it at her. “Now.”

“Oh, gods,” she gasps.

I soak in her expression: the half-parted lips, the delicate furrow between her brows as she bucks against her palm. Her lashes flutter shut as she climaxes. A fierce, savage pride detonates in my chest because that’s all for me. She’s all mine.

Her chest heaves as she comes down. Her eyes are soft and hazy when they find mine again.

“Get over here,” I say. “After what Alexios put you through, you deserve to be worshipped properly. Don’t bother drying off.”

Water sluices over her curves as she rises from the bath. She steps out and walks toward me with all that glistening skin on display, pristine and wet and prettily flushed, nearly vibrating with pent-up need.

“Crawl up here and let me taste that pussy,” I murmur.

She braces a hand on the headboard as she climbs up to settle her knees on either side of my face. Close enough for me to feel the heat of her, smell the sweet scent of her arousal.

Bryony jolts with a sharp gasp as I kiss her pussy. The first taste of her bursts across my tongue, sweet and filthy. I’m greedy for her. For every moan and shudder. I flatten my tongue and drag it over her clit in a slow circle, again and again, varying the pressure.

She grinds down. Her fingers twist in my hair, holding me right where she needs me. I commit to memory all the places that make her sigh, that have her squirming, nails sinking into my scalp as she rides my face. And it’s a devastation—a kind of unmaking I’ve never known to be used like this.

This is what worship should be, I think, drunk on the taste of her. Not blood on altars. Not fear and genuflection. This.

By the time she’s shuddering apart on my tongue, I’m so hard I ache with it.

“I need you,” I pant. “If I’m not inside you in the next thirty seconds, I’m going to lose my mind.”

Bryony doesn’t hesitate. Just shimmies down my body until she can get my trousers unbuttoned, shoving them down to free my cock. I exhale sharply at the first tentative stroke of her hand. My hips buck into the contact. She lowers herself onto me, both of us groaning at the slick glide. The weight of her on top of me is hot and perfect, and I can’t do anything but lie there and let her use me.

She sets a slow pace. Hips rising and falling, each downstroke forcing me deeper. I am drunk on it. Drunk on her. Reduced to base instinct, to the animal roar of mine mine mine.

Her head tips back on a moan as she finds a more urgent rhythm. She rides me in uneven grinds, dragging a little on the downstroke, close and deep and absolutely devastating. So warm and tight and wet for me. She’s something I never knew I wanted, but always craved. I spent centuries in my grief feeling like I needed to bite and claw and fuck and ruin, but this—she—is everything I ever wanted.

The shackles bite into my wrists as my hands fist with the need to grab and claim—

“Keep using me,” I say. “That’s it. Ride me hard. Take everything you need.”

Her nails are a sweet, stinging pressure where they sink into the muscles of my chest for leverage. When she reaches my wings, I groan helplessly as she trails her fingertips along the bottom edge.

“Which part of these is most sensitive?”

“Coverts,” I manage between panting breaths. “Closest to my shoulder blades. Dig your nails in.”

The instant she curls her fingers into the short feathers there, everything whites out. Rapture screams through every nerve ending. My spine arches. My hips surge up to meet hers, chasing that blinding sensation.

“Fuck. Like that. Just like that, Chosen.”

“I love you,” she says roughly. Riding me harder, taking me so deep. “I love you so much.”

It only takes a handful of sharp, desperate thrusts before I’m falling over the edge. I shudder through it, still arching into her. She shatters moments after with a fractured cry. I watch her shake apart on my cock, committing every detail to memory. The spill of damp hair over her shoulders, the heaving swells of her tits, her lips parted.

Our breathing is loud in the hush as we come down.

“That’s three,” I say when I can speak again. “Let’s see if I can wring another four out of you before dawn.”

*   *   *

The stench of other demis clings to her skin, and it’s driving me out of my mind. Even after she’s bathed and fucked me, I can detect traces.

Bryony’s curled against my chest, finally peaceful after all that pain. I won’t disturb that. Not when she fought so hard just to make it back to me. Still, I have to know.

“You don’t have to tell me everything,” I murmur into her hair, hating how the chains keep me from properly holding her. From wrapping her in my wings. “But at least tell me how many there were.”

She goes rigid. I track the sudden spike of her pulse, the shallow draw of air. The bond between us pulses with echoes of remembered humiliation.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Her voice is too steady, too controlled.

My Chosen has many talents, but lying to me sure as fuck isn’t one of them.

“Yeah, you do. The scents of other demis were all over you when you showed up in the cell. It’s still there.”

She flinches. “They didn’t hurt me.” She pulls away and sits up, hugging her knees. “They just…”

“Just what?” The words come out as a growl.

