Vor offers to carry me back to my rooms. I can’t very well refuse. Though soothed by the warm lake water and Vor’s gentle ministrations, my feet are still quite battered. I’m not sure I can make it back on my own.
So, I submit to the indignity of being lugged about in his strong arms. Though, if I’m honest, that’s not so terrible a trial. At first, I hold my body very tense, braced for pain. Long years have taught me that any amount of physical touch will inevitably end badly for me. It’s difficult to let such habits of wariness go. But Vor’s feelings are carefully locked down once more, and my gods-gift is not unduly activated. Instead, I’m extremely aware of the sensation of his hands gripping my body. His strong arms bear my weight as though I’m little more than a doll. My skin warms right through the damp fabric of my shift. My cheeks are flushed, my breath tight and uneven.
This isn’t a good idea.
Or maybe . . . maybe it is? After all, by tomorrow, I’ll be on my way back to Beldroth unless something happens to change Vor’s mind.
My teeth clench. Vor wants me. Though his defenses are back in place, I know I didn’t misread his emotions earlier. He wants me—and not just in the hot, fiery way a man wants a woman. He wants more than that. He longs for a companion he can trust, for someone on whom he can depend through all the tumultuous storms of this life. When he looks at me, he knows I could be that very companion. I could be the one to give his heart safe harbor. Why then does he still resist so vehemently?
I study the hard line of his jaw, the shadows of his throat and clavicle. His tale of Hoknath and the horrors he witnessed there chilled me to the bone. But I’d been able to bear it, far better than I’ve ever managed to bear such unchecked emotion in the past. Perhaps Vor was holding himself back. Perhaps he wasn’t telling me all. He spoke of poison and the damage caused by the quake, but there is more going on here than he’s willing to say. A darkness threatening all the Under Realm.
I press my lips into a thin line. If his kingdom is in such imminent danger, doesn’t that make the alliance more important than ever? He shouldn’t be giving up so easily. My father’s mages are Vor’s best bet for saving his people. He should strive with everything he has to make this alliance work.
We are silent as Vor crosses the garden. I scarcely notice the beauty of the winding paths, the rock formations and crystals, caught up in my own thoughts as I am. When at length he reaches the palace and steps into the shadowed halls, his stride does not slow. “You can put me down now,” I say quickly.
He pauses. His muscles tense. Is he going to protest? To refuse? A shiver of reluctance ripples through his barriers. But when I shift in his grasp, he sets me on my feet, withdraws his arms, and backs up two paces. I wince, pain shooting up my legs, but quickly mask it in a determined grimace. I will not be carried about like a child. I can certainly manage to walk on the polished stone floors and soft rugs of the palace interior. Lifting my chin, I face the Shadow King. Now we are inside, away from the glowing crystal-light of the garden, he is suddenly an ominous, enigmatic figure. Only one pale lorst stone set in a wall sconce gleams in the depths of his eyes.
“I can find my own way back,” I say bravely.
His eyes narrow. “It’s not safe, Princess. You do not know whom you might meet on your way. It’s best if I escort you.”
I hold his gaze for a long moment. Then nod. He turns, sweeps an arm, and we walk together down the cavernous hall. He matches his long stride to my short one. In truth, I’m glad to have him near. I’m not at all certain of the way and don’t recognize anything until we come to the stairwell leading up to my floor. This I recognize well enough based on the distinctive carving of a long, sinuous dragon etched into the wall.
My pace slows. I grip the stair rail hard, willing each painful footstep after the other. Nothing but my empty chamber waits at the end of this climb. My luxurious prison cell. But . . . does it have to be a prison? Or might I put it to better use?
My stomach knots. I cast a sideways glance at Vor, whose gaze is firmly fixed away from me. I can scarcely see him in the shadowed stairwell, but that doesn’t matter. I remember every feature of his beautiful face, every line of his magnificent body. I feel his warmth like the draw of the celestial spheres, pulling me to him.
I know what I want. But that doesn’t mean I’m not afraid.
