But aren’t.
Just this heat, this fire – they’re the only things left in this world.
He’s just watching as his power rushes through my body.
My arm flies out, fingers clawing at the wooden boards. My back arches, the last bit of air escaping my lungs. I have no control over this. No fight. I forget he’s not even touching me, falling into bliss so hard that, in the back of my mind, I begin to consider that there might not be life after this moment.
And I really don’t care.
Then it stops.
Gone – withdrawing so hard that all I feel is grief.
I’m a panting mess on the floor, looking up at his intense dark eyes. Long hair frames his face, and serious lines crease his brow.
“My power will crush you,” he says, his tone too silky to be called a growl, but the sound still sends shivers racing through me.
What is it with these men and knocking me to the ground with their powers!
I don’t move. My legs are like jelly. My muscles feel like they just had equal shares of too much good and way too much bad. There’s not even a shadow of the heat inside me now. Just a vague memory. And with the cold that’s left behind, I realize he’s making perfect sense.
Roarke is dangerous.
I’m not strong enough.
The realization sinks to the pit of my stomach. Cold, hard truth.
My power snaps out, filling her all-too-willing body and flooding mine with her reaction. A need to follow her to the ground. To take those lips for mine.
I could make her feel things… become things… My whole being leans into the idea, wanting to show her how compatible our bodies would be. The floor. The wall. Throw Eydis’ supplies across the room and use every surface in here. My fingers burn with the desire to find her flesh. Rip her shirt off.
Have her.
Give her me.
Then those gray eyes are suddenly green.
The floor is gone – replaced by a bed. My bed in the White Castle. Soft red and black blanket with a mess of matching pillows. The woman is not my Kitten, but she is mirroring her every expression and gasp. The sounds are so alike.
The arch of their backs.
But the memory takes over the present, snapping away at my desire. Just pleasure. One more breath. Green eyes dead. Body limp and listless. A semblance of beauty washed out by the take of my power.
For a few moments, I’m alive with satisfaction, my power satiated. Then my soul recoils with deep disgust.
In the early hours of the morning, Pax will carry her body to the morgue on the southern side of the castle. I will Allure the memory from the healer and anyone we cross paths with. I can’t Allure a whole castle. I can’t distill the rumors or coerce the dignitaries.
I die a little more inside, a fresh piece of me tearing from the rest and burning to ash.
My Kitten is still moaning on the ground.
I snap my power back into my control – feeling the physical pain as a sharp throb through my skull, down my spine, and into my chest. Killian would enjoy controlling his power – enjoy this hovering pain and the challenge of working through it.
Aeons – he probably doesn’t even notice it, but I’m not sure how much longer I can take it.
And this little experiment proves the risks.
“My power will crush you,” I tell her, walking away and pulling Allure around me to bend time and make it look like I’m focused. Like I’m working and not at all thinking about her.
Thinking of the things I want to promise. All of them play through my mind as if they mean something. As if they stand a chance against the truth.
All I care about is that you live.
I will let my soul burn for you to live.
But the reality yet to unfold speaks of desire getting what it wants, and nothing but ash for the few remaining shredded pieces of my soul.
Fifteen Paces
Roarke is dangerous. I completely believe that.
But what would he do if I jumped on him? I wonder.
And apparently, my body agrees with my mind because I’m climbing to my feet and working hard to crush the idea – damn you, Killian, for beginning to break down my good servant walls.
I force myself to stand still. I didn’t have this problem before I met that man.
But the feelings I get around Roarke aren’t really Killian’s fault, and they’re not lusty, they’re more … crap, what’s a good word for it?
Tender? Fond? Endearing?
What?
My mouth opens, and I cut that train of thought off. No good things come from digging through fragile emotions. There’s a pretty good chance what I’m feeling is gas. Just gas. Not even people gas. Probably Brahman gas. Or donkey gas. Or some mythical creature like a unicorn.
“Just so you know,” my mouth kicks in. “I’m not worried about any of that stuff.” I wave a hand to indicate him as being the stuff I’m talking about, just a little bit more aggressively than I’d meant to.
He’s in front of me again, gripping my shoulders, then marching me backward, pushing me until I’m next to the filing cabinets.
“You, stay here,” he says, but he doesn’t let me go.
“You can’t tell me where to stand, Roarke.”
He lifts an eyebrow.
“Okay, so you can,” I admit.
“My full power just pressed into you, and you stopped breathing.”
I make a ‘who cares’ gesture. “Who needs air?”
“You need air! And I almost killed you looking for your memories and telling those Sabers to cease and fall.”
“What does that even mean?” I ask, distracting us both from the escalation.
He lets out a strangled sigh before answering, “When we wish each other safety, we say ‘leave and return’. When a Saber passes into the Aeons, they ‘cease and fall’.”
“That’s a really poetic way of telling someone to die.”
He nods, but I don’t really need him to. I watched those women convulsing and turning blue on the ground. They were dying.
“Why did you change your mind?”
“If they didn’t return to Lithael, others would have been assigned to investigate.”