Bryony swallows hard. “Spat at me,” she says quietly. “Called me names.”

I count to ten in every dead language I know. Then I do it again, forcing myself to breathe and bank the inferno raging beneath my skin.

“Let me get this straight,” I manage. “Alexios made you march past dozens of hostile demis while you were barely conscious?”

Right. Alexios just earned himself top billing on my murder list.

“No one touched me. I handled it.”

So then why does she look so small? So fragile?

“You shouldn’t have had to,” I snap.

“They wanted to make sure I understood my place. That being your Chosen doesn’t erase what my family did during the war.” A bitter laugh. “And you know what? They’re not wrong. It doesn’t.”

“Don’t care,” I say. “Here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to give me any identifying details you remember. Then I’m going hunting. Someone fucks with what’s mine, they answer to me.”

“You’d only make it worse.” She drags a hand through her hair, frustration bleeding into the bond. “You can’t just threaten people into accepting me.”

“The fuck I can’t. That mark on your wrist means you’re under my protection. Choosing you means you’re mine. An Eternal not doing anything to defend his mate shows weakness—”

“And it shows weakness in me to let you,” she says sharply. “Do you have any idea how I’d look to them if I did that? I’m not a demi Chosen who already earned their respect by virtue of being born with wings. I don’t get to skip the part where I earn my place here. What I need is for you to give me room to figure this out on my own and let me choose my own battles. Your love can’t be another cage that denies me the right to fight for myself, Wolf.”

I swallow around the sudden thickness in my throat. “I just want to spare you pain. Because no one in your life ever bothered to.”

Bryony’s expression gentles. “I know. But you can’t. Pain is part of living. You think I don’t know that by now?”

Her finger absently traces the scar on her throat—that silvery line that makes me want to burn the realms to ash every time I see it. Every time I remember how close I came to losing her before I ever had her.

“I never told you,” she says, soft like a secret, “how much I wanted to die after this happened.”

The words are a knife to the gut. I go still, barely breathing.

“My guards carried me everywhere when I was recovering. Not because I couldn’t walk, but because they were protecting me. And I was so fucked up that I didn’t even care. I was just a body to them, anyway. Why not let them treat me like one? But one day, Theo snapped. She commanded the guards to put me down and told me to walk. It had been weeks, and I was so frail that I collapsed over and over. I was just… I was so angry. But that anger made me want…”

She trails off, dragging in a deep, uneven breath.

“Want what?” I breathe.

When she meets my stare again, her eyes are blazing. Defiant. Beautiful. “It made me want the world to bleed at my feet. I can’t tell you how many times people in my life have expected me to just… endure. The Oracles, my people, Alexios—I wasn’t a person to them. Being an Anchor was like being buried alive in my own skin. When you came to my room in Hellevig and let me cut into you, I felt like an animal chewing off its leg to escape a trap. Anger was something I could hold on to, something that made me feel like I could be more.”

Slowly, she reaches out and settles her hands on my chest, right over my heart. “You can’t deprive me of my anger, Wolf,” she tells me, calm and implacable. “So you’re going to let me fall, and then you’re going to let me get back up and do it again. Today, tomorrow, a century from now.” Her fingers flex against my skin. “I’m going to be pregnant with our child one day, and you’ll have to keep your promises. You’ll have to watch me hurt and scream, even if some of it ends up being directed at you, because I’ll be scared out of my fucking mind. I’ll say awful, unfair things to you that I don’t mean because this”—a rueful twist of her lips—“is a process. Us being together is going to be messy and ugly and so damn hard sometimes. Because humans and gods are enemies, and everyone will want to see us fail and tear each other apart.” She wipes away a tear from her cheek. “We’re both fucked up, and we’ve got more jagged edges than smooth, but anything worth fighting for is like that. You have to mix the bad in with the good.”

Her hands flatten more firmly against my chest, and I feel her certainty down the shimmering tether of our bond. “I can’t hide behind your wings forever,” she tells me. “You can’t shield me from every hurt. That’s not who I am. It’s not who we are.”

I love her. I love her so damn much I can’t breathe around it.

“Then be angry,” I tell her, voice rough with emotion. “Scream. Rage. Break shit. Fall and claw your way back up as many times as it takes.” I lift my head, catching her lips in a gentle kiss. “Have my babies. Burn this place to the ground. Just promise you’ll leave room for me to offer a hand when you need it.”

A wondering sort of smile touches her mouth. “I promise.”

“Good.” I kiss her again. “You belong with me, Bryony Devaliant.”

“I belong with you,” she breathes.

