by J. L. Weil
“I can think of a great number of things I desire from you, Prince.” She purred “desire” in a way that incited red-hot jealousy within me.
Glaring at her and seeing the way she watched Ashor, I was horribly afraid I knew what she would ask of him.
Over. My. Dead. Body.
Not my mate.
Ashor raised a brow at my sudden rising anger and jealousy, but my eyes darted back to the queen, daggers of hate radiating from me.
“A single night… in my bed,” the queen said, and my vision went red.
The vein in my forehead pulsed, and every muscle in my body wanted to kick her ass. Maybe a kick to her honey pot would change her mind. “You bitch.” I lunged forward, darkness swimming in my veins, but Ashor caught me around the waist.
“Easy there, luv.” His breath was a cool whisper in my ear.
“You should be thankful I’m only asking for a night.” She ran the tip of her nail along her lips, glittering eyes of wine running over every inch of Ashor. “I had toyed with asking for much more.” Shifting her gaze from the prince, she looked at me. “He would look regal at my side. A king. Hmm, yes, you would look good on the throne,” she said, her attention returning to Ashor. “But I figured this demon’s life wasn’t worth the price, even if he is a friend.”
“You figured right.” His voice was colder than Alaska and a million times more dangerous. From our bond, I felt how close he was to tearing into the queen. He wanted her blood.
Verena uncrossed her long legs, keeping them slightly parted as the slitted fabric of her dress dropped to either side of her bronze thighs. “Is his life worth a night?”
I struggled against the arms that held me, flashing my teeth. “I will kill you before I let that happen.” Screw allying with the Court of Envy. Right now, I didn’t care if Kali destroyed Verena’s entire court. Fuck. I might help bring down the walls.
The queen grinned. “Your mate is so bloodthirsty.”
“She is. Particularly for royal blood,” he snarled.
The queen pressed her lips together, dismissing me as nothing but a scampering mouse in her court. Meaningless. “Do we have a deal?”
Cayden made a gurgling, choking sound, blood running out the side of his mouth. Ashor glanced down at his friend. “One night?” he whispered.
“Ashor,” I gasped, attempting to wiggle out of his arms. “You can’t be serious.” Betrayal like I’d never felt before tore through my heart, right into my soul. I felt as if he had cut one of the threads tying us together. I stopped breathing.
“Just a single night,” the queen said like the backstabbing seductress that she was. “Tick. Tock. The clock is ticking. He doesn’t have much longer.”
The powerful muscles lining his back quivered beneath his shirt, and a blast of cold air went through the chamber. “I chose the night.”
Verena beamed a smile of satisfied victory. “Done.”
Ashor glanced back down at Cayden, his fingers going lax at my waist, but I had gone numb and didn’t advance toward the queen. Instead, I stood in the center of the room and watched as Ashor gave a shallow nod. Then he sauntered to the queen. She got to her feet, meeting him at the end of the dais. If I could feel my body, I would have slapped the shit of the superior grin on her lips. A knot of dread expanded in my stomach.
I couldn’t figure out who she was punishing with this deal. Me? Or Ashor?
Most likely it was the both of us. A way to cause friction and division between us.
And it was working.
For a second time in my life, I watched as Ashor took a blood oath with a demon queen and I could do nothing to stop it. His promises to other females were stacking up.
What about the promises to me?
Verena licked Ashor’s blood off her nail. “Don’t make me wait too long.” Her eyes flickered briefly to mine before she turned her back to him, returning to her throne.
My fingers itched to snatch a clump of her strawberry-colored hair and yank as hard as I could.
Ashor sighed heavily, his patience running thin. “First, you hold up your end of the deal. Heal him.”
The queen gave a curt nod as she took a seat. “Alora. Dinah. Take him to the enchantress.”
This time when the two succubae advanced toward Cayden, Ashor didn’t stop them. He only stared at me, but I refused to meet his gaze. I dropped mine to the white floor, spattered with Cayden’s blood.
My world was off-balance. Nothing about me felt right. And I blamed Ashor.