“I mean – did you want to watch them die?”
His hands are still on my shoulders, his thumbs digging in, and suddenly that feels confining. “My power has an underdeveloped sense of morality. Yes, I would have enjoyed seeing them die – they were standing in the way of something I wanted. I always get what I want.”
“Wow, that’s extreme,” I whisper. And as far from Roarke as I ever imagined. Killian – yes. Roarke – no.
I rub my palm across my forehead, ready to give up for today.
He shakes his head. “Not like that. It’s more complicated than that. Desires forget about logic and reasoning. If you desire chocolate, it’s very easy to eat a whole block and not care that it’s making you feel sick.”
Agreed. I still have blocks stashed in Seth’s bag. At least I hope I do; he better not have eaten them.
“But wanting chocolate is not the same as wanting people dead,” I say.
“It is to my power.”
“Can’t you outsmart your power? You’re the smartest guy I know.”
“That’s the only reason I’m still alive,” he says, a sad little smile on his face.
“You weren’t always the last Allure, were you?”
“No, I was ninety-eight when I became the last one. Lithael’s father, Lucif, just had to dangle a carrot, create a desire too strong to resist, and each one of us fell. There were five family lines when I was young. Now there’s none. Losing my mother almost killed me – the desire to forget that pain. To try and feel whole again. Alive… If I didn’t have my brothers…” He stops to swallow hard. “They kept me alive.”
And now I’ve completely forgotten what we were arguing about. Roarke’s glazed eyes, fading and losing their intense depths, suck the fight right out of me. I
throw my arms around him, taking him by surprise enough that I slip through his grip without resistance. Nuzzling into the point where his shoulder becomes his chest.
A jasmine scent fills my nose, washed over by the crisp smell of aged paper so intense that I have to blink twice to be sure I haven’t fallen asleep with my face in one of these old books.
No, just Roarke. Just me and Roarke.
There’s a split second of hesitation. Almost long enough for me to consider that I’ve overstepped my boundaries and should let go of him. Then his arms are around me, and he’s holding me tight.
He buries his face in my hair, and a shudder rakes through his chest. He’s crying – or almost crying. I hold him, and he holds me, and my heart aches badly enough to want to crack open.
“What happened?” I ask, my words almost eaten by the tension in my throat.
“A lot, Kitten. A lot. Mother only trusted her advisor Muinthel, but Lucif had far too much access to her private wing. Access that let him get close enough to assassinate my father. I didn’t deal well. Mother was grief-stricken, and we were in our first year at the White Castle. We were too lost to realize that whole Seed lines were being eliminated – and I blame myself for that. Before we had our wits about us again, we were Sealed to the White Castle, and that monster murdered our mother. Kitten, the world was unraveling around me, and I became a thing of nightmares.”
“I don’t believe you,” I say, muffled by the fact that we’re still holding each other close.
“My Seed wanted satiation, but none ever came. Lover after lover, night after night. Kitten, you know that only Elites survive my power, right?”
My insides clench tight, and all I can manage is a slight nod.
“Then you know what happened to the women I took to bed.”
He’s right, I probably don’t need to hear this – but not because I don’t want to face the demons of his past. I want to face them with him, I’d even face them for him if I could, but that doesn’t ease the knot of fear in my chest.
“Your power killed them,” I manage.
“No, Kitten, I killed them.”
I shake my head against his shoulder. “No, you were stupid for not locking yourself in a cave or something until you got over it, but you didn’t end their lives. I know you. You care too much, and that’s why you break into sharp pieces when something hits you hard.”
Come to think of it, all the Elorsins do. Pax went on a killing spree after they lost their child – that can’t be any worse than anything Roarke did.
My fingers rub along the soft skin on his neck. Heat radiates up through my nails, along each bone, and into my hand, but no further. No rush of power. No spark of lust.
Just me and Roarke.
And a heavy pain in my head and in my chest. I swallow hard to try and control the impending waterworks and only partly succeed.
“I can’t see it that way,” he whispers.
“I can, and I think you should stop seeing it your way and start seeing it my way.”
He doesn’t agree with me or argue. He doesn’t say anything – just takes a long inhale and continues to hold me.
Eventually, when he relaxes his grip and straightens, I try to sneak a hand to my face to wipe the moisture away. He stops me, grabbing my arm, his fingers smooth against the bare skin of my wrist. He wipes his eyes with his palm. Looking intently at my hand for a long moment, a disbelieving expression on his face. Slowly, his gaze trails along my arm and up to my face.
My face, which is still wet with tears.
“You’re crying?” he asks.
I nod.
“Why?”
“Seeing you hurt made me hurt,” I say, my voice all choked up.
I almost don’t get to finish my sentence before his lips are pressed against mine. Moving in a long, slow caress that sets all the sensitive parts of me to a slow burn. Just a little. One flame dancing inside of me.
Soft. Careful.
After the crazy intensity that knocked me to the ground, this doesn’t even feel like the same guy. I feel his fist clench, actively trying to contain his power as his tongue brushes across my lip, and his breath stutters, skittering warmth over the moisture left behind.
