To Bleed a Crystal Bloom

by Sarah A. Parker

  There’s something unbridled in the scrape of his voice, and I feel it scour every inch of my skin.

  He glides forward a step—the motion so smooth it reminds me of the mountain cat I once saw prowling through the forest—and my heart leaps into my throat.

  This time, I have the good sense not to argue.

  I can hear the howls from my tower—a sound derived straight from the pit of my nightmares. Not even my dense, feather-stuffed pillows can stifle the racket.

  Rhordyn’s down there somewhere. With them.

  Another pained moan slips out.

  Eyes squeezed shut, robe clinging to my sweat-slicked body like a second skin, I tuck my knees up close to my chest and stuff another piece of night bark into my mouth. My third in just as many minutes.

  It tastes like dirt and is corrosive to your teeth, but it’s my last resort. A fast-acting sedative that wears off not long after you’ve been dunked into an inky sea of sleep. Though the effects don’t last long, I’m hoping the kick is all it takes considering I’ve barely slept in days.

  I just need to be free of this yearning ache between my legs and the sounds I can’t escape; need to be rid of this hollow desperation urging me to race down Stony Stem and dart across my Safety Line. For me to follow Rhordyn into the forest.

  I stuff my face into the balled-up pillow slip that smells like him and close my eyes, waiting for sleep to ease me out of this living nightmare. Praying the monsters don’t follow me into the abyss.

  But they do.

  They always do.

  I dream of their vicious talons, of fire licking at my toes and wide eyes that never blink. I dream of a little boy with glistening irises and stretched-out arms, but he’s so far away I don’t think I’ll ever be able to reach him.

  I dream of an unyielding hand wrapped around my throat, belonging to a man I think I recognize.

  Most of all, I dream of him ...

  Rhordyn.

  Somehow, that’s the most frightening dream of all.

  Too much blood—the metallic scent so potent it clogs the back of my throat. The ground shakes, again and again, like giants are stomping.

  If I can’t see them, they can’t see me.

  I tuck into a ball and hide in a bubble of protection I don’t want to leave. But is it enough? Will it split like an egg as they fall through the roof and tear me limb from limb?

  I wonder if I’ll bleed the same color as the others, or if something inky will leak from my severed bits?

  Will the monsters chew on me like they chewed on the boy with a face freckled with stars? The one who reaches for me in the darkest corner of my dreams ...

  I hide, go elsewhere in my mind, someplace I can’t smell the lingering scent of agony. But I can still hear the scratching, like something sharp is being dragged down a dinner plate over and over and over and—

  A honed sound powers out of me, the tapered edge a spade forged from the fragments of my pain ... and I dig, shoveling velvet nothing. Forming a chasm that grows and grows until it feels eternal.

  Something is following. Slithering after me. Watching me work.

  My throat hurts, and still that chasm grows while I scream and scream and scream, digging down, down, down ... deep into the core of my mind.

  Like a seed, I plant my hurt at the bottom of the gully, cover it with dirt, and pat it into place.

  My relief is instant.

  It’s gone. Buried in a ravine so dark and vast that light will never cast a ribbon of life onto that wretched seed. Won’t let it shoot up and show my colors in a bloom born of death.

  My scream tapers off ...

  Their sounds are gone. So are their howls.

  There’s nothing but bone-chilling silence, but I’m cold. My heart is ice. One tap from a chisel and I’ll shatter—

  I feel myself being pulled from the mattress, settled against something hard and wet, like silk-wrapped stone.

  Opening my eyes, I see the edge of Rhordyn’s jaw through a curtain of tears. Realize I’m tucked against his chest, screaming, the sound a rusty rasp that tastes like blood.

  I let the knowledge of where I am settle, smelling the deep, earthen musk of his scent. Usually a comfort.

  Right now, it’s the opposite.

  I’m sizzling. My head feels like it’s about to burst. There’s an ache between my legs that’s going to kill me—an emptiness I can’t shake no matter how much I roll my hips.

  I try to speak, and his grip tightens when all that comes out is a curdled cry for help.