We exit the stairwell, emerging into the empty passage outside my chamber. Vor utters a low growling troldish word. “What’s wrong?” I ask.
“That boy.” Vor grunts and shakes his head. “He’s not here.”
“Maybe he’s in the room?” I suggest.
Vor swiftly crosses to the door, tries the handle. It opens at his touch, and he pushes it wide, puts his head inside to quickly scan the space. “Not here.”
“Maybe . . .” I swallow, my throat thickening. Then: “Will you inspect the chamber for me?”
He draws back to give me a look. Does he know what I’m doing? Surely, he does. Surely, he can read my intention plainly in my face. But I offer only an innocent expression, all wide-eyed and blinking. His cheek tightens. Then, without a word, he steps into the room and begins a slow, methodical search, underneath and behind even the smallest bits of furniture—though what assassin he thinks might hide beneath my footstool, I cannot imagine—inside the tall wardrobe, the hearth, up the chimney.
I step into the room after him. Slowly, I shut the door behind me, taking care it should not thunk and draw his attention. My heart pounds. Heat pools in my gut, thrills in little bursts through my breast. Unaware of my turmoil, Vor steps onto my balcony to finish his inspection, parting the long curtains and vanishing through them. For a moment, I’m alone. Alone to think through what I’m about to do. Can I go through with this? Have I the courage? The will? Gods help me, I should have listened more closely to Fyndra! My father’s mistress had given me many pointed tips on the art of seduction. I’d been so distraught at the time, I’d not registered any of it. But maybe it will come naturally? If I only have the courage to begin . . .
Vor spends more time on the balcony than necessary. I can’t help suspecting he’s taken the opportunity to steady his own breaths, firm his own resolve before returning to face me. He reappears at last, pushes back the curtains, steps through, pulls the window shut fast behind him. Then he turns. Faces me. His expression is hard as stone, but his eyes are bright. Very bright and very pale by the low glimmer of moonfire on my hearth.
“There’s no one here,” he says.
Am I mistaken, or did his gaze flick ever so briefly to my narrow bed? If so, he looks away again almost at once and refuses to let his eyes drift that way again. Instead, he crosses the room in a few quick strides. His shirt was still too wet to wear when we left the gardens, so it’s tied around his waist, leaving his torso bare. Firelight catches and plays with the contours of his powerful, warrior’s body. He looks unreal, like some mythic and magical being.
My mouth goes dry. I lean back against the closed door. “Do you . . . do you think the young guardsman will return soon?”
Vor stops a few paces from me. His jaw is tight, his brow hard. “He may have gone to the infirmary. But he should have thought to send a replacement. I’ll have a word with that boy.”
“Don’t be too angry with him.” I put out one hand, lightly touch Vor’s arm. A thrill streaks through my fingers just at that barest contact. It’s terrifying. You’d think being carried in his arms would make me somewhat immune, but here in this room, in this low lighting, with that bed close by, everything feels so much more . . . alive.
Vor feels it too. His careful barriers quake with the sudden surge of feeling in his soul. He stares down at me, at war with himself. “That boy was meant to protect you,” he says, his voice rough and low.
I tip my chin up, exposing my long neck, the low cut of my neckline, the tight heave of my breast as my lungs struggle to draw breath. “Maybe I don’t need protecting.”
Vor’s gaze flashes downward before dragging back up to my eyes. “Nonsense. You’re in danger every moment you remain in this realm. Of course, you need protecting.”
“Maybe I can protect myself.”
“Can you?”
He draws a step nearer, looming and powerful and shadowed and dreadful. My heart rams in my throat, and my gods-gift roils with powerful bursts of emotion. I don’t know which of these feelings belong to me and which to him. It’s all one. All need. All desire.
I don’t mean to do it. Not exactly. But I reach out. Slowly, slowly, I place my palms flat against his chest, hard as stone, but warm and alive. “Yes,” I whisper, and flick my gaze up to meet his. “But maybe I don’t want to.”
