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The lion inside her won out, roaring for more. Hungry to devour the rest of the realm.
She pushed back, allowing herself to look at Taristan fully. His face was clean-shaven, his dark red hair combed back. But for the gash across his cheekbone, he could pass for a pampered, handsome prince.
Taristan stared back, studying her with the same intense scrutiny. Grinning, he slipped a hand into the jeweled belt around her waist, using it to drag her closer again.
“I feared the worst,” Erida said, raising her chin to stare up at him.
Taristan quirked his brow. “Death?”
The Queen shrugged, a smile tugging at her lips. “Oh, I don’t worry about that. Not with you.”
Her consort was a man of few words, even alone with his wife. He fell into his usual silence, stone-faced. Once, she thought it a wall between them. Now Erida saw it for what it was.
An invitation.
She pressed closer. The heat of him radiated, even through her armor and silk.
“I thought you may have,” she said, her breath catching. To her annoyance, she felt herself flush. “Forgotten me.”
Above her, Taristan made a harsh sound deep in his throat. He leaned until their foreheads nearly touched, his black eyes voids to swallow her whole. Erida wondered what she would find if she tipped forward into such an abyss.
Is there only darkness? Or is What Waits somewhere in the deep, a red presence hidden in shadow, waiting to rise to the surface?
Let me in. Let me in, she remembered.Does he hear it too?
“You are Queen of Four Kingdoms,” Taristan muttered. Court life had not changed his blunt manner. “The lowest beggar in the street knows your name.”
Erida pursed her mouth and held her ground, unmoving. Taristan towered over her but she felt just as tall, the might of four crowns like steel up her spine.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know,” he answered, so softly she almost missed it.
Then he closed the final distance between them, his lips pressing firmly to her own. Where his eyes were an abyss, empty and impossible to read, his lips were an inferno, impossible to misunderstand. They burned over her, trailing from her mouth to the corner of her jaw and back again. She welcomed them gladly, her own mouth parting, her fingers suddenlyin his hair, her nails scraping along his scalp. He gasped into her and she grinned, a lip in her teeth.
Then the red sheen flared deep in the black, a bolt of lightning in an otherwise empty sky. She saw What Waits swim to the surface of Taristan’s mind. It was only a small reminder and Erida took it in stride. She had not opened her own mind to the Torn King, but He stayed all the same. She knew He waited, pawing at the door, a wolf howling to be welcomed in.
What Waits could wait a little longer, as could all else.
Her fingers trailed across Taristan’s cheek, running down to cup his jaw. Again, she eyed the gash across his face, marring otherwise handsome skin.
Erida touched the cut gently, tracing it with her finger. His skin flamed beneath her own. He didn’t flinch but his eyes hardened, all black again. What Waits disappeared, diving back into the depths. For now.
She remembered the cuts Corayne left on Taristan’s face last time. Three ragged lines, little more than a scratch. They healed, but not so quickly as they should have for someone like Taristan.Some kind of magic, he told her then.
This wound was worse, scabbing over in a dark line.
“Was this Corayne?” she asked, searching his eyes.
Gently, he pulled her hand away. He shifted, putting some inches between them. Erida shivered at the loss of his warmth.
“Corayne and her witch,” he answered. A rare flush spotted high on his cheeks.
Erida furrowed her brow. She saw shame in Taristan, as much as he tried to hide it.
“And what else?”
His white throat bobbed over his collar, pale veins webbing beneath the surface. She noticed a patch of red skin, raw and shining. Like aburn.