“Shout it, nemesis. My queen doesn’t need anyone’s permission to take up space. She owns it. She takes what’s hers.”

Bryony inhales sharply. “I belong with you!”

A fierce sort of pride explodes in my chest. “That’s my Chosen. Never let anyone make you feel small and shut you up. Not those courtiers. Not Alexios. And sure as fuck not me.”

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49

BASTIEN

MIST CLINGS TO the spires of Hellevig tonight. I suppose some might call this city beautiful, if they were inclined to ignore the fact that every new building erected since the war was built on the bones of slaughtered gods. One day, I’m going to raze this whole festering shithole to the ground.

But not tonight.

My mind breaks down each variable as I near the palace—velocity, trajectory, altitude. The immutable mathematics of motion, as fixed and unchanging as the stars.

There’s a certain purity to it. A peace in the way everything reduces down to its component parts, neatly labeled and filed away. Logical. Orderly. Untainted by emotions that turn people erratic and unpredictable.

I land on the balcony. A flick of my fingers, and the latch for the door crumples.

The bedchamber reeks of perfume. Gilt and ornamentation crowd every surface, garish to the point of vulgarity. But I’m only here for one thing: my knives. My blood sings in every molecule of Turpori steel, and every second they’re here makes me want to raze this entire realm.

I slip into the darkened halls, each footfall soundless. The palace slumbers around me, and—

A scream rips through the hush.

I pause. Not my problem. Not my business. Godkillers first, and everything else in this shithole can burn for all I care.

But against my better judgment, I turn down the corridor, casting out my senses, and—

Collide with a wall. Not stone or steel, but a diamond-hard blockade of pure will, as implacable as the woman it belongs to. It shoves against my mind with brutal force.

I know that psychic signature. I’ve tasted it before, in a blood-soaked village heaped with Vartenan dead.

Theodora Devaliant.

When I reach the door, I don’t bother with the handle. I just slam my boot into the wood and send it crashing inward.

She’s pinned between two males. One is locking down her arms, and the other is forcing something around her neck—a collar. Theodora claws at the metal as a flush crawls up her face.

Intervention just slid from “optional” to “non-negotiable.”

My shadows burst free and yank Theodora out of their grasp. She hits the floor. Her assailants don’t even manage a word before I slide my knife from its sheath and bury it in the side of the first male’s neck.

The second one tries to run. Mistake. My shadows catch him before he makes it two steps, the inky tendrils wrapping around his limbs, his torso, his throat, and wrenching. Every bone in his body snaps simultaneously—crack-crack-crack—spattering blood across the walls. The tendrils drop him to the carpet with a wet thump.

Killing them both takes fourteen point seven seconds, start to finish. Inefficient.

Boots pound in the hallway. I look up as three guards burst into the room, pulling up short at the sight of me standing among the carnage, splashed in gore and coldly furious. Their faces pale as recognition sets in—they know exactly who I am.

“Walk away,” I tell them softly.

Their hands flex on their sword hilts as if they’re actually entertaining the foolish notion of pulling steel on me.

My shadows twist around me. “You have three seconds.”

They look at each other in the universal language of “fuck this, I’m not dying tonight”, then back out of the room. Wise of them.

A desperate animal sound drags my attention back to Theodora. She’s on her knees, hunched over, and scrabbling at the collar. Blood wells under her nails where they scratch at the metal.

“Stop that,” I tell her flatly. “You’ll tear out your throat.”

Those green eyes snap to mine, and there it is—that spark I saw in Aldgate. That core of steel running through her. For a moment, I’m drowning in sense-memory, standing among the corpses in the village and watching this woman curl her lip in contempt as she surveyed my handiwork. A spike of pain stabs behind my right eye at the memory.

She’d shoved me out of her mind then like a psychic slap.

A shudder rolls through her, the muscles of her neck straining against the metal. “Get it off.” The words scrape out of her. “Please.”

Please. Such a soft, broken word from lips better suited to commands. I should savor this—Theodora Devaliant brought low, forced to beg the monster she despises. Sentiment is a destructive thing. Sticky fingers in all your tender places, scooping out handfuls until you’re just a raw nerve. I should let her sit in the consequences of it, stew in the impotence for a bit.

But I’m not here to indulge petty whims, and the Shroud’s more important than perverse pleasures.

So I drop into an easy crouch and reach for her. “Be still, and I’ll remove it.”

I’m not wearing gloves. I’m going to have to touch her bare skin.

“I bet you’re getting off on this,” she says. “After Aldgate.”

Not an accusation. She states it plainly, almost curiously, like she’s genuinely wondering what makes a monster tick.