His eyes glitter with dark fire.
Suddenly, he takes two lunging steps. I don’t pull my hands from his chest but let him push me up against the door. His fists plant on either side of my face, his arms framing me in a cage of strength. He stares down at me, his breath hard and hot on my face. Then he draws one hand down to rest a finger under my chin. His touch is featherlight, gentle, a sharp contrast to the look in his eye. His thumb trails across my mouth just before his fingers glide lightly down my throat to my shoulder, igniting my skin with bright sparks. He brushes his palm along my arm and finally lets it come to rest on my hip. His eyes are ready to devour me with their heat.
I stare at his full lips, so very near. “Kiss me, Vor,” I plead.
His teeth flash in the moonfire glow. “You know I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“If I kiss you again, I won’t be able to stop.”
“Then don’t stop.”
With agonizing slowness, he lowers his mouth to mine. But doesn’t touch. He angles his face, breathing me in, tantalizing me with the warmth of his lips so near and yet torturously withheld. I feel like a woman starved, ravenous and desperate. One of my hands slips from his chest to the back of his neck and glides up into his hair. I try to pull his face down to mine, to close that space between us. But he turns away. Conflict coils through his soul, equal parts red craving and cold black resistance.
Time is running out. I can feel the seconds slipping away. Too soon, too soon, we will be parted forever. I need this moment. I need him. Now.
“Vor—” I begin.
Then his mouth is on mine. Crushing me with the intensity of everything he’s feeling, fierce and hot as the core of the world. I melt into him, ready to burn up in that first kiss, to give myself over to the inferno. He tastes like fire and darkness and smoke, a heady combination that rushes across my senses. My fingers knot in his hair as his tongue slips between my teeth. He flattens me against the door, pins me under the great wall of his chest. The hand at my hip skates down my curves, then grips fabric, and pulls. He hikes my hem up higher and higher, until his fingers are underneath my shift, gliding up my hipbone, my ribcage. I whimper as his thumb traces the lower curve of my breast. So gentle. Too gentle.
I take his lower lip between my teeth and bite. Just enough to shock him, to make him draw back and stare down into my eyes. His eyes blaze, his swollen lips parted, panting. Slowly, they curve in a smile.
A growl rumbling in his throat, he lifts his fist from where it’s pressed against the door, wraps his large hand around the back of my head and drags me into another kiss, harder and hotter than before. Beneath my shift, his scorching fingers slip around to my back, slide down lower and lower still, until he holds me cupped in his palm. He pulls me to him, flush against his body. All my softness melts against his stone-hard flesh.
“What have you done to me?” His voice is a low snarl against my mouth, my cheek, my ear, my neck. “What have you done, Faraine? Deeper Dark damn me for a fool!”
Desire warps my answer into a breathy, wordless gasp. My hands slip through his hair, down his neck, his back. My fingernails dig into his skin. I must have more of him. I must have all of him. I must—
A terrible pounding rattles the door behind me, right where I’m leaning. I swallow a cry as Vor jerks his mouth away from where he’d been kissing sparks of fire against my throat. His hand rips out from under my shift just as Hael’s brusque voice barks, “Princess! Are you in there?” The latch turns, hits the small of my back. “Morar-juk, you haven’t even dropped the bolt! Do you never think of your own safety?”
The next moment, the door begins to open, pushing me along with it. Vor is already halfway across the room, leaving me to stagger and catch my balance as Hael bursts into the room. “Princess!” my bodyguard exclaims. “Thank the gods above and below, you’re here. Where did you go? My fool of a brother found me and told me you’d given him the slip, and the king . . . the king . . .”
Her voice trails away even as her eyes take in my disheveled state. My body, clad in nothing but a damp, clinging shift. My hair, mussed and tousled. My face a roaring fire of blush. From there, she turns to the king, standing at the fire, leaning heavily against the dragon-carved mantel. Naked to the waist. His back like a wall.
