Page 138

“At the Night Market! I was trying to get away from Rictus, and you tackled me like the asshole you are!” I spit up at him.

“Good. And how was Sóna Mac Raith collected?”

“I don’t even know what that means!”

His hand squeezed tight, and he leaned forward to whisper in my ear. “How was she tricked into coming to Magh Meall?”

“I answered a stupid fucking job ad. Should have known it was bogus, but I had just lost my job again.”

His grip lessened, and blood rushed to my head, hot and wild, making me dizzy. “What are you to me?”

I wanted to say I didn’t know. I opened my mouth to spit those words back at him, and my tongue burned like I was licking lollipops made of razors. Pain welled up all along my mouth and bit down my throat as blood began to pool at the ridge of my tonsils.

He grinned maniacally, reminding me of a hyena. “Welcome to the chambers of Senán. God of suffering, mourning, hidden things, grief, and most importantly, deception. Try all you wish to lie to me here. Every time you do, the curse upon this room will slice at your tongue.”

His gloved free hand pushed a stray hair from my face and caressed the heated mark on my cheek as I swallowed the blood. “I paid a king’s horde of stable magic to have access to this room and have no questions asked of me, little bug.”

“Why bother? You could have just fucking asked me.”

“You have lied so many sweet little whispers to me since you came here. They’ve all woven such a pretty little tapestry and kept me warm in the nights. Haven’t you?”

I glared at him. I didn’t bother to deny it. I’d told half-truths and avoided so many of his questions.

“What was it? Rule number five?” His thumb pressed into the tender flesh of my brutalized cheek.

“Fuck! Yes. Five. Lying is only bad if the person you’re lying to is a good person.”

“And I am not a good person, am I, little bug?”

“Stop calling me that,” I hissed, struggling under his weight to try and get free. “No, you’re not.”

He squeezed, darkness encroaching on the edges of my vision as he leaned forward on his hand, his significant weight pressing my head and neck into the bed. “I am the worst of us all, little bug. I have told you this over and over. I have warned you repeatedly that I am not a sweet man. Not like Silvertree. Not in the least bit. And yet you keep flying closer and closer to me. Why?”

His hand released, air and blood rushing into the void. My head spun like a top, and I couldn’t see straight. Everything in me wanted to fight him, to fight the magic of this room, but that warm pit within me squirmed up and wriggled into my tongue.

“You know why.”

Okay, tongue. Sure, care to share with the fucking class because I don’t know why!

He tilted his head, his eyes narrowing on me as he watched me like the little bug I was, pinned under him.

In the absence of his next question, I pushed him back. “Why can’t you leave me alone?”

The dark-green grove of his eyes sparkled with mania in the pale light that filled the room, and he leaned forward again, this time not pressing in on his gloved hand.

His lips were dangerously close to mine. I could feel his breath teasing at the seam of my lips, and when he spoke, the thunder of his voice vibrated them with a dangerous promise. “Because I can’t get you off my mind. Every day, all day, all I think about is you. All I want is you. I feel your absence like a blade in my stomach. I feel your heart like it were my own beating in my chest.”

“That sounds like a problem,” I whispered back to him as my heart began slamming in my chest.

Our eyes connected, and he held me in his sway. I fell into the depths and found myself swimming in the sea of green moss, naked and bathing in the light of his warm dawn.

“It’s only a problem because I didn’t account for it.” He shifted, freeing one of my hands as his knee moved over my thigh and pushed it wide to account for his hips “It’s only a problem because you make it so fucking hard to think when you’re not next to me.”

“You should think less.”

I didn’t think, didn’t consider that, the last time I touched him, he had pulled away. I was lost in the swaying of an old growth forest, leaning up to capture his lips with my own.

Fireworks lit and sizzled where our flesh connected. Our breaths tangled together, and his mouth opened, mine following his lead as he deepened the kiss. Our tongues danced together in perfect harmony as the sun of a new dawn crested over a sea of thousands of stars glittering in its golden rays.