  “I’m here. You’re okay.”

  I’m not.

  “M-my head,” I force out, something warm and wet dribbling from my nose, down my chin.

  “Fuck.”

  Rhordyn lifts me, holding me close while he carries me through the balcony doors. A blanket of falling droplets drench us both, and he sits on my sodden balcony, settling me between strong thighs so my back is resting on his chest.

  I can feel his breaths—in and out.

  Vaguely aware that my split robe is baring my breasts, I close my eyes, waiting for the crying clouds to tame the pressure in my head. The ember in my core.

  Rhordyn eases me forward, removes his shirt, then settles me against his bare skin that’s cold as slate. He covers me with fabric that’s wet, heavy ...

  Oppressive.

  “No,” I rasp, clawing at it. “No, no, no ...”

  I don’t need to cover my body. I need to expose it.

  Ruin it.

  In my mind, my fingers are long, merciless claws. I use them to shove fabric, baring the flushed, tender skin of my belly—untarnished skin I gouge and slash with strikes of unrestrained wrath. Because I can’t do this anymore ...

  I’m done.

  This heat has boiled me down to nothing but a lump of wanton need, and I have to choke this feeling. Need it to die so I can get back to being me.

  “Stop. Orlaith, you’re hurting yourself.”

  “I’m fixing myself!” I scream. “I’m going to rip it out with my bare hands!”

  A serrated growl saws out of him as he snatches my wrists, pinning them against my warring chest. I try to pull them free so I can hollow myself and end this agony but his grip tightens.

  “What are you—”

  “No more.”

  I whimper, desperate to extinguish this furnace inside me.

  My hips roll, seeking ... searching ... until a surge of pressure threatens to crack my skull open, and a shriek belts out of me in jagged spurts.

  “Fix me!” I plead, and his chest stills. “Please. I can’t take it anymore. I need ... I need ...”

  Something. Anything.

  I wrench against his hold, determined to snap my wrists if that’s what it takes to free myself.

  “Fuck, Milaje. Stop.”

  “Please ...”

  He groans; a sound of deep-seated torment. “You’re going to be the death of me.”

  “So long as you take me with you,” is my strangled reply, and for a fleeting moment even the rain seems to hang in the sky, as if the world is sucking a gasp through parted lips.

  “Never.”

  The word is bitten from the night and spat with distaste, landing on my chest like a rock that threatens to stop my lungs from drawing breath. Something about his declaration eases the pressure in my head but fuels that fire into forking spikes that lash out, making my hips jerk and jerk.

  My skin itches from the fervid fury trying to flee through my pores, and I want to scratch at it. To tear off big chunks of flesh so I can release the heat in plumes of fire and steam and—

  I wail, the sound flawed by my sliced-up throat, overriding the symphony of splatters.

  I thought I was in agony before ... but this? This is something more. Something deadly.

  In a surge of adrenaline, I manage to wrench an arm free, but he snatches it up, hands clamping around both wrists like manacles.

  My next breath is acid.

  “You’r
e killing me now.”

  He releases a feral growl that threatens to cleave me down the middle.

  Still holding firm, he maneuvers my wrists into a bundle held within one of his hands, freeing the other.

  My heart skips a beat.

  Fingers lingering on the delicate curve of my clavicle, his breath quickens to join mine, but we’re out of sync—as if our lungs are playing tug of war.

  I’ve never wanted to win something so badly in my life.

  A small eternity sifts by before his fingers trail down, pebbling my skin, pausing briefly where the plump flesh cradles my vulnerable, eager heart.

  My breath hitches, back arching.

  His hand is calloused and worn, cold like the bolts of rain hitting my skin and those shards of ice that danced across it in the bath. For a moment, I wonder if he, too, will fall victim to the fire in my veins. If he’ll dissolve like the milky breath puffing out of me with every fevered exhale.

  His hand continues to rove at a glacial pace, perhaps waiting for me to make a sound; scream at him to stop.

  I’m frightened to move lest he do just that.