That bastard.
How dared he!
If he thought I was going to just sit by while he spent the night with another woman, he had another thing coming. We might be the first mated couple in history to break up. Could he not have bargained for anything else? If the roles had been reversed, he would have obliterated the Court of Envy before he let someone else touch me.
My mind couldn’t stop visualizing Ashor and Verena doing the nasty. Eyes closed. Eyes open. It didn’t matter. The images wouldn’t stop, and they were going to drive me mad with jealousy. Her hands roamed places where my lips kissed. Her tongue tasted his, moaning with pleasure. Rage boiled, burning up inside like I was the center of the sun.
I continued to stare out the window in my plush prison, silence stretching out within the room. I hadn’t said a damn word to Ashor on our way back, regardless that I wanted to fly off the handle. Or burst out crying. I couldn’t make up my mind which emotion would come out, so it was best I just kept my trap shut and ignored the son of a bitch.
Pink and gold stained the horizon, the sun setting behind the woods, painting the River Styx as if it were on fire. It mimicked my own fury.
I felt Ashor’s gaze as he studied me like I was a riddle he was trying to unravel. “Don’t be angry,” he said softly, in a tone that put a tiny crack in my shield of anger.
Ribbons of calm radiated from his voice and inflamed the burning inside me. It was like ice and fire clashing. I whirled my head in his direction, a desire to hurt him swelling inside me. “Are you fucking kidding me?” I spat, releasing my temper. “You’re going to spend a night with another woman, a demon, and you don’t want me to be mad. Besides, I’m way past mad. I’m fucking furious. We’re about to have our first fight, princeling. Buckle up.”
He leaned against the wall, keeping his distance. “I only finished what you started.”
“Don’t pin this on me,” I hissed, feeling my temples throb. “I will not take the blame. No one asked you to volunteer yourself. I was more than willing to make a deal with the queen. It should have been me!”
His voice was rough as he said, “You want to spend a night in her bed? I’m sure it can be arranged.”
I blinked, stiffening, finding no humor in the situation. “And you would be fine with it?” I hurled at him.
Ashor sighed through his nose, his jaw locking. “I never said that.” Finally, a display of emotion.
A quick bolt of violence sliced through our bond. “So you are capable of feeling.”
Shoving off the wall, he crossed the room to me. “No one should know what I am feeling better than you. You are the only one who has access to the deepest parts of myself.”
It was too difficult to weed through the labyrinthine levels of fury, betrayal, pain, and the thousand other things I was feeling to find his emotions. “What does it matter? When you are with her, I will be able to feel what you feel. Do you have a way to protect me from that?” My chest heaved as I took a breath. “All this time you’ve claimed every decision you’ve made has been to protect me, but you failed to see the one person who had the power to hurt me the most. You.”
“Lexi.” My name was a guttural ache from his lips. His agony joined mine, making it nearly intolerable to bear.
“I can’t believe I came back for you,” I spat, leaping off my seat to pace the common room like a caged tiger. I could no longer sit still lest I be utterly consumed by the swirling storm inside of us both. It threatened t
o sweep me away.
“He would have died,” Ashor murmured.
I didn’t want him to engage my sympathy, so I continued clinging to the anger. “You don’t think I know that? I’m not pissed because you saved your friend’s life. I’m fuming because you didn’t even bother to negotiate a different deal. One that didn’t involve you, the queen, and a bed!” I finished with a shriek.
He shook his dark head, the shadows in the corner staining the wall behind him. “Another option wouldn’t have worked. She took advantage of the situation so she could cut where it would hurt the most.”
A tear slipped down my cheek, and I brushed it away with an angry swipe of my hand. “Explain to me how spending the night with her is going to hurt you?” I was being unreasonable and a part of me knew it, but in the heat of the moment, I was only consumed with my own pain, not thinking about Ashor’s, or what he sacrificed in agreeing to her deal. His own choice had been taken from him.
