His words stabbed her, recalling truths about their future that she did not want to consider—not now, not with the rain against the window, and this soft cocoon of a bed, and his arms around her like they were meant for nothing else but holding her.
She shook her head against his chest, as if that could do anything to defy the horrible fate that had been dealt them, and then she moved up his body and kissed him, until she felt him hard against her belly. She reached down and touched him, relishing his sharp, strained cries, how he clung to her as she kissed his shoulders, his hair. This fearsome weapon of a man, desperate and trembling in her arms.
After a moment he gently stilled her hand, gasping against her neck. “Please,” he whispered, “not like that. I need you. Eliana, Eliana.” He nuzzled his face against hers, and she sighed happily at the soft scrape of his unshaven cheeks. “Can I?”
For answer she kissed him, sweetly, slowly—until suddenly, sweet and slow were no longer enough, and he was bearing down on her with a groan, his tongue in her mouth and his back slick under her hands. He moved against her, his circling hips sending waves of heat sweeping through her body, and for a moment she gave herself up to the hungry force of him, gasping into his kisses. He nipped gently at her neck, and she hooked her legs around him with a sharp cry. Low and hoarse, he murmured her name, and she shuddered, holding his head against hers.
“Keep talking,” she whispered, her eyes drifting shut. “I love hearing you like this.”
He laughed softly. “What shall I tell you? How the sight of you in my arms is beautiful beyond my every imagining?” He nibbled at the soft spot behind her ear. “How determined I am to give you every pleasure you desire?” Then he buried his face in her hair and said her name again, a choked little growl.
Dizzy at the rough sound of his voice, her skin humming and hot, she began turning away from him. He released her at once.
“No,” she murmured, nestling her back against his front. “Don’t leave. Come back to me.”
“I’m here.” He kissed her temple and wrapped her up in his arms. “Like this, Eliana? This is how you want me?”
She nodded, wriggling her hips against his, grinning to feel him so hard and eager. He hissed into her hair, a breathless curse. He held her in place—one gentle hand around her neck, the other sliding between her legs, teasing her. And then he was inside her, his thrusts slow and deep, and she arched back into him, crying out from the sheer pleasure of it—his arms cradling her, his chest strong against her back, the fullness of him, the heat of him, his fingers stroking her as his hips rocked against hers.
She gripped his arm, digging her nails into his flesh. “Simon,” she said, her voice cracking. “Oh, God…”
“Say my name again.” His lips were hot at her ear, his own voice strained. “Please, love.”
She did, again and again, until she could no longer speak, for the sounds he made as he moved in her were too delicious, too animal and passionate, and her skin was a prickling wash of fire. He pressed his face against her neck, his arms tightening around her. He kissed her throat, her jaw, and then laughed a little, the sound fevered.
“You’re beautiful,” he said hoarsely. “You’re exquisite. My God, look at you.”
Then he guided her head back to his, bringing her flush against his body, and kissed her, murmuring her name against her cheek, her lips. And the tenderness of it, the damp strands of his hair against his forehead, the steadiness of his hands, made her chest ache with the beginnings of a terrible loss.
Soon, they would try the impossible.
Soon, she could lose him. She could lose all of them.
“Harder,” she whispered, thrilling when he immediately complied. “Faster, Simon.” He would drive it out of her; he would make her come apart a second time and wash the building grief from her heart. She gathered her breasts in her hands, sighing and twisting in his arms, smiling a little when he swore against her neck.
He tightened his grip on her, obeying her every whispered command. She tried to say his name once more, but just then her pleasure crested sharply, and the word broke off in her throat as she fell apart in his arms with a soft cry. The sound seemed to push Simon over the edge. He pulled her back hard against him, his fingers digging into her hips, gasping her name, his voice harsh and frayed. He said it again, and again, whispering it into her hair. After long minutes, when they lay trembling in each other’s arms, and Eliana’s racing heart had calmed enough that she could think once more, she turned around to face him.
He smiled at her, heavy-lidded. He was so dazzling in his happiness that it pained her, like looking too long at a bright sky.
“Hello there,” he said roughly. “You’re glorious. Did you know that? You look thoroughly kissed.”
But she could not manage a smile and hated herself for it. Even after his touch and his kisses, her earlier fear remained. That terrible, hot sadness had lodged in her chest, and she could not shake it.
She touched his mouth, memorizing its shape.
“What is it?” he asked, his expression shifting to one of concern.
The words were there on her tongue, ready to be said: this was an awful mistake.
Because now, if and when she did lose him, the loss would cut deeper.
Except, of course, it wouldn’t cut at all. If they managed to do this thing and stop her mother, if they rewrote the course of history so that the Blood Queen never fell and the Empire died before it could begin, none of this would have ever happened. She would never have been Remy’s sister, or known Harkan, or killed Rozen.
She would never have fallen in love with Simon.
It was the first time she had said the words to herself, and she felt punched by them, knocked breathless and spinning. But they were true, as true as the fact that if she lost Simon, if she lost this life and this future, and everyone inside it, there would be no loss at all. There would be only an erasure.