  He chases raindrops down the slope of my breast, the ladder of my ribs, bypassing the sodden ribbon knotted around my waist and pausing just below my belly button.

  Don’t stop.

  Please don’t stop.

  I hear him swallow over the pound of rain, feel his chin rest on the top of my head as if he lacks the energy to hold it up.

  My muscles spasm beneath his hand, and my insides do the same, clamping around nothing.

  Anticipating.

  I roll my hips, an unbridled answer to my body’s plea, desperate for his touch to explore the hot wetness between my legs.

  He’s so close ... inches from crumbling that barrier between us.

  “You’re going to promise me you won’t try to hurt yourself again.”

  “Yes, whatever you say ...”

  Right now, I’d give anything he asked.

  I’d give him my soul. The breath in my lungs. I’d lump my heart on a silver platter and let him drink straight from the source.

  “Say it, Orlaith. Or I go no further.”

  “I promise!”

  A soft, rolling growl makes his entire chest vibrate.

  His hand descends those final few inches, fingers cupping that most intimate part of me, providing a cool perch for me to grind against.

  My entire body shudders—threatens to turn inside out, all my blood seeming to rush to that one point of contact. I unfold for his drugging touch that’s loosening my joints, making my hips tide like the ocean.

  Smooth. Confident.

  Drawing my own strokes of pleasure from his resting hand, I feel myself start to pulse from the inside, my legs drifting wider as I stoke that heat into something that roars with its own fiery heartbeat ... but it’s not enough.

  I need him filling me, stretching me, chilling me from the inside. I need him to make those flames wink out.

  “More ...”

  His chest quakes, and something hard presses against my spine.

  “You’re going to regret this,” he grits out, his deft touch sliding up my slit. Spreading me apart.

  Threatening to stake a claim.

  I need it like I need the breath in my lungs.

  His finger swirls around my entrance, stirring me into a frenzy of tight, desperate need before it dips into the heart of my hot, sensitive core. It happens so suddenly my head kicks forward, then back again, body aching to coil around the connection.

  It’s everything and more. So much more.

  I never want this moment to end.

  Eyes stinging, I gasp aloud as he eases out, making wet sounds while he swirls around, then slips back in, again and again, striking me with bolts that never go further than his second knuckle.

  I drive my hips forward in hopes that he’ll dig into me until I’m raw and full, but his reflexes are swift, retreating with the same dexterity.

  “Stop it. If I go any deeper, I’ll break you, and I’m not leaving here with your blood on my hands.”

  “Then don’t leave.”

  My words are met with an icy growl that threatens to shatter me.

  He inserts another finger and quickens the pace, pumping in short, exquisite strokes, pushing me higher, higher ... until I’m a knot of carnal need—flushed and swollen and spread.

  Something inside me is about to burst.

  “Rhordyn ... I need ... I need ...”

  Lips tucked close to my ear, his thumb slides up my slit, swirling around, then stamping against that vulnerable bud of nerves. “Come,” he growls, and I’m struck with a surge of lightning, body lurching forward as I convolute in an explosion of ecstasy.

  There is no up. No down. There’s just him and me and this current surging between us, threatening to tear the world apart in a clash of fire and thunder.

  At this moment, I couldn’t care less. All that matters is this.

  Us.

  Just when I think I can take no more, everything loosens; my body and mind and anxious soul. I unravel, drawing what feels like my first full breath in days, my fire a sated beast.

  Rhordyn’s fingers are still inside me as I fold upon his chest, heaving, recovering in his arms while my aftershocks pulse around the welcomed intrusion.

  I no longer want to jerk my hips or rip my skin and gut myself. I no longer want to scream my frustrations at the sky.

  I’m free.

  But more than that ...

  This moment of stillness is bursting with possibilities. Perhaps that door between us will no longer be necessary. Perhaps he’ll finally let me in—talk to me and share a meal with me.

  Let me into his Den.

  Perhaps he’ll spread me out on this balcony and stoke that dozing well of pleasure until it’s a hungry inferno, only to be assuaged when he thrusts other parts of himself inside me.