Ashor shoved off the wall and was standing in front of me within a blink. I stood still, staring up at him, and as another tear fell from the corner of my eye, he caught it with a kiss. “Anything that hurts you hurts me,” he whispered, cooling off my flushed cheek with his words.
Damn him.
I didn’t want to be reasonable or admit that what he said made sense. My scowl deepened. “That’s not particularly very ally-ish of her.”
His eyes roamed over my face as his hand moved to tuck a piece of hair behind my ear. “She wants to make sure I don’t forget the position she holds. I might be a prince, but she is a queen; therefore, I am beneath her.”
I ignored the tingle of his touch. “I hate demon politics. You guys might actually not hate each other if you stopped being supreme dicks.”
The edges of his lips twitched as he tried not to smile at me. “The last thing we should be doing is fighting. It is precisely what Verena hopes for, to divide us. It is only my flesh. The queen will never have my heart or my soul. Those belong to you.”
I met his gaze, letting him see everything I was feeling and the truth in my words as I said, “You’re wrong. Your body does belong to me as well.” I reminded him. “Heart. Soul. Body. You may already have my body and my soul. But I will never give you my heart. Never.”
He moved closer so my chest was touching his. “Best not to say something you’ll regret, luv. I’d hate to make a liar out of you.”
I swallowed, lifting my chin, and told myself to stay strong. “This is one aspect of the bond you can’t force, Ashor. I have to freely give you my heart, and it is going to take more than ancient accents and cute nicknames for me to profess my undying love.”
“Lexi, you’re being unreasonable. Nothing will happen between the queen and me.”
My nails bit into my palms as another round of anger spiked in my blood. “Oh, so she just invited you to her bed for Parcheesi and meaningful conversation. I’m not a fool. Don’t patronize me.”
Ashor swore low under his breath. “It doesn’t matter what Verena wants or tries. I’m incapable of doing anything with another woman that isn’t you.”
Despair shone in my eyes. “Then why accept the oath? Tell me how you plan to find a loophole out of this one, princeling?”
“When will you learn to trust me?” he breathed.
Wrong answer. “Screw you, Ashor. I wish you weren’t my mate.” I spun on my heels and stalked into the bedroom, slamming the door in his face behind me. My chest was heaving as I pressed my back to the wall. After a few minutes, I realized he wasn’t going to follow me into the bedroom, and that awful ache in my chest came back. The one that had assaulted me for months during our separation. The one I never wanted to feel again.
Ashor had the power to hurt me. More than any demon or human could. Whether it was intentional or not, it didn’t hurt any less.
The images of Verena and Ashor tangled together came back. Her luscious lips on his. Her painted nails trailing down his chest. Her voice calling out his name. Eyes closed or wide open, it did not matter. The visions of them did not stop. For the first time since we’d been united, I truly missed home.
I crawled into bed, curling up into a ball, however I slept very little that night. The sporadic bouts where I did tumble into sleep, I was plagued with nightmares of Ashor and Colin. Their faces often blurred together, which wasn’t the scary part. In each and every dream, I watched them die, unable to do anything to stop their deaths.
I didn’t put much stock into dream reading, yet I couldn’t deny there was some kind of twisted foreboding at play. The idea of Ashor being taken from me was like dying myself.
Sometime in the middle of the night, the door to the bedroom squeaked open and Ashor’s shadows wrapped around me like a cooling blanket, quieting the nightmares. My soul cried the tears I refused to let my eyes shed. He didn’t come to bed, but lounged in the chair that sat in the corner of the room, as if to watch over me. His presence quieted my soul and relaxed my body, so that by the time the sun came up, the sting and ache of his blood oath were drained from within me.
Trust.
Ashor wanted my trust.
I had not given him my trust the first time he abducted me to the underworld. He had not earned it then. But now…
I trusted Ashor with more than my life. And I would find a way to trust that what he said about Verena never touching him was the truth.
21
His eyes were closed as rays of orange and gold splayed over the right side of his face. It was unusual to gaze at the Prince of Darkness bathed in sunlight. He was fit for the night, yet somehow just as gorgeous in the daylight.
