Текст книги "Alien god"
Автор книги: Ursa Dox
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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 29 страниц)
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CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE Wylfrael
I returned to Sionnach, landing among howling winds that made me think Rúnwebbe’s voice had followed me here. But it really was only the wind, rising in preparation for a storm. It made my tied-back hair whip and buffeted my wings as I descended to the stirring snow.
But those winds, the coming storm, were nothing to what I felt inside myself. The confused rage that churned, Rúnwebbe’s prophecy the catalyst. I still couldn’t believe what she’d said, but more and more I began to hate and fear the fact it may be true. That I would be the cause of my own mate’s destruction. Rúnwebbe’s prophecies were very rare – usually, she only had whispers of what had already come to pass, or what was happening right now, out among the stars. I’d only heard tell of two other visions of the future besides this one, and both others had come to pass, just as she’d said they would.
I will murder my own mate.
I roared, rage coming out as sound. I funnelled my power towards the ground, sending a wave of snow high as a mountain crashing into the forest in front of my castle. It did not make me feel better, so I did it again and again, sending huge walls of snow rising and crashing. The wind picked up further, catching drifts of hurling snow out of the air and sending the white spinning in a frenzy until it seemed as if I’d been caught in the centre of some white tornado.
I was using too much power, and I knew it. I was still healing, and I’d opened two sky doors – one to Rúnwebbe’s, and one back here – already today. But I did not care. The fury inside me was too great. If I did not see it mirrored back at me by the violent landscape, I felt as if I might fall apart.
I fell apart anyway.
My power sputtered, then retreated. I collapsed to my knees, wind swirling against the great, chaotic dunes of snow that I’d created out of once-smooth white. I leaned forward on my hands and knees, my fingers sinking into the snow as I panted.
Who is she?
I knew now that I could never find out. I could never seek her out among the stars and claim her as I was destined to do. If meeting me would be her death, then she would never meet me at all. I would resign myself to a life of isolation, along with eventual mate-madness, or star-darkness, or both, to save her life.
At least Skalla has found his, I thought bitterly to myself. I hoped that she was safe, that her touch had calmed his berserker rage, soothed his madness, and brought him back into himself. But at the same time, an ugly jealousy made me almost wish she weren’t safe. Why should Skalla’s mate be fine when mine was doomed to die simply because she’d been bonded to me?
Rúnwebbe hadn’t given me enough information about Skalla; I’d still have to go track him down and make sure his rampage had ended for good and that he hadn’t harmed his mate in blind fury. And I still needed to find out what was happening at Heofonraed. But now that I knew I’d never have my mate at my side, approaching or joining the Council of the Gods was out of the question.
I stood, the bleeding ache inside me clotting to form grief-stricken resignation. I would have no mate. My greatest love would forever be lost to me before I’d ever even had the chance to find her. I would have no sons, would never have what my parents had once had, what every stone sky god searched for.
An empty, endless life.
Maybe I should have let Skalla kill me after all.
The storm was a full-fledged blizzard now, flurries of snow making it near impossible to see. I shouted, “Mirreth!” into the gale, and the castle appeared, a dim silhouette among the swirling white.
Feeling my future weigh as heavily upon me as stone, I trudged towards the castle as if to take shelter in the past.
Of course, being greeted by Shoshen in the entrance hall reminded me that this was not the past. Things had changed, including the occupants of this castle. It was the whole reason I’d gone to see Rúnwebbe in the first place.
“Quite a storm whipping up out there, my lord! I’m glad you’ve returned safely.”
I grunted, in too foul a mood to form a proper reply. No doubt sensing it, Shoshen shut his mouth and flattened his ears.
I took in a deep breath through my nose, forcing myself to stay civil, to not punish the Sionnachans for my anger, my fate.
“Here, Shoshen,” I said, my voice gruff with the effort it took to remain calm. I took three squares of webbing out of the satchel, leaving only one for the prisoner. “These are for you, Aiko, and Ashken. Put the square into one of your ears, and you’ll be able to understand everything the prisoner says. And anyone else who ever speaks to you in an unknown language, for that matter.”
Since my mother was Sionnachan, and I’d been raised here, I spoke Sionnachan as well as the language of the stone sky, so the fact my staff didn’t currently have any webbing had been no great matter. Shoshen looked stunned by what I’d said, staring at the glowing squares with their interwoven multi-coloured threads. Finally, he reached for the squares, taking two in one hand and one in the other. Looking unsure, but not willing to disobey me, he draped a square over his right ear.