I don’t dignify it with a response. Just skate my fingers under the collar’s edge to grope for a latch, a hinge, a join—anything I can persuade to pop open so I can be done with this. I’ll never go anywhere without my gloves again.

The backs of my knuckles brush her skin—burning hot, pulse jumping erratically—and every muscle in my body locks up, rejecting the contact. Touching other people makes me want to flay myself raw. It brings up too much I’d rather stayed buried—the slap of flesh on flesh, all those tugging hands a prelude to a different kind of dying.

Rough palms sliding over my skin. The bite of restraints. The way they laughed as they—

No. Focus on the present. On the task. Break it down into parts: find the mechanism, disable the lock, remove the collar. Simple. Clinical. Safe.

“You’re shaking,” Theodora says quietly.

“Shut up.”

My shadows seep into the mechanism, and the lock crumbles. The collar hits the floor with a dull clank.

I snatch my hands back the instant it’s done, resisting the urge to scrub them against my pants. Later, there will be scalding water and soap. For now, I settle for flexing my fingers until the sensation of touch fades.

“An asset dying would be inconvenient,” I say. “Don’t let it happen again.”

Theodora rubs at the marks on her throat. “I’m not your asset.”

“You’re the last Anchor holding the Shroud together. That makes you one.” I reach for the collar and examine it.

It’s Turpori steel with magic embedded in the metal.

I swallow back my low curse. Even now, my stolen feathers put my realm at risk. Whenever a human consumes those parts of me, they temporarily have the ability to create my steel. Three hundred years ago, that gave humans a flood of new weapons to use against us. And now, here it is again. Still plaguing me.

“What is it?” she asks, watching me. “Do you recognize it?”

Too observant, this one.

“No.” Technically true. I don’t know the meaning behind this particular configuration of runes and wards. But I will soon. I shove the remains of the collar into my coat. “Their names?”

“I skipped introductions while they were putting me in the collar.” She staggers upright. Her copper hair is loose, curling around her delicate features. “What do you care?”

Her hand keeps rubbing at her abused throat. I track the movement with a predatory focus, staring at the map of veins close to the surface, starkly visible under bruise-mottled skin. Her nightgown is torn, and her shoulder is bare—easy access. I could put my mouth there, I think. Drag my tongue over that fluttering pulse, sink my teeth in, and bite—

I eviscerate the thought before it can fully form, and shove it into whatever septic mental sewer it crawled out of, where it can rot with the rest of my unwanted urges. I can acknowledge attraction, lust, baser impulses. Catalog the symptoms. File them away as quantifiable variables in an equation I’ll never actually solve. Immaterial, in the grand scheme.

Theodora Devaliant is beautiful in the way natural disasters are beautiful—all that eye-catching destruction a trap for the unwary or the arrogant. But a Devaliant’s loveliness is just a trick of the light. A misdirect drawing attention away from where the knife is about to slide in.

I pull my dagger from the stiffening corpse at my feet and clean the blade on my coat. “Alexios will want details about your incompetent security. Their response time was three minutes and twenty seconds after you screamed.” I glance at her. “Unacceptable.”

Her eyes narrow. “Your lunatic brother gutted every half-competent guard when he went on his murder spree through my palace. So apologies if my current security detail doesn’t meet the exacting standards of Alexios’ favorite butcher.”

Fucking Evander. There are times I’m convinced the stars wove idiocy into the fabric of his soul. My brother’s self-control has the structural integrity of wet paper. Leaving the empress unprotected because he couldn’t keep his dick in his pants around her sister? Even for him, that’s impressively stupid.

Tension gathers behind my eyes. I’m going to develop an aneurysm at this rate. Several of them.

“Hire new guards.” I sheath my weapons. “More of them, better trained. Or Alexios will exploit an Accord loophole to assign someone to nanny you.”

Theodora glares at me. “Alexios doesn’t need to exploit anything. The Accords state he can’t meddle in my life or rule through force, so I’ll allow his guards until I replace mine. Now”—her hand drops from her throat—“tell me why you’re creeping around my palace in the middle of the night.”

“Reclaiming my property. Your sister had my knives, and I want them back.”

The color drains from her face. “Tell me she’s okay.”

I don’t bother to confirm or deny. Bryony Devaliant’s fate depends entirely on the whims of a half-mad god-king and a brother whose self-control has always been more decorative than functional. The girl did not look well when I last saw her. Assurances would be premature at best.

“Irrelevant,” I say. “I want my weapons.”

A muscle in her jaw jumps. For a moment, I’m convinced she’ll launch herself at me in a doomed blaze of defiance. I almost want her to.

