“Fucking hells.”
My nostrils flare, the world narrowing into angles of attack, momentum, and instinct. Light illuminates the bedroom, piercing hot, and her shadow daggers flicker out of view. She misses her next attack, her blade disintegrating inches from my cheek.
Moving twice as far as before, I catch her right arm, pivot hard, and slam her against the wall. She cries out as I shackle both wrists above her head and pin her front to the tapestry, while her back faces me. I brace my knee between her legs to prevent her from kicking or escaping.
My muscles strain to hold her captive. “Enough! I don’t want to hurt you—but I will.”
She cranes her neck to look at me through her thick black lashes, and delight spreads across her face. “Then hurt megood.”
A bad bruise splits her bottom lip, and she licks the blood clean.
My light melts the blue freckles on her brown skin as she arches off the wall, flattening her chest to the tapestry to reach further back with her ass.
I let out a surprised groan when her naked backside makes contact with the tent in my pants, that part of my anatomy clearly not as appalled as I am by the turn the night has taken.
“There you are,” she purrs. “I take it back. You haven’t changed at all.”
A wave of nausea slithers through my belly.
I release her immediately, stumbling backward, and stare down at my hands while blood continues to slide down my bare chest. For one awful second, I can almost feel another version of myself standing beneath my skin, larger than me, colder than me, someone capable of hurting his lover on purpose.
Someone Iris expects to find again.
“I’m not him,” I say, though I’m no longer sure whether I’m trying to convince her or myself.
Then I flee.
I run because every second I stay in that room brings me closer to my past self. The bastard is catching up to me, and I can’t shake the intuition that, sooner or later, there won’t be enough of me left to stop him.
Chapter 43
Secret Passage
MAX
Mirrors line the throne room from floor to ceiling, turning one chamber into a hundred. The round pillars, the curves of the staircases, the glass enclosure hanging overhead. Everything is the same as it was this afternoon.
My feet are so, so cold, and I look down. A thin coat of frost peels off the marble as I circle the very scene I stumbled upon earlier, except this time, I’m no hidden voyeur on the mezzanine. I’m on the raised pedestal, close enough to touch the throne, close enough to hear every moan and count the beauty marks on Iris’s neck.
My past self stares down from above with wide, horrified eyes, and I see the exact moment she realizes the King of Light was the man who flew into my mother’s bedroom, and why he looked so much like E.
Ethan and Iris are still…I’m not sure “making love” applies here, but they’re certainly having sex.
Iris is bent over the throne, her head thrown back, her dark hair spilling over the gilded armrest as the King of Light takeswhat he wants from her. His white wings stretch behind him, more for show than from any need to fly, his hands wrapped possessively around her hips.
I’m forced to witness their coupling again, the arch of Iris’s spine, the parting of her lips, the moment her face tightens in ecstasy.
Every mirror offers a new scandalous angle, another stolen glimpse. No matter where I turn, the dream wants me to witness it all again. Every breathless sound Iris makes ricochets off polished glass until it feels like I’m trapped inside the act with them.
I can’t even close my eyes.
The scene continues in a series of satisfied grunts and dirty praise from the King of Light until the mirrors begin to frost over.
Another Iris appears in the glass, and I freeze. This new Iris is bent over the throne, too, but she’s not merely a reflection. A completely different scene is playing out beyond the glass.
There, Iris is crying. Sobbing, really.
Her hair hangs in wild, tangled ropes around her face.
