I whip my head forward with the strike of rapture, and Vicious breaks apart around me, milking me as I sink my teeth into her neck. Her flesh bursts, and the smooth, velvety taste of her lifeblood cracks what’s left of my composure.
I spill into her, planting my seed so deep inside her body I picture it taking root, entwining us until the end of time.
My own savage, unbuffered burst of sun and sea …
Mine.
Hands cushioning my head, body stretched across the ground, I’m lulled by the fronds of grass painting secrets on my cheeks. By the warm, dappled sunlight that drips upon my face, breeze rustling through the peach tree arched overhead, jostling leaves and making the branches creak.
My belly is heavy, hands and lips and chin sticky with peach juice, eyes shielded by the rim of my cap as I dream of a life where I could stay out here forever. Disappear and let everything else just …fall away.
An aching niggle between my legs pulls my mind from the clouds, a thread of dread stitching through my chest with thoughts of what I did today. That rebellious, beautiful,hideousthing.
It was right. I know it was.
I owed it to myself—to ease some of that suffocating pressure and give myself some room to breathe.
Even so, the aftermath threatens to swallow me down a cleft in the soil.
I stuff the thought aside as Gael groans beside me, and I sense her stretching out her limbs, peeling my eyes open in time to see her sit up.
I tip my hat, heart sinking. “Time to go?”
Golden coils of hair blow across her face as she twists, squinting at the sun that ignites the blue bursts around her pupils. “We have another hour before the light starts to fade and the Irilak get brave enough to creep close, but I think we should probably go soon. By the time we get back to my house, the guards will be getting antsy. I’m going to wash my hands in the brook just over the hill. Be right back.” She pushes to her feet and slowly wanders up the rise, dropping out of view.
I let my eyes sweep shut again, toes stretching, mind drifting, chasing some sounds and dismissing others. Feeling a cold, incorporeal pressure scribble across the pads of my feet, my eyes snap open, heart flipping a beat as I edge onto my elbows, looking down the spine of the gully and into the thick tuft of jungle that plugs the far end.
It doesn’t take me long to see them shading the deeper pockets of shadow in messy clusters that float and sway and pulse and flutter.
The corner of my mouth turns up.
Irilak.
Too many to count—big and small, tall and round. Some have their bleached faces exposed, beady eyes pinned on me. Others watch from beneath their vapor veil, peeking out from behind tree trunks and steel-blue shrubs.
“I’m going to have to catch some mice …”
A muffled scream comes to me on a shove of wind that hits the side of my face. My head whips to the right, stare lashing in the direction she went. “Gael?”
Seconds drip by as I push into a seated position, ears straining, dissecting every sound …
Another muffled scream—sharper this time.
A spear of icy panic impales me.
I’m on my feet, legs churning, hand weaving up beneath my shirt and gripping the hilt of my blade, ripping it free before I even have time to think. I rise over the hill, looking out across the clearing caught in the curl of a rushing brook, dominated by a large tree that shades three men I don’t recognize.
They’re wiry, dressed in patchwork clothes, faces knotted with rabid rage that spits from their twisted lips as they kick at a gagged and bound figure on the ground, swathed in a shimmer of gold.
Gael.
Crouching beside her, one of the men tries to maneuver a sack over her head, and she kicks and bucks, her muffled screams battering the air.
I plunge into that cold, dead place deep inside that drops my heart in an icy lake, sprinting across the clearing like an arrow shot to kill. Lips peeling back, a snarl rips free, my hat flying off my head as I spear toward the man who has a fistful of Gael’s dress, catapulting through the air—landing a kick to the back of his head that drops him like a bag of bricks.
I hit the ground hard and roll through the grass, hair unraveling, stabbing my blade into the soil and grinding to a crouching halt. I flick my head up, seeing him twist into a groaning knot of muscle and sinew.
The other two run at me, belting brutal words.