Hael’s gaze snaps back to me. “Juk!” she gasps, her eyes widening. Then she veritably leaps for the doorway, muttering something in troldish.
“Gurat!” Vor barks, his tone imperative.
“Juk,” Hael mutters again but stops in her tracks. She pulls herself to attention and faces her king. Vor takes a step back, draws his shoulders straight, and gives his head a single shake. Only then does he turn around. His face is a mask, utterly unreadable. He speaks a string of troldish, all very cold and clipped. Hael answers in kind. She doesn’t look at me. Or her king. Her eyes are fixed intently on the far wall.
Vor crosses the room in a few quick strides. I try to catch his eye, but he won’t look at me. He makes straight for the door without another word and disappears into the hall. Leaving me. My heart still racing, my blood still burning, aware of every place on my body where his hands and lips had touched. Is this it then? Is this the last I will see of him? Will he keep me here, imprisoned in this room, until that cursed messenger arrives from Beldroth? Have I lost my chance?
“No, no, no,” I growl, and leap into motion. Ignoring Hael’s cry of, “Princess, wait!” I dart from the room. “Vor!” I call.
He’s down at the end of the passage. One second more and I would have missed him entirely. For a moment, I fear he’ll keep going and never look back.
But he stops.
Pulls back his shoulders.
Then, slowly, turns.
I wrap my arms around myself as I hasten down the hall toward him. I’d not felt cold until this moment, but now I can hardly keep from shivering. I wish I dared reach out and touch him. From the way he’s poised, I fear any sudden movement will send him fleeing again. I stop a good ten paces from him and lift my chin. The lorst light from the nearest sconce gleams on one side of his face, sparks in the depths of his eyes. “You said you expect the message from my father.” I keep my voice firm, level. “Either tomorrow or the next day. Is that true?”
“Indeed. It should take no longer, Princess,” he replies stiffly.
“And then we must say goodbye? Forever?”
He hesitates. Then nods. Once.
I can see the little bruise on his lip where I’d bitten him. I can still feel the fire on my skin where he’d touched me, gripped me. And yet he stands there, like he’s carved from stone, all his feelings locked down fast. It takes every ounce of courage I possess to speak again: “In that case, I would beg a boon of you, great King.”
His brow tightens. “A boon?”
“Yes. If tomorrow is to be my last day in Mythanar, I prefer not to spend it alone in my room. I’ve seen so little of your city. I’d like an opportunity to see more before I am gone. So that I may at least have tales to tell around the winter fires of my own world in years to come.”
He stares down at me. “Captain Hael—” he begins.
“I should like you to show me.”
He stops. I hold his gaze hard, all my hope and longing in my eyes. I don’t know if he can see it in this dim light, don’t know if he can be moved to heed me. “Princess,” he begins.
I press on before he can finish. “We shall be out in public. In the city.”
His jaw works. His resolve wavers.
“Please,” I press gently. “When I return to my father, he will send me back to the convent. I don’t expect I shall ever leave it again. My life will be . . . very small. Narrow and confined. Give me this one boon. Give me this one last chance to truly see something of the worlds beyond my limited scope. Show it to me as you see it, as you love it.”
Vor’s head bows. He breathes a long sigh before lifting his brows and peering at me once more. “And this is your last request of me, Princess?”
“It is. If you grant it, I shall never ask another.”
He holds his tongue a moment. I’m caught in terrible suspense. Then, finally: “Very well. I shall meet you at lusterling and take you for a short excursion into the city. A short excursion, mind. Then you shall be returned to Hael’s keeping, there to remain until the time of your departure is at hand. Understood?”
My heart soars, but I take care to keep my tone level when I respond. “Completely.”
He nods. His lips part, and I think he’ll say something more. In the end, however, he simply inclines his head and touches one hand to his bare chest. “I bid you grakol-mir, Princess.”
I swallow. My fingers tighten around my upper arms. “Good night, great King.”
Without another word, he turns and hastens away, vanishing around the bend. And I stand where he leaves me until I hear the door to the stairwell shut.
