For three daysI carefully collected the Underfae’s venom. She had less to give after the first extraction, and though I fed her my blood each time, her feral nature continued—slashing and biting through the air every time I met her in the abandoned room.
The Beast was calm, only roaming a few hours each night while I slept in Arthur’s bed. He’d slip back in and I’d turn, feigning fitful sleep to reach for him. I was awake the entire time he was gone, and though I never said it, I yearned for the heat of his body next to mine. We’d wake tangled together, my head resting on his chest, his arms wrapped around me. We’d become two people forced together, but choosing each other’s company anyway.
Damn this curse.
Damn the both of them.
In the early morning of the fourth day, I lifted my head, resting my chin on his chest, watching him sleep. Arthur had become a friend in the six weeks I’d known him, and I didn’t want that to be the end of us… or what we could be together.
Tonight, we planned for my escape from the curse and thoughts tempted me. Dark ones, salacious ones, soft ones. I would bet all the marks in the Brackish Wood that this mancould see to them all, but time was not meant to be manipulated in the lives of those cursed by the Veil.
We had either too much.
Or too little.
And as I stroked Arthur’s brow in a light caress, some part of me begged to stay. In all my six centuries of life, I’d spent little of them living for what I wanted.
My children, my people, my title, my crown—all had come first, leaving me a flame doused in the liquid chill of power that came with a price when it was thrust upon me at such a young age.
I had a list of moments where I wished I had the power to stop time from turning. I brushed a finger over Arthur’s soft mouth, adding this one to it.
His lips parted as he stirred, and I pulled myself closer, easing my mouth softly over his, brushing over his lips in a ghost of a kiss. His eyes fluttered open, blinking in soft confusion that spun to realization. Sinking his fingers through my hair, he pulled me to him, our mouths meeting in something desperate, something hungry.
He sat up, taking me with him, pulling me into his lap without breaking our kiss, and that lighted spark within me flared, shimmered—proved itself capable of climbing to flame with the caress of him to fuel it.
My hands dug through his hair, which had grown longer in the weeks since I’d arrived. My body raked against his lap, building in pressure for what I wanted—what both of us needed from each other that we’d denied ourselves in this curse.
The most beautiful pair of hands gripped my thighs, roaming to my backside while pulling me in. I met my turning point, deciding then which direction to go.
“I’m leaving you tonight,” I whispered between our lips. “If I do not go now, I fear the excuses I’ll make to stay.”
He pulled away, sweeping his hands along my neck to cup my face. “I understand. They need you more than I do.”
I peered into his steel blue eyes, knowing his response for the lie it was. I covered his hands with my own. “One more extraction and we’ll have enough.”
His lips met mine again, soft and wanting. “Go,” he whispered. “Before I beg you for more.”
On a sharp inhale, I kissed him again, pulling myself out of his grasp and from his lap. I pulled on my silk robe and left his rooms, refusing to look back.
I’d see him tonight.
We’d planned everything with Piffle.
And as I passed the staircase leading to the lands of winter, I did look back, knowing I’d see him at his doorway, watching the Goddess he’d been infatuated with for years plan her final escape from his grasp.
CHAPTER 34
Arthur
“I look foolish,”I grumbled, adjusting the collar of my jacket. Black beads shimmered through the lapel in an ensemble Piff had shoved me into after a long bath that did nothing to quell my unease.
My stomach crawled up my throat, my heart shredding with each passing minute, well aware of what waited for me this night.
Where once I’d been a miserable soul, living each day like the last for thirteen years, now my future held nothing but gray days and memories ofher. Where once Reshina had been a distant light, something to hope upon and never grasp, merely written on a page, I now knew her lips, her smile, her way of weaving her authority and power into her words, never demanding much, knowing she’d always get it, so why bother?
Now, I knew what it was to fall.
And right at the point of this realization, she’d be leaving me. For good.