“It has to go deeper,” I growled. I raised my hand, poking the web deep into his ear. Shoshen suppressed a yelp and clapped his hand to his ear when my finger withdrew.
“It feels odd, but it will pass. Don’t shake your head around or try to take it out until it’s dissolved,” I told him. His tail puffed up and twitched, but otherwise, he remained completely still at my command. Eventually, the tension in his body eased.
“It does not feel strange now,” he said. “Thank you, my lord.”
“For what?”
“I... I must admit, I would like to be able to understand her – the prisoner. She has been very cooperative while you’ve been gone. I rather think... I rather think she is trying to be kind to us.”
My mouth thinned into a hard line, my wings pulsing with irritation. After everything I’d been through today, I absolutely did not want to hear about how kind the woman who’d invaded my world was.
“Oh! And her name is Torrance, by the way, my lord. I know you asked Aiko to find out.”
Torrance...
I grunted again, then pointed a claw at the two squares left in his hand. “Those are for Aiko and Ashken. You can explain it to them.” I bit back a sigh at the fact that I would have to be the one to put the web in Torrance’s ear. No matter how kind she’d pretended to be in my absence, there was no way she’d let a Sionnachan insert it into her ear. And I doubted Aiko or Shoshen would have the gall to even try, once she started struggling.
This time, I didn’t hold it back. A heated sigh hissed between my fangs. The thought of going up to Torrance’s chamber now and dealing with her flailing and wiggling exhausted me. The news Rúnwebbe had imparted was the greatest blow I’d ever suffered in my life – even worse than when I’d nearly died. And now I was expected to deal with mundane matters like the prisoner in my tower? A dark realization came over me, the realization that I would not be able to contain my anger around her, control the need to punish something, as well as I had around Shoshen. The Sionnachans were innocent.
She was not.
I will not go to her today.
I would save her webbing, and my interrogations, for tomorrow. When I was in greater control of myself and had had more time to absorb everything that had come to pass today. I was no longer overly concerned about her being ill, either. When she’d woken this morning, I’d noticed that much of the redness in her eyes had gone, and her breathing had returned to normal.
I was about to head into the tunnel that led into the Eve Tower, to spend some time in my old room, the furthest place from where the human was, when my wings prickled with awareness. I whirled back towards the entrance hall’s door. It was closed, and other than the incessant wail of the winds, there was no sound.
But all the same, I knew something, someone, was out there.
“Stay here,” I growled at Shoshen, stalking to the door. I wrenched it open and stepped back out into the white abyss.
This close to the castle, I’d be protected under the Riverdark spell. No one approaching would be able to see me.
Who is it? Skalla? More humans?
I squinted into the sky, now nearly opaque with sheets of slicing snow. Eventually, something emerged from that whiteness. A dark, flying figure giving off a faint red light.
Maerwynne.
I relaxed slightly, then launched into the air to greet him. No doubt he was looking for me, and my castle, but he would not find it from up there.
“Maerwynne!” I called over the sound of the storm. “I am here! Land!”
“Wylfrael! Thank the stone of the sky. I thought I’d have to fly zigzags over this entire world before I found you.”
I led him down to the ground in front of my castle.
“There’s a Riverdark spell on it,” I explained. Apart from Skalla and my father, no other stone sky god had been here before, and Maerwynne wouldn’t have known where to search on Sionnach for my castle. “I’m surprised you got this close in your search.”
“I heard a lot of roaring and crashing noises. It sounded the way you sounded when you were fighting Skallagrim at Heofonraed. I merely followed the sounds into this storm.” He shivered, his red wings shuddering and his long black tail tensing. “Let me inside, would you, Wylfrael? I don’t know how you stand this kind of cold.”
I snorted at that. Maerwynne’s mother’s world, Vizhir, was one of humid heat and belching volcanoes. He burned hotter than most. Even now, his body heat melted snow before it even touched his skin. He was already soaked, as if he’d been trapped in a torrential downpour, not a snowstorm.
I spoke the password, and the castle appeared again. I led Maerwynne inside.
Shoshen had disappeared, likely off to deliver the bits of web to his sister and father. The entrance hall was empty – we could speak freely here.
