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“Look,” he whispered in her ear, half carrying her to the window. “That’s Vencia in our wake.”
The hill holding the city rose above the wall of the breakwater, the palace that had been her prison sitting atop, the bronze dome of Silas’s tower glinting in the dawn light. To be free of it seemed impossible, and part of her feared she’d awake to find herself back in her tiny room in the harem’s house, her escape only a dream.
“Are you all right?”
She tore her gaze from the city to look at Keris and found herself once again short of breath. Lifting her hand, she tucked a lock of his hair behind his ear, wondering how his eyes had ever inspired her hate. Wondering how she’d ever compared them to his father’s, for beyond the color, they werenothingalike. “Yes. Other than the fact I stink like corpse and have needed to piss for hours.”
He winced. “I’m sorry. I wish there’d been another way.”
“It was my idea, Keris,” she reminded him; then they both turned to stare at the body stuffed into the trunk, limbs bent at awkward angles from Keris forcing the man to fit. “Let’s dump him while it’s still dark.”
Working together, they hauled the man out of the trunk and over to the window. Zarrah opened it, air that smelled of brine and storm rushing over her, lightning crackling to the north over Ithicana. The ship rose over a large wave, then plummeted down, spray rising to mist her hair. More than enough noise to cover the sound of a body splashing into the water.
“Ready?” she whispered as the ship rose another wave. “Now!”
They heaved the man out the window, watching him strike the water right as the ship hit the dip between waves. The corpse disappeared beneath the foam.
“Serin will suspect.” Keris leaned on the windowsill, the muscles in his forearms bunching. “There’s no way around that.”
“He’s suspected for a long time but not had the proof he needed to convince your father.” She hesitated, then added, “I overheard them that night in the tower. Your father… he’s protecting you.”
“I don’t believe that. My father hates me.”
Was it better that he continue to believe that? Better for her to stop this conversation in its tracks than to open old wounds? It was tempting, but Keris had kept hard truths from her out of the desire to protect her. Truths that had subsequently been delivered to her by others with hate in their hearts. Truths that she’d rather have heard from him. “I don’t think he does. I think you frustrate him and piss him off, but… but you’re the only person who isn’t afraid to stand up to him, and he respects that.”
“That’s bullshit.” He scowled at the water. “I’m fucking terrified of him. Always have been.”
“But you still don’t bend to him.” She bit her bottom lip. “He believes you’re suppressing your true nature, but that there will come a point you’ll embrace it. That you’ll live up to your name and be the heir he wants you to be. That’s why he’s protecting you.”
Keris rounded on her, eyes full of anger as he snarled, “I willneverbe like him. I’ll put a knife in my own goddamned heart before I’lleverlive up to his expectations.”
A flicker of unease ran through Zarrah. Not because she believed Keris anything like his father, but because she sensed a thread of darkness ran through him. An inky stream that, if ever allowed to swell, might turn him into something far worse than Silas. Keris pressed his fingers to his temples, voice exhausted as he said, “I’m sorry. I can’t… I don’t want to talk about my family right now. For a moment, I just need to feel far away from them.”
Her chest tightened. This wasn’t how she imagined her first breaths of freedom would be while trapped in that cursed trunk with a corpse. In her mind’s eye, she’d seen herself in his arms. Felt his mouth pressed against hers, his hands on her body. Wanted to lose herself in him in a way that had been so long denied.
A tear rolled down her cheek, and Zarrah brushed it away angrily. She used the facilities before retrieving a pitcher of water to scrub away smeared cosmetics, blood, and sweat from her body, the mirror revealing a bruised and swollen cheek where Silas had struck her. Her body also bore scrapes and bruises from the battle. From her fight with Serin’s lackey. All evidence of what she’d endured to get here, yet the pain of them was nothing compared to that in her heart.
Donning one of Keris’s shirts that she’d taken from a trunk, she picked up her ruined gown and went to the window where he stood, then tossed the garment into the surf. The jewels she wore swiftly followed, a hint of relief filling her. Not because she’d disliked the garments Coralyn had chosen, but because being forced to wear them had been as much a form of control as the bars and shackles.
Keris abruptly turned, one arm wrapping around her body and hauling her against him, the other braced against the wall as the ship rose and plunged. She wrapped her arms around his neck, resting her cheek against his, feeling the dampness of sea spray.
“Coralyn was