  Perhaps his plan to gift Zali his cupla no longer exists ...

  I draw a deep, unbridled breath, picking up on the hint of a wet dog smell. A scent that blows into my conscience and flares a memory to life—reminds me where he’s been.

  My muscles tighten.

  “You went out there with the ... with the Vruks,” I whisper, struck with the echo of stress I felt while ascending this tower earlier, swiftly followed by a belated surge of relief.

  Rhordyn survived.

  So enmeshed in the revelation, I barely register his stillness until he draws a deep breath, expelling it with a coarse sigh. “Yes.”

  His clipped answer chips at my content, but I dash those thoughts away, fanning life into this wistful feeling lightening my heart, making it swell.

  He’s here, with me, quenching my body and planting hope in my chest.

  “How are you still alive?”

  “My sword got to them first.”

  He releases my wrists, and I’m lifted, limp and listless. Held against his chest with my head rested atop the sludgy beat of his heart, he carries me inside where I’m struck with the botanical medley that lingers in my room. That, and the overriding fragrance of my heat.

  My cheeks warm as he winds around the space, past my bed and vanity, until he reaches the tub. He sets me in the icy water—robe and all—the liquid a balm to my flushed skin.

  I have to stop myself from pulling him in with me.

  “Their talons—”

  “Are useless if they don’t land a blow.”

  He spins, leaving the curtains gaping enough for me to watch him stride toward the door—bared muscles rippling with each brutish step, his sodden shirt strangled in the tight ball of his fist.

  “Wait, where are you going? You’re not leaving, are you?”

  He stops mid stride and turns his head so I can see his side profile over the wide breadth of his shoulders.

  No eye contact. Nothing but cold detachment.

  My stomach gutters before he even starts to speak.

  “Remember your promise
. And I suggest learning to fuck your own fingers. You won’t be using mine again.”

  The words land a crushing blow that bursts my hope into a million mangled pieces.

  My next breath is choked.

  Knees hugged close to my body that suddenly feels too bare, too vulnerable, I watch him pursue the exit like it’s his salvation.

  He pauses at the threshold, a figure of shadow and seething brawn. His head tips for a second, and then he leaves, slamming the door shut—thumping that barrier back into place between us.

  My body jerks from the onslaught.

  I listen to his descending steps, each beating another nail into my bruised and battered heart. By the time he reaches the bottom, I’m choking on a bouquet of noxious emotions, one eclipsing the rest enough to leave me shivering despite my fever ...

  Shame.

  Outside, the world is gray and gloomy. The rain has abated, but the high-hanging clouds are preventing even the tip of my tower from catching light.

  I miss the sun; the way it fills me up. I feel like my soul is dripping away—like I’m wilting.

  Empty.

  It doesn’t help that I woke this morning to a broken fever, which I celebrated for all of two seconds before I realized I smelled like bloody death.

  Feeling like I’d peed myself, I’d peeled back the quilt, mortified when I saw a red stain that had seeped through to the mattress. Not only did the entire thing have to be replaced, but I now have a wad of thick, absorbent material stuffed in my undergarments.

  Sighing, I cast my gaze across the lumpy clouds and slide off the windowsill, locking eyes with the mannequin standing by the far wall, swathed in a neck-to-floor, blood-red gown.

  Wide eyes that stare at nothing.

  I bristle.

  Tanith delivered it this morning, and now it’s in my personal space—a constant reminder the ball, Tribunal, and Conclave are just around the corner. A trifecta of obligatory torture.

  The monthly Tribunal is necessary for Rhordyn’s people to have a stage to voice their woes, but with people coming from all over the continent for the ball and Conclave, too? It’s going to be a challenging few days.

  The less I think about it, the better.

  I snatch a throw off the end of my bed and cast it over the mannequin, hiding the proof of Rhordyn’s insistence to inject me into society against my will. Retrieving my bag, I tip it, scattering its contents across the bed. I’m about to repack it with the bits I need for the day when all the energy sputters out of me, and I let the crochet tote fall to the bed in a heap.