Resting the side of my face on the pillow, I drew up my knees, battling with my desires and my head. They were at war with one another. In the end, the bond tying me to Ashor won. I was powerless to refuse our connection, and spending the night alone, without him beside me, only deepened my ache to get closer to him.
Ashor was part of me. I was part of him. Divided, neither of us was whole.
I swung my legs out of bed and softly padded across the room to where he stretched out in the chair. Long legs extended in front of him, while his hands were folded on his belly. He was still fully clothed in the black pants and shirt he wore yesterday. As my eyes feasted on his form, I wished his wings were out so I could feel their silky feathers against my skin.
My wrath toward the queen was no less than it had been last night, but my anger at the prince had cooled significantly. Now all I wanted was to feel his arms wrapped around me. It seemed my ability to hold a grudge against the prince was a bit more difficult thanks to the deep connection between us.
He didn’t move as I crawled into his lap, but a soft sigh escaped his lips, parting them. His shirt was unbuttoned halfway, and my fingers splayed over his chest, feeling the steady beat of his heart under my hand. My wandering fingers didn’t get far. Ashor’s hand reached up, grabbing mine. Dark violet eyes blinked at me, clouded with sleep, as if he didn’t see me at first. “Lexi?”
“Who were you expecting?” A soft edge leaked into my voice before I could stop it. I no longer wanted to fight and was ready to move into the kiss and make up phase.
He flinched before the lines around his mouth and forehead relaxed, as did the hand gripping my wrist. “We sleep in the castle of a demon queen who I trust very little. And my mother taunts me. It isn’t farfetched to expect the unexpected.”
He was worried. I pressed my forehead to his. He didn’t often open up to me and the fact that he chose to now warmed my heart. “I didn’t sleep well either, if that is any consolation.”
“It’s not. My wards only protect against demon attacks, not personal demons. Being apart, even in sleep, takes a toll, more so now that our connection is deeper.” He brushed at a messy stray strand of my hair, tucking it back into place.
My cheek arched toward his touch. “Then we make a promise to never sleep without the other, no matter how pissed I might be at you.”
The corne
r of his lips twitched as he slipped his fingers to my hips, pulling me closer. “Swear it in blood,” he murmured.
“I’ll do one better. I swear it on our bond.”
“As do I,” the prince whispered against my lips right before he claimed them in a kiss.
Lightning zipped through my veins at the first taste of his darkness. It had been a single night where we hadn’t shared a bed, and yet as I moved my lips over his, it seemed like months since we were close, since his skin pressed against mine, since our tongues tangled in a dance as old as time.
This link that fastened us together was stronger than I ever fathomed. Every fiber of my being hummed in response to him. I had a newfound respect for Chase and Angel’s relationship and all the hurdles they overcome.
Ashor ended the kiss far too soon, but he kept his hands looped around my waist. “I do not want my oath to Verena to drive a wedge between us. I need you to know that I have no intention of spending the night with her. And I am sorry that I allowed you to entertain the idea of us being together for a second. A part of me relished in your jealousy. I am part demon and not above such emotions. This is the Court of Envy, after all.”
“You’re going to start a war.”
A half sensual grin danced on his lips. “Probably.”
My fingers were toying with the ends of his sable hair, and I tugged on a strand, earning a scowl. “Tell me that you’re not doing this for me.”
“You know I can’t do that.”
“Ashor,” I scolded.
“We’re going to be on the winning side, luv,” he said, with more confidence than any single man needed. Then he proceeded to slap me on my ass. “Trust me.”
“How can you be so sure?” I retorted, wishing I had an ounce of his assurance.
Ashor’s eyes glimmered, and the smile on his lips was a dark, cruel thing. “Because I never lose.”
“Don’t be such a dickladle,” I said dryly.
Ashor choked. “Come again, luv?”
My lips quivered, enjoying the glint of amusement lingering in his eyes. “It means stop being an ass. So tell me how you plan to weasel your way out of spending a night in her room.”
