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She snickered, her pussy tightening around me as she did so. “Who’s begging now?”

“Fuck, woman! You’re killing me!” I hissed against her shoulder.

She pressed a kiss to my lips and finally slid all the way down my throbbing length and seated me deep within her. Pleasure burst across every synapse and misfired in my brain. My body rattled from head to toe with a groan echoing in her own chest as she held onto me shaking. We stayed perfectly still, panting breathlessly into each other’s skin, just enjoying the way the other felt.

“You’re lucky I’m not into corpses,” she finally whispered and pressed a gentle kiss to my shoulder.

“So, you’re saying you’re into me?” I asked mirroring her strange sentence, grinning into the weight of her hair as I drew in her scent.

“Don’t push your luck.”

I pulled back from her and captured her chin, letting our eyes connect so I could watch that sheltered tenderness peek its head out. “I was the luckiest Fae ever born the day I met you. Every single day since has been pushing my luck.”

She said nothing, just watched the sincerity in my eyes. I hoped she could see the way my green eyes shifted with the truth of it. I wished I could see the brilliant blue-green of her eyes transform with this moment. Instead, she was cast in pale greys and blacks with the slightest hint of milky color for a moment that I would remember for the rest of eternity.

Her hips moved in a slow, torturous rock, shifting me within the tight confines of her body as we made love.

I let her take the lead for the first round. Let her test her body against mine. Let her hands roam where they wanted, chest to chest, heart to heart. But by the time we finally collapsed into the broken beams of the sagging bed we were both covered in bruises, bites, scratches and a thin film of each other’s sweat. I lost count of how many times I had to cover her mouth from screaming my true name to the entire inn as she came undone for me. Or how many times I roared for her.

In the end, when we were both too exhausted to move, I gathered her into my arms and tucked her safely against me, encircling her within the protective wall of my flesh as I toyed with her hair. A comfortable silence fell over us as she closed her eyes and rested her head with my bicep as a pillow.

Her finger traced the hair covering lines of my tattoos. Circling each one as her nail followed the looping knots of them, drawing pebbled skin in her wake. When she got bored of the tattoos, she moved on to the many scars that cut a network maze across my skin.

“What do they mean?” she asked finally, returning to tracing my tattoos, this time focusing on the swan.

“Must they mean anything?” I asked dodging her question. I didn’t want to think of my shame with her in my arms. I didn’t want to think of how I had received them or why they would matter to her. I didn’t want to think of the way I had destroyed everything I had held sacred. Not in this moment. I didn’t want the same disgust at my actions she had showed in the bathing chamber when I had first revealed my shame to her, to stain this moment I had stolen and certainly did not deserve.

“When humans get tattoos, they usually mean something to them. I haven’t seen any other Fae with tattoos except you,” she murmured, her eyes never flicking back to my face, locked onto the journey of her fingertip with distracted attention.

“Most Fae have tattoos but they hide them.” I took a deep breath, forcing her to turn to look up at me expectantly. “Tattoos are usually magical in nature, oaths sometimes, litanies of fealty to their god or court. Lovers’ marks. Deeply personal to each Fae—though, no one can really use them against each other like a true name—but they are still something most Fae would find worth the magical vanity to hide.”

“But you don’t?” It was an innocent enough question, naive of the reason why I might not be able to use magic to hide them on my skin. Nor why I had taken great pains to hide them under my clothing within the confines of the palace.

“No. I cannot.”

Her brows knit together in easy confusion, and I answered the obvious question before she asked it. “These tattoos are not placed on my skin by choice. These are punishment for my crimes, little bug. Forced upon me as payment for the offenses I have told you about. This one—” I wrapped my hand around hers and guided her fingertip to the beheaded falcon. “—cut me off from the power the throne of Árus Láigh granted me. This one—” I moved her to the shattered mountain. “—proclaims the Court of Árus Láigh a corrupt court destroyed for its infamy and turpitude, never to be made whole again by command of the Ard Rí. This one—” I moved her finger to the hammer. “—declares me as an outcast warrior bereft of honor and chivalry, robbed of his weapon. A disgrace and humiliation that prevents me from honorably championing any cause, court, or Fae. To do so would sully their reputation more than whatever manner of accusation already had. This one . . .” I paused, steeling myself against the swan which represented my crime against the House of Magic.

I had schooled my features when reciting the liturgy of my cravenness. I did not let the complex poison of rage and betrayal, nor the depth of the wound each had ripped open within me show on my face. But this one was a fight too fevered and raw.

Every time I had mentioned this to her it ate away at me. I deserved all of these tattoos, and more, but some how this one was the one that I felt the most repulsion for. “This one is the broken swan. It is the symbol of the ultimate crime in Fae society, a crime against magic itself. It is my punishment for the atrocities I committed at the House of Magic. It declares that all my allies, all of my family, and all of my court must be killed. It declares me as the lowest creature to walk the realm, and that any crime against me could not be punishable by our laws, only the law I make with my own hands. It binds my magic, keeping me weak in my connection to magic, and declares that should I die, I will be committed to the Tears of Odharnait, so my magic does not return to the Well and corrupt it. They are why, little bug, I am not my own Fae. When you asked me why I went back to the Ard Rí after the war, after my imprisonment, it was because of these. Because at least in the palace with the enemy I knew, I could slowly rebuild. Out in the wilds, away from his protection, I would not have lived long enough to meet you.”

I did not mention that the sniveling worm that survived in my flesh after the war held some scrap of hope that the love that he had lost to his cravenness might redeem him. I did not mention that even as Daróg tortured me, imprisoned me, and murdered everything I loved, the love I held for him kept me at his side until it was murdered. I had deserved my punishment for all this and more, but my family—my court—they had not.

Daróg and I murdered that love together.

I thought she would have pushed me away, knowing the full extent of each tattoo’s meaning. She knew my shame of course, but she didn’t truly know what it meant. She would have formed her own opinions after I told her that day in my bathing chamber, but she could not have known the depths of my transgression. She did now but her reaction to it was not what I expected. Instead of doing anything a sane person would do, she merely continued tracing the bent and broken black swan, growing very quiet and pensive.

I expected our argument to resurface. Expected her to push for the reason why I had done what I did. Expected her to once again try to weedle culpability away from me by blaming Daróg. After all, had I not spent decades doing the same? In the end, I could not explain my actions, I had been forced to accept that I was young and stupid beyond measure, madly in love with a madman. I had to accept that some battle-crazed part of me had read the command and decided to destroy everything.

Silence stretched out between us as I let her absorb the evidence of my tainted past. Eventually she lay her head on my chest, her hand still pressed to the swan.

“You know, when you came back from the deep dark, I would have filled rivers with blood and shot the stars from the sky just to hold you like this,” I murmured, stroking her hair.

“Why didn’t you?” She didn’t even bother to open her eyes to ask.

“I should have told you this a long time ago, little bug. I knew who you were to me back at the Market. The moment my skin touched yours, I knew. I felt my magic pouring into you. I didn’t say anything because I was scared a human wouldn’t be able to accept that a Fae was her soulmate.” I pressed another kiss to the top of her head as her eyes slowly opened to stare into the night-shrouded blackness of the room.

“Is that why you never touched me? Because you were worried about your magic?” Her voice was soft, scratched to shreds on her pleasure.