I want to grip the front of his shirt and try to yank him closer to me. Wanting more. Wanting to fall into him and this moment, this kiss. Just him and me. Maybe even forever.
But all of that is because I want it. Not because his power is boring into me. Not because I’m on fire.
And because I’m still in control of me, I don’t overstep my boundaries again or let the unfurling of heat that has replaced the pain in my chest rule my actions. I can feel his pain, the lengths he’s going to, to be in this moment with me, but without his power.
Each one of my breaths is slow and purposeful. Containing my need. Clamping down on the burning until all I smell is the roses underneath.
Pure tenderness laces every movement he makes. His lips are just whispering against mine. His fingers trace through my hair. His fisted palm opens and presses flat to my hip. A shallow groan escapes him.
“Kitten,” he says, trying to catch his breath. “Please, stay.”
He turns sharply and scoops his book up off the floor. Then kicks into his unnatural Saber speed and slips into a world of his own. Picking up books, frowning at bottles, and clearing his workspace. The whole bench is cleared in a heartbeat – which is saying something, because my heart is racing.
I’m frozen in place with my eyes wide and my fingers shaking.
What the chuck? He can’t just kiss me like that then completely block me out – again.
I moan, running my hand over my clothes to try and smooth them into place. I’m so confused. My body wants to be all over him, wants to snatch at his power, and wants his power to snatch at me.
But obviously, I’m not going to get that at all.
Roarke’s too fast, faster than the others in their super-speed modes. He collects more books, flicks through them, reading in a blur, then props them open to specific pages using glass weights.
Silvari glass.
Just like the vials and the instruments. But not the potion jars. Makes sense – potion jars need to be able to break. Silvari glass almost never breaks.
Unless I’m around.
I avoid moving in case I get in his way. He blurs around the room, drawing across the bench with chalk, then gathering ingredients off shelves and frowning at them.
“Swirls and dots. Three of them,” I mutter to myself as I turn to the filing cabinet.
Outside, the world is dark, and clouds are rolling in to fill the night and hide the stars.
I dig through the filing cabinet, finding something that looks similar to the word Roarke wrote down, but I’m not game enough to try and walk over to the workbench to double-check – if he ran into me at his speed, he’d probably kill me. Inside the folder are two pieces of paper. One looks like a list, with small diagrams of plants and several symbols that could be cooking methods. He said he already had the recipe, so this is nothing new. The other looks like a letter – the handwriting is different to the list and in the corner is a very official-looking gold seal.
A rush of static pinches at the nerves just under my skin as thunder cracks in the distance.
Roarke keeps working.
I pace away from him, skirting around the edge of the room, not finding the edge of my bubble until he zips across to the far wall, and it bumps into me. I wait until he’s not moving before I pace towards him. Counting each step across the room, right up until I’m standing flush against his back.
He turns so quickly that I’m knocked staggering back.
“Kitten, what are you doing?”
“Fifteen,” I say.
One eyebrow furrows in confusion, then lifts in surprise.
“Fifteen,” he whispers.
Then he takes my shoulders and paces me backwards, pushing my butt onto the window seat, before backing up. I count his steps,
fifteen – then my wall bumps me to my feet. He’s not even at the far wall yet. From the window seat, my bubble doesn’t even cover the whole room.
I’m expecting him to say something, but as soon as I’m seated he snaps back into his speed and starts zipping about the space again.
Clearly he doesn’t like the sound of fifteen. Neither do I.
The information repeats itself in my mind, five or six more times before I can move on to the next thought. Math is not my strongest skill, but generally when one counts backwards, the end result is always zero.
If it has been slowly shrinking this whole time,why is it suddenly speeding up now that we’re at Eydis’?
Eydis – the dead woman still out there on the rocks, with her blood running over the stone in the shape of a creature with talons and raised wings.
And Roarke’s too busy to answer my questions or provide me with a distraction from my thoughts. If I could step into someone else's bubble right now it would be Seth’s. Damn how I miss the way he wipes the deep and dark from my mind. I need a Seth hug, but what I have is a lonely view into the black night.
I can’t see the body in the dark, which eases the tension in my chest just a little. Does nothing for the dull ache in my head or the turmoil in my heart. Those two things stay right where they are while my gaze skims over the trees settling on the biggest. The thing seems to have its roots wrapping around boulders and sprawling down the side of the mountain. I’m thinking that’s why she built her house here, and why this level of the house is facing this particular direction. Because of that impressive tree. The thing almost touches the sky, and in the flashes of light, the branches reach out and hug the night.
I prop a cushion between me and the window frame and slip one of the darts out of the cuff on my ankle. I’m hoping twirling it will distract me from the continuously replaying memory of Roarke’s lips against mine, but all it does is bore a hole into the window frame as the light show continues over the tree and the night wears on.
The lightning charges the air, making the hair on my arms stand on end and sending little jolts of excitement through me. It’s akin to Pax’s power, but not quite the same.
Shadows and Shade Box Set Page 72