And that, she decided, was the worst thing she could imagine. Not to lose a beloved thing, but to have it taken from you, to have the experience of it ripped from your heart, leaving no memory behind. To be ignorant of the loss entirely.
“Eliana.” Simon smoothed her tangled hair back from her face. “Tell me what’s wrong. I see a million worries in your eyes.”
“You know exactly what my worries are,” she said, and then, before he could respond, she pressed her face against his chest, her arms tucked between them, and whispered, “Stay with me. Please. Stay with me all night.”
He was still for a moment, and then drew the blankets up over them, tucking them around her shivering body. He hooked his leg over hers, and the kiss he pressed to her forehead pulled tears from her eyes.
“I’m right here,” he said, his hands soft in her hair. “Don’t think about anything else but that. Not tonight.”
“And tomorrow?” she whispered, unable to contain the question.
He turned up her face to his and kissed her so gently that her heart felt ready to burst.
“Don’t think of it,” he told her. “Tonight is all that matters right now.”
“Tonight,” she said, gazing up at him, “we’re together.”
The expression on his face was open and tender, so unlike the Wolf she had first met months ago in Orline—and yet so familiar, as if she had been looking at him all her life—that she had no choice but to kiss him.
And this time, when they moved together, she faced him, letting his solid weight press her into the bed. Their gazes locked, his hands cradling her face, and she watched him until she couldn’t, until the pleasure of his touch pulled her under. She clung to him, trembling, her hands fisted in his hair. She listened to his voice break against her neck and prayed furiously—to the saints, to the empirium, to her own unthinkable power—that they would wake in the morning to find that someone else had come to save the world, allowing them to rest at
last.
41
Rielle
“‘When you feel a prickling on the back of your neck,’ said the good witch Tahti, ‘even when it isn’t cold; when you feel that someone is watching you, even when you’re alone; when you feel that the strange road you are walking is one you have walked before, in a dream or in a fever. These are the moments, little one. Listen closely to them. These are the moments telling you one of your deaths has been born. They are many, and some are kind, and some are cruel. They wander the world, blind, with fingers deft and clever. Someday, one of your deaths will find you. Someday, one of them will claim you in the name of an ending.’”
—Black Wood, White Sky a collection of Borsvall children’s stories
Rielle sat in a vast, treeless field dusted with snow.
Barefoot, clad only in a thin nightgown, she shivered, holding her knees to her chest. In silence she waited for the footsteps she knew would come, and when they did, crunching against the frosted grass, she smiled to herself but did not turn to face him.
“Why have you brought me here?” she asked.
Corien circled her, hands clasped behind his back. He wore a long dark coat and a fur-trimmed cloak that trailed through the snow.
She did not look at him. She would not look at him.
“Because you wanted me to,” he replied.
“I wanted to sleep.”
He laughed quietly. “You wanted me.”
She bit down on her tongue, refusing to look at him. He wasn’t wrong—since resurrecting Genoveve, she’d been desperate for his voice, his touch, his reassurance—but she refused to acknowledge this aloud.
“I haven’t been able to sleep,” she said instead. “Not since I brought her back.” The heat of tears rose up her cheeks, but her eyes remained dry. “Garver’s given me medicine to help me sleep. But it doesn’t work. Nothing works.”
He crouched before her, and still she stared past him at the wintry landscape of her mind.
“You would sleep beautifully,” he told her, “if you would stop fighting the truth.”
“And what truth is that?”
“That staying there with them, with him, will ruin you.”
She licked her dry lips. “Audric told me Genoveve isn’t sleeping either. She screams and screams. She has terrible nightmares, even worse than before. Sometimes I hear her. Sometimes I ride Atheria to the mountains so I won’t hear her.”
“You tell me this as if I don’t already know it.”
Finally Rielle glanced up at him, her breath catching at the beauty of him in the pale, cold light.
“What did I do to her?” she whispered. “Why can’t she sleep? Why can’t I sleep?”
“I’ve already answered your second question. As to your first…” He shrugged off his cloak and settled it around her shoulders. “Some minds are too weak to bear the glory of resurrection.”
“You’ve infected her. That’s what it is. You’re driving her mad.” She wrapped herself tightly in the cloak, too grateful for its warmth to discard it. It smelled of him—a sharp, spiced perfume, the tang of smoke, the bite of winter.
“I speak the truth of our suffering,” he said, watching her without blinking. “The suffering inflicted upon my people by her own. If she cannot bear to hear it, then that is her failing, and not mine.”
Rielle glared at him. “Leave her be.”
“No,” he answered simply. “She must be punished, as they all must be. She is not the first, and she won’t be the last.”
Rielle pushed herself up from the ground, discarded the cloak, her teeth chattering, and turned away from him, hurrying toward the horizon.
He walked alongside her. “You’re shivering.”
“An astute observation.”
“I’ll take us somewhere warmer. Somewhere more comfortable.”
And then the world rearranged itself. The frozen landscape disappeared, replaced by a warm, dark room. A roaring fire in an enormous black hearth. A four-poster bed, a long, elegant divan. Furs and tasseled blankets, a table laden with food and drink.
Outside a wall of broad square windows loomed an arctic tableau—snow-capped mountains, an icy valley, the distant glimmer of a frozen sea.
