Page 430 of Commanding Scythe and Sky

Encircled.

Surrounded by this man—his strength, his magic, his musk, the tantalizing feel of him as his tongue invaded my mouth, forcing me to take what he was giving as his hands roamed. Pleasure had always been my safe space—my escape from the weight of the world. The high I used to numb the more unpleasant pieces of life. But there had been no pleasure in these walls—no escape from the hell within.

My fingers slid into his thick hair right as he wrapped my braid around a fist, pulling me to the side.

Adrastos swooped down to lick up the line of my throat with a growled, “Fuck.” His lips came down harder, more forceful, like he couldn’t deny the part of his nature that demanded he conquer. And I hated how desperately I needed it.

Needed him.

To feel again.

“You are precious,” he panted into my mouth as his hand inched up until his thumb brushed the underside of my breast.

Pleasure rippled, swallowing the distant sting of my back, but his words stuck like an axe into solid wood. Reverberated.

Precious.

He’d saved me because I was precious?

Faster than a bucket of ice water, the reality of what I was doing—what I almost let myself do—slammed through me.

The agony of letting him go, forcing Mags toward him, watching them together, his hands on her skin, every moment after I’d seen him in that club slammed through me, right down to the moment he’d trussed me up like a prized bird in front of his people, mocking me. Humiliating me.

This man had been part of the war band that hunted me and my mother—part of why we moved from place to place until Reyna put us up in what I now realized was her safe house.

The safe house that didn’t keep us safe.

He was why she’d been taken from me.

Slaughtered.

Humiliated in death.

Anger, white-hot and vicious, sluiced through my veins, and I bit down—hard. Hard enough to draw blood as he yanked away from me.

Tears scalded down my cheeks, my breath turning ragged as an animalistic cry flew from my lips. My hand flew to cover them.

Adrastos straightened, panting for breath, a shadow of pain flickering in his eyes as he stared down at me. His pupils shrank as his swollen lips fell open, chest heaving.

“Blythe.” It was a prayer, mangled and desperate.

“Get away from me!” I sobbed—the sound somewhere between a human cry and an animal scream, power slamming out of me with enough force to make him sway.

“Blythe—”

The flat of my palm cracked across his face with so much fury that his head snapped sideways. A muscle in his jaw feathered. When he lifted his hand to his mouth, his fingers came away bloodied, eyes sparking as they landed on my face.

His mouth still parted as he tried to catch his breath, and he nodded curtly, shifting through the shadows and reappearing across the room, his back against his countless books, hands gripping a shelf so tightly his knuckles bleached white. “Blythe, I⁠—”

He shook his head, staring out the window as I scrambled to right myself on his bed, tugging his comforter with me.

What the fuck had I just done? Had we just done?

“You should’ve done everyone a favor and finished it.” Guilt soured my stomach as I watched his eyes grow distant. “Forgive me.”

And then he was gone.

Magnolia