Page 78 of Veil of Night & Flames

His brother in his blood.

Cora at the other end with his brother.

The two of them tangled together in the Real, and the bond between him and Chase running thick and hot with the proof of it.

Adric closed his eyes and let himself revel in the sweet decadence of it.

He did not see them—the bond did not work in pictures. What it gave him was pure, delicious sensation. The claiming drive of his brother’s hips, coiling through him as if it had always been Adric’s hips. The catch of Cora’s breath, not heard, only felt. A tightening behind his chest every time she made a sound that only Chase got to hear. The heat of her skin as Chase ran his fingers over her bare body.

He was so damn hard already, and he undid his trousers, then slid his hand under the material to curl around his cock, then felt himself smiling at the irony, for he had not done this in his own bed in ages. Kali had been satisfying that urge almost since The Breaking. And, truth be told, the strangeness of satisfying his need by his own hand was almost as exquisite as the bond itself.

Almost.

He closed his eyes and reveled in the delicious wickedness of it. Sharing this with his brother across two realms. Stealing it. Receiving it. Knowing that Chase felt the echo of Adric’s arousal across the bond. It went both ways, after all, and Adric had no intention of being careful.

He thought about that as he worked himself. About Chase. About what his brother was feeling at the other end of the invisible bond connecting them. The intimacy of Cora under him and a king in his blood, whether he wanted him there or not.

About whether Chase would be furious. Or whether—in the dark privacy of his own pleasure—Chase might actually let himself enjoy it.

He hoped for the latter but knew better. Still, it would be a kindness to help his brother along. To let Chase feel every wave of Adric’s pleasure. Every facet of his pounding pulse.

His hips moved as he stroked his cock, and waves of want and need and a feral sort of claiming crashed over him. Somewhere in the Real, his brother was driving deep, deep, deeper still, and Adric was right there, his body answering every stroke with a wild, intense, growing heat that rose like a wave, hovering over him, threatening to crash. And when that wave finally crested, he made no effort to be quiet about it. And somewhere in the middle of it, he heard himself call her name even as he said a silent thank you to his brother.

Only after it had ebbed and left him in his chambers with his pulse still slowing, did Adric let himself name what he had just been given.

For an age, he had been alone in his own blood, and he had carried that aloneness so long he had ceased to know it was there, the way a man with a missing limb eventually stops dreaming of it.

He had organized his entire kingship around being alone, no longer tied to a brother who had no use for him. He had found solace in Kali’s arms, a thin bandage on a gushing wound. And all the while, he knew that what he was truly missing wasn’t sex, but the other half of himself.

It wasn’t the same, of course. Yet somehow, it was.

Somehow, the bond had awakened in him just as it had in Chase. And it was not lost on him that while Chase told himself that the bond was an intrusion he hated, Adric quite liked it.

More, he couldn’t help but be curious about how this intriguing new chapter in his life with his brother was going to play out.

If nothing else, it would be very, very interesting. Especially since Adric had felt enough to know that Chase didn’t hate it at all. What he hated was that he liked it.

He bit back an amused smile. His stalwart brother. Suffering for it, liking it. The very idea was delicious.

He crossed to the carafe and poured the wine, then stood at the window as those in his realm went on with their evening—the courtyards lit, the dragons calling from the stable, his subjects living their lives. Any one of them would surely feel violated by such a connection as their king had experienced, just as his brother undoubtedly felt.

Adric could put his magicians and scholars on the question. Undoubtedly, they could find a way to break the bond.

But he would not assign them thus.

He was going to leave it as it was, and he was going to receive whatever came through it for as long as it kept coming, and he was going to do so knowing exactly what it cost his brother.

Somewhere in the Real, Chase was asleep with the woman they both loved curled against his chest.

Adric could carry that. He had carried worse for less.

What he could not continue to carry was the silence he had felt since The Breaking. A silence he had brought upon himself, and yet could no longer bear.

Tonight, that silence had been broken, and he would not be the one to mend it.

Chapter

Twenty-Two