“I’ve been here before,” she murmured. “In a dream. You brought me here before.”
He joined her at the window, still and cold at her side. “And I will again—in reality, if you’ll allow it.”
She scanned the mountains quickly, noting the neat grid of roads carved through the snow, the half-built ships in an ice-scattered harbor. Broad doors cut out of the mountains, deep square pits carved into the earth, all of them glowing orange with firelight.
She tucked the information away into a corner of her mind, feeling clumsy and frantic as she did so, and unsteady on her feet. He would notice her spying efforts. He would know what information she would bring home to Audric.
To distract him, she touched his hand, and he flinched a little, and then drew her fingers through his own.
Their palms met, hers scorching and his icy cold, and suddenly an image flashed through her mind—herself and Corien, arms entwined, his lips pressed against her neck, her hands tangled in his hair.
She tried to control the image, shove it away even as her body responded, her skin prickling, but it was too late.
The world shifted once more, and they were no longer standing beside the window.
They were in his bed, that massive bed in the corner of the room, draped with silk and furs, and he was pressing her into the pillows, his hips pinning her in place, his mouth sucking hungrily at her neck. And it was as if they had been kissing for hours. Her body hummed, supple and slick. Her legs had hooked around his, though she hadn’t moved them herself. Her nightgown had ridden up to expose her belly; his hands gripped her naked thighs.
“No,” she gasped against his mouth.
“This is what you want,” he murmured, his face pressed against her throat. “I know it is. Rielle, I saw it in your mind.”
“It was a thought, not an invitation,” she hissed, and then shoved him away so hard that he flew across the room, his head cracking against the wall. She forced herself to regard him dispassionately, though her head still spun from his kisses, and her body ached at the loss of him.
“You don’t know what I want,” she said, her voice rough. “And if you force yourself on me again, I will destroy you.”
Then, as he stared at her, dazed, a dark trickle of blood sliding down his temple, the door to his rooms flew open.
Ludivine entered—pale eyes blazing, hair loose and golden, sparking as if made of flame. She wore a square-shouldered gray gown, its brocaded fabric resembling armor, and she carried a gleaming sword.
“Rielle, get behind me,” she instructed, her voice tight and hard. “Don’t look at him. Don’t speak to him.”
Corien, slumped against the wall, began to laugh—a rough, gurgling sound that soon cleared. The blood on his face vanished. He stood, drawing a sword that had appeared suddenly at his side.
“How charming,” he said. “Is this how you see yourself, rat? Some vengeful savior?”
Ludivine did not answer, glaring at him. “Rielle, behind me.”
Rielle, shaking, rose from the bed.
Corien’s eyes cut to her, pale and furious. “Really? You’re going to obey her? She beckons and you run to her, like a dog to its master.”
“You’ve a funny way of trying to win my heart,” Rielle said, catching her breath against one of the bedposts. “You force yourself on me. You call me a dog.”
“I’m trying to save you from them.” His voice cut thin as a blade. “Why can’t you see that? She could, if she wanted to, wake you from this dream. She’s closer to you than I am. She’s at your bedside, in fact. She could do it, if she tried. But she wants you to see
her like this. She wants to impress you.”
“Don’t listen to him,” Ludivine ordered. “He’s trying to poison you against me.”
Corien gestured impatiently with his sword. “And she wants what I want, the very same thing, only she cloaks her desires in kindness and lies.”
Rielle put her hands to her temples. Her mind was too full of their warring words. “Stop,” she whispered. “You’re hurting me.”
“Ask her what really happened to us.” Corien approached, pale eyes flashing. “Ask her what your beloved saints did. How they deceived us.”
“Shut your mouth, snake,” Ludivine spat out.
Rielle squeezed her eyes shut, turning away from them. Her head was a symphony of drums. “Please. I beg you.”
“Me, the snake?” Corien laughed bitterly. “I do what I do to save our people. Yes, that’s right. Our people. You’re an angel, too, or have you forgotten? And what you do, you do it for yourself. You think of no one. You’ve forgotten us all. You care only to save your own stolen skin.”
“Stop!” Rielle screamed, sinking to her knees. Their desires battled within her, tearing her thoughts in two. She curled into herself, pressing the heels of her hands against her temples.
Then, hands on her shoulders and lips against her brow.
She looked up, tears streaming down her face, and saw Audric kneeling before her. He was saying something, but his voice was coming to her from distant shores. She glanced wildly about the room. She was home, she was home—in Audric’s rooms, beside his bed of rumpled plum-colored sheets. The fire still crackled in the hearth. Behind him stood Evyline and two other of her Sun Guard—Jeannette, Fara.
“Audric.” Rielle gasped and leaned into him, pressing her face against his bare chest. “Oh, God. Help me. They wouldn’t stop. I felt them inside me, and they wouldn’t stop.”
A soft rustling of fabric, a familiar lavender scent. “Rielle,” came Ludivine’s voice. “I’m so sorry. I was only trying to help you.”
“Lu, get away from her, or I will banish you from this city,” said Audric, his voice more furious than Rielle had ever heard it.
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