“That’s it? You broke in for some knives?” Her voice climbs with each word. “Who cares which realm they’re in?”

I’m tempted to reach into the lockbox of her mind and squeeze until something ruptures. In one hundred and ten thousand years, I’ve never met a human who could keep me out. The fact that she can is starting to piss me off. I’m not above challenging anything that defies me by digging my teeth in until it stops squirming.

“Watch yourself,” I say. “I don’t play games, and you’re wearing my patience thin. Any blade forged from Turpori steel is mine by right.”

Understanding clicks in her expression. “I see.”

How much does she know? What else is she hiding behind those walls?

I press against her mental barriers, searching for cracks. Places I can slip through and take what I want.

“Get out of my head, Blade.” Her voice is soft, but her mind rises to meet me, repelling my intrusion with a hard slap. “Before I make you regret it.”

I blink. “How are you doing that?”

You shouldn’t be able to do that. No one can do that.

Breaking into minds is what I do.

“Your mind feels wrong.” She meets my stare without flinching. A lesser creature would have crumbled by now. “It doesn’t play nice with mine. What happened to it?”

An itch starts up beneath my skin. Her scent fills my head, the inescapable musk of human. It blankets my tongue until I’m choking on it, until my gorge rises and my fingers twitch with the need to dig into flesh and tear—

“The knives,” I say sharply.

The itching is spreading. And I have the sudden, horrifying certainty that she sees me. Down to the rotted core, the empty space where my heart should be, all the filthy memories I keep locked away.

And she does not look away.

“Come with me,” she says, cool and clipped.

I fall into step a precisely calculated distance behind her, close enough to intervene should she stumble, far enough to avoid even the suggestion of considerate hovering. As we walk, I analyze variables—the positioning of guards (inadequate), potential ambush points (numerous), structural weaknesses (laughable). And Theodora. The newly crowned empress and the sole surviving Anchor, leaving two realms vulnerable to anyone who might want to see the veil collapse and a new war sparked.

It’s a disaster waiting to happen.

The armory, when we reach it, is at least marginally better defended. Iron-reinforced doors, competent locks, some attempt at organization.

Theodora leads me to a cabinet in the corner. “I moved them in there.”

I trail my fingertips over the wood. My shadows shimmer down my arm, seeking the hidden tumblers like the teeth of a key. The lock crumbles, and the doors groan open.

The knives rest on a bed of black velvet, singing with the resonance of my power. The metal knows me, remembers when my hands and energy shaped it, and it croons a welcome as I lift them free.

“You need to hear something,” I tell her as I push the blades into the belt along my ribs. “You won’t like it.”

She sighs. “Gods, what now?”

“Get pregnant. Immediately.”

A startled laugh escapes her. “Excuse me?”

“The Shroud needs your bloodline to continue. Right now, your body is the most valuable thing in two realms, and tonight proved how vulnerable you are. Any halfway competent assassin could slit your throat and bring down the veil.”

Her shoulders stiffen as understanding sinks in: this woman is chained to Hellevig and unable to leave without the veil collapsing. This city is now her prison.

“Are you offering to fuck a baby into me, Blade?” The words are steady. Inflectionless. “How selfless.”

There’s the bitch I met at Aldgate.

I curl my lip in disgust. “Don’t flatter yourself, Empress.”

Just the thought makes me want to heave up knives.

I turn to leave, but at the door, I look back at her standing in a pool of moonlight. “Try not to die. It’s annoying enough dealing with you alive.”

*   *   *

I knock on Evander’s chamber door. Rustling fabric and a muffled curse filter through the barrier, followed by the telltale creak of a mattress. Of course. My brother’s proclivities are as predictable as they are tedious.

“Yeah?” Evander calls, voice rough with sleep and other things I’d rather not dwell on.

The smell of sex hits me when I enter. Evander remains chained to the bed where I left him, and the princess is nestled under the blankets at his side. They’re covered in each other’s scents—that unique aroma of Chosen like an imprint beneath their skin.

She stirs as I approach, violet eyes fluttering open. I study the rosy flush of her cheeks, the way her flesh has knitted back together without even a scar to show for all her suffering. The perks of fucking a healer, I suppose.

Evander watches me with a smirk. “You’re looking almost dapper, Bas. Who did you have to disembowel to manage that at this hour?”

What a useless question. As if I’d ever allow my appearance to become so dissolute.

I level him with a flat stare. “Your attempts at humor remain as pathetic as your self-control.”

“Jealous? Don’t worry. I’m sure we could find someone willing to hate-fuck even your cold ass if you asked real sweet.”

“When I want to act like a mindless animal, I’ll seek your expert advice.”