“What news, Maerwynne?” I asked, turning to him. I untied my hair and shook snow from it before retying it, then brushed the flakes from my clothing before they could melt and leave me as dripping as my visitor. His crimson hair was so wet it looked nearly as black as his hide. He was dressed in the Vizhiri style, wearing a loose, white tunic and trousers that now clung wetly to his frame, accentuating hard muscle. My gaze was drawn, as if with the force of a planet pulling one’s feet down to the ground, to his star-dark hand.
“It is not spreading. Yet,” he said gravely, holding up his hand and inspecting it. The rest of him glowed just as it was supposed to, red constellations like little flames across his skin. “You have had no problems with your star map, I take it?”
“No,” I said, though I doubted that would last much longer. Since I could not seek out my mate, unless another cure for this star-darkness was found, I’d likely lose my star map eventually. If I don’t go mate-mad first.
“I have been to see Sceadulyr,” Maerwynne said, dropping his hand. “I went to confirm what Rúnwebbe told me. His star map is entirely dark, just as she said.”
The mention of Rúnwebbe was like venom in my veins. I clamped my teeth together and let Maerwynne continue.
“He is hosting a gathering of the gods soon,” Maerwynne said. “In the Shadowlands palace.”
“Hosting a gathering when he is so weak?’ I asked, surprised. But then again, Sceadulyr was often surprising. The shadow-wielding god was as unpredictable as he was treacherous.
“As far as I could tell when I spoke to him, he is not weakened. He just cannot open sky doors and travel.”
“Hmm. When is it?” I asked. It might be good to go to a gathering, even if it meant venturing into Sceadulyr’s shifting lair. I’d been asleep so long. I needed to continue getting caught up on the news from the other stone sky gods. Find out more information about the goings-on of the council, and the spreading star-darkness.
“It is... blast, this always does my head in. I hate converting time between worlds.” Maerwynne’s red and black eyes closed, and he rubbed his forehead. “It is... yes, it’s seventeen Sionnachan days from now.”
His eyes opened once more.
“I told Sceadulyr I’d inform the other gods as he cannot travel to invite them himself.”
“And that is why you’ve come here, then?”
“Yes. Although,” Maerwynne paused, turning towards the door and then back to me. “I wanted to see for myself how you’d made out with the human invaders. I didn’t see any sign of them while I searched for your castle out there.”
“All but one are gone,” I replied. “Dead, or fled. Just as weak as you said they’d be.”
“All but one?” he pressed, and I cursed myself inwardly, suddenly wishing I’d kept the information about my prisoner to myself.
“Yes. One remains. She is my prisoner.”
Maerwynne’s gaze rose above my head, as if trying to see her through the crystal floors above. This annoyed me, and I wanted to bark at him that she wasn’t even in this tower, but I held my tongue.
“She’s female? Let me see her.”
“What?” I asked, my voice falling low in warning. It was one thing to visit me and be welcomed here. It was another thing entirely to command me in my own castle.
“I cannot risk not seeing her, Wylfrael,” Maerwynne explained. “My mate could be anywhere. I must meet this human female and see if I starburn for her, or if my star map returns.”
His darkened hand curled into a fist, and I knew instantly that he’d fight me, to the death, if necessary, to find my prisoner and potentially save his star map.
“She’s not your mate,” I snapped.
His eyes narrowed.
“And you know this, how?
“Because she’s my prisoner, and prisoners do not get nice things like mates or conjugal visits.”
Maerwynne’s wings flickered, a tiny pulse of warning.
“If she is my mate, she will not be your prisoner for long.”
I stared at him in silence, weighing my options. On the one hand, I owed Maerwynne for trying to help me with Skalla, and for opening the sky door here when I couldn’t. On the other...
I simply did not want him to go up there and see her.
“Fine,” I said after a long moment. “But I have to go give her the web first. Otherwise, she won’t understand a word you say if you start starburning and waving your knot at her.”
I rather liked that image, actually. Maerwynne besotted, my human confused and wanting nothing to do with him, rejecting him. Our mates starburned, too, a heated mating fever that allowed them to take our knots, but two mates did not always starburn at the same time. Sometimes, both felt the mating bond snap into place at once. Sometimes, it took a long time for both of them. Sometimes, it was just one, but not the other until much later.
“Will you even be able to understand her?” I asked, stopping just as I’d begun ascending the stairs. “Her people’s language seems quite young.”
Maerwynne’s tail flicked.
“Yes. I got fresh webbing when I last saw Rúnwebbe.”
“Alright. Stay here. In the meantime, you can talk to my Mistress of Affairs, Aiko. She’s just as likely to be your mate as anyone else.
With that, I left him, carrying the satchel with the final scrap of webbing up the stairs and through the tunnel. As I went, I wondered why I’d had such a visceral reaction to Maerwynne wanting to see my prisoner. Perhaps, after what I’d learned today, I did not want him to find his own mate so easily when I could never find mine.
That sort of jealousy was not a fair or noble thing, but I felt no shame in it. I was too angry to be ashamed. Too much in grief for something I’d never had but always thought I would.
But then again, I hadn’t cared about him seeing Aiko...
It was something specific to the human, then. Well, then, it was as I’d told him. She was my prisoner. It would be far too easy for her to be spirited away by another stone sky god without answering for her people’s crimes. She had yet to explain herself, but now that I had the webbing, she would.
I’d make sure of it.
I held the satchel tight and opened her door.
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CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR Torrance
When the door opened again, I assumed it would be Aiko. She’d been with me the entire day so far, but a few minutes ago Shoshen had come, speaking quickly, and they’d gone away together. I’d taken that moment alone to finally change back into my still-damp clothing. My bra was still pretty wet, though, so I just wore trousers, panties, and my T-shirt. When the door opened once again I turned to face it, smiling, expecting to find the tall fox woman I’d actually grown to like despite the circumstances.
But it wasn’t Aiko.
It was Asha Wylfrael.
He entered the room like a storm in the shape of a man. Crashing dark clouds and searing lightning. Something’s different, I realized, panicking, stumbling backwards and away from him. He was a brutal male at the best of times, but this... this was different. Something had happened while he was gone, I was sure of it. Something that had infuriated him even more than my presence had.
“What’s wrong? What is it?” I asked shakily as he crossed the room to me in lunging, ground-swallowing strides. “Don’t come near me!”
He didn’t answer, but his grim mouth tightened, his eyes on mine, almost as if he’d understood what I’d said. But if somehow that was true, he certainly didn’t listen to me, because he just kept on advancing, relentless. Heart in my throat, I moved until my back hit the wall. Fuck! Trapped. I plastered my palms to the crystal, as if I could feel my way along to some escape. My eyes sought the door on the other side of the room, but my view of it was immediately blocked by Asha Wylfrael’s bulk.
“Don’t-” A gasp strangled my words as he seized me. He caged me in, one hand at my jaw, and in a rush of fear that he would strangle me, I shouted and struggled. He responded to that with a grunt and a shift of his position, one of his hard thighs pressing between my legs. The sudden grind of his leather-clad muscles against my clit made me jerk.
For some reason, he was only using one hand to hold me. A quick glance down told me he held something – a bag of some sort I hadn’t noticed before – in his other. Though he certainly could strangle me with only one massive hand, it now seemed that wasn’t his goal. Instead, he turned my head roughly to the side. His grip was like iron, and I forced myself to be still, scared my jaw – or my neck – might snap if I tried to wrench away from his hand. He muttered quietly, sounding immensely irritated, then did something that shocked me to my very core and made the place his thigh pressed between my legs pulse shamefully.
He fucking blew on me.
His breath cascaded along the side of my face, rustling strands of hair away from my left ear. It was like an electric shock. The hot whisper of sensation twanged through my nerve endings like licking fire, making me tremble and twitch.
“What are you doing?” I whispered. He replied instantly, mimicking the flow of a normal conversation, once again giving me the jarring sensation that he’d understood what I’d said.
His free hand rustled, doing something with the bag. A glimmer of something rainbow-coloured, flimsy like lace, fluttered in the corner of my eye.
And then my ear was on fucking fire.
This was different from the hateful, pleasurable fire of his breath on my skin. This felt like actual fire. I cried out at the shocking pain of it, my entire body going rigid. Behind the burn there was sound, too, buzzing rising like my head had been filled with hornets.
What had before been a tremble became a vicious, quaking tremor. Every muscle shook so violently I distantly wondered if I was about to have a seizure. The pressure at my jaw eased, but I barely noticed it above the agony in my ear. My hands flew upward. I wanted to rip my own fucking ear off, but Asha Wylfrael was in the way. His head was bent, his mouth against the burning place, his lips moving rapidly. So, I scratched and clawed at him instead, all thought gone from my head, reacting on pure instinct to the pain. He didn’t move. Didn’t react to me clawing at him like a feral animal. Didn’t even pull back when I grasped a chunk of white hair that had fallen loose and pulled as hard as I could.
The burning began to fade so slowly I almost didn’t notice it. The buzzing died down, too, and through that buzzing came words.
Asha Wylfrael’s words.
Words I could fucking understand.
“It won’t last long. Just hold on. Blast, your kind must be extra sensitive. It will ease, Torrance. It will ease.”
I tried to form words in response, but the shock of the encounter – the pain and his mouth and understanding him speaking to me, speaking my name – left me voiceless.
The burning, just as Asha Wylfrael promised, kept easing away, until eventually there was nothing left but a slight prickle.
But now, I wasn’t sure if that prickle was caused by whatever he’d done...
Or his mouth still hot against the skin of my ear.
I panted raggedly, my arms shaking around...
Around his neck.
At some point, wild with fear and pain, I’d stopped scratching at him and had started clinging to him, like I’d needed some solid anchor to hold onto. Our positions had completely changed. My feet were no longer touching the floor. I straddled his thigh, my crotch pressed against his hip. My back wasn’t sealed to the wall – his arms were there, wrapped around me like an embrace. One of his hands was splayed along my lower back, the other cradling the base of my skull, fingers buried in my hair.
You hurt me, I wanted to say. Wanted to sob.
But that would make me even more vulnerable than I already was. Instead, I merely croaked out the word, “You.”
A tiny flicker of tension went through Asha Wylfrael’s hold on me.
“Yes. Me.”
Holy shit.
It wasn’t some fluke or some hallucination caused by pain. I really could understand him.
“What... what did you do to me?”
“I gave you something that would allow us to speak to each other. I did not expect that it would...” He faltered, his voice nearly softening. But then he hardened it, freezing it like ice. “It was necessary.”
“Necessary!” I gasped. “You should have warned me!” My voice fell to a whisper. “You’re a monster.”
“Monster... I suppose to someone as fragile as you, I would appear so.” I felt his mocking sneer against my ear as well as heard it in his voice. “I did not know you would be that sensitive, though being so well acquainted with how weak you are, perhaps I should have guessed.”
Weak. Easy to hurt. Easy to kill.
“Let go of me,” I hissed. I ripped my arms away from his neck, the neck of the man who’d murdered my friends. His own arms didn’t move, apart from a slight tightening of his fingers in my hair. My scalp tingled as the tips of his claws grazed me. Not enough to draw blood. But almost.
“Now that you can understand me, little human,” he muttered darkly against my ear, “I will explain the situation to you in the bluntest possible terms. You humans invaded my world and stole things from my land. When I found the others here, they tried to kill me with laughable, stupid little weapons, so I destroyed them. You were abandoned by the survivors, and now you are the only one left to answer for the crimes of your people.” His mouth got so close that his lips dragged harshly against my skin when he spoke next. “I am not a monster, but a god. You are my prisoner. And you do not command me.”
But he let me go anyway.
It was only sheer hate, and the need to prove to him that I wasn’t weak, that kept me from collapsing when my feet hit the floor. Asha Wylfrael stood back from me, observing me keenly but coldly, his gaze sweeping up and down as if assessing me and finding me lacking in every way. His eyes lingered just a half-second too long at my chest before he turned away from me. I looked down to see my nipples taut and pointed, pressing outward from beneath the thin fabric of my T-shirt. I crossed my arms over my breasts, wishing now that I’d put my stupid bra on even though it was still so wet.
Asha Wylfrael didn’t say anything else, striding away from me to the door. But instead of going out, he stopped there, as if waiting for me to follow.
“What?” I snapped. “What do you want now?”
For a long moment, as if purposely making me wait, he didn’t answer. Instead, he reached up and untied the blue ribbon from his hair, the style dishevelled from my scratching and pulling. He ran his claws through the long, silver-white strands, smoothing them behind his shoulders. He still didn’t speak, turn around, or answer me as he retied the ribbon. When the bastard was done fixing his hair, he let his hands drop and spoke forwards, into the doorway.
“Come. We have a visitor.”
A visitor?
“Is that why you had to fix your hair?” I blurted. “Don’t want them to see how much I messed it up? That your prisoner was able to touch you, to do something to you?” I was being careless. Stupid, really, provoking him like this. But the pain and the adrenaline and thinking of Suvi and Min-Ji made me too angry to care.
“Come,” he said again, his tone clipped. “He will not leave without seeing you. I do not want to have to drag you there. This day has worn my control thin and I do not wish to break something.”
“Break something? Me, you mean?”
He still didn’t fucking look at me.
“Yes.”
“Why do you even care!” I cried. Now that I could understand him, and him me, all the confusion and fear of the past few days exploded into questions. “Why did you even let me live at all? I’m supposed to answer for my people’s crimes but you don’t want to break me, so what does that even mean? I’ll just stay here forever in this tower?”
“Do not mistake yourself,” he said, finally turning around. “I have plans for you. Interrogation, to start with, now that we can speak to one another.”
I reached up and rubbed my ear, shocked not to feel anything inside it. No chunk of metal, no technological translator clipped on like something from a sci-fi movie.
“What did you do to me?” I asked again. “What did you put in my ear?”
“A piece of the whisper weaver’s web. The pain has stopped, I presume?”
He asked it almost flippantly, like he didn’t care about the answer, but there was a slight adjustment of his posture – a nearly imperceptible straining forward and tensing of his wings. His whispered words from before came back to me in a tumble. Just hold on, Torrance...
I gave my ear one more stroke to be sure, but other than some lingering sensitivity, there was no pain. I still had no fucking clue what he’d put in there, and I could only hope that it wouldn’t start burning a hole in my brain from the inside out eventually. But as of now, my ear pretty much felt OK.
“I’m fine.”
He straightened, his wings easing into a folded position behind his back.
“Then we will go now.”
I didn’t want to go anywhere with him. But I also didn’t want to get dragged. And I couldn’t pass up the chance to leave this chamber – who knew when I’d be allowed to do so again? Arms still crossed tightly over my chest, I went to him.
Together, we went out the door. Unlike last time when he’d led me through this place, he didn’t walk ahead but rather walked beside me.
I decided to take full advantage of the positions and started asking more questions, even if he wouldn’t answer them.
“So, who is this visitor, then? Another fox alien?”
“Fox?” Asha Wylfrael’s blue gaze remained ahead. “I do not know what a fox is. Our language has no equivalent.”
“Like Aiko and Shoshen.”
“They are Sionnachans.”
“Alright. So, is this visitor a Sionnachan? Are there more of them around here?”
“He is not Sionnachan.”
He... I didn’t consider it a great sign that this visitor was male.
“And why does he want to see me?” I asked, my steps faltering, dread pooling in my belly.
Asha Wylfrael’s reply turned that liquid dread to stone inside me.
“His name is Maerwynne. He’s come to see if you are meant to be his bride.”
I stopped walking, reeling like his words had punched me.
“His what?”
Instinctively, just as I’d done when Asha Wylfrael had stormed into my room, more tempest than man, I started backing away. We were in the tunnel now, and I whirled and stumbled back towards the stairs. Stairs that led to a prison that now felt like a safe haven.
A strong fist closed around the back of my T-shirt, like someone grabbing a kitten by the scruff of its neck, halting me.
“No!” I said, reaching back for his hand, my bare feet slipping on the crystal. “Please, no! I don’t want to marry an alien, please!”
“I thought you’d welcome such a thing,” Asha Wylfrael muttered sardonically. “If Maerwynne starburns for you, he’ll take you away from here. Away from me.”
I stilled, letting his words absorb. But they brought me no sense of relief. Asha Wylfrael was a murderer, my brutal captor, but at least he was the devil I knew.
“I’d just be trading one form of captivity for another,” I whispered. And this new form of captivity would have a whole new layer of threat to it – the threat of sexual violence. They have to breed somehow, right? Why else would an alien want a bride, especially one he doesn’t even know?
“Calm yourself, little human,” Asha Wylfrael said, releasing the fabric of my shirt. “You’re not going to marry him.”
“I’m... I’m not?” Slowly, I turned to face him, breathing heavily. Asha Wylfrael’s body loomed so close to mine that my nipples brushed his front on my next inhale. I crossed my arms once more, peering up into a face that was hard, entirely like stone, except for the winter fire of those eyes.
“It is not your fate to be his bride.”
“And how do you know what my fate is?” I whispered.
Asha Wylfrael’s gaze trekked over my face. He caught a strand of my hair near my ear between his finger and thumb, rubbing it slowly before suddenly letting go, as if remembering himself. But he didn’t move away. And he didn’t turn around.
“Because I am your destiny’s keeper, Torrance. Your fate is as I will it.”
“Fuck you,” I spat. My whole body heated with rage, my cheeks burning, my palms sweating, my feet feverish against the cool crystal floor.
Asha Wylfrael raised a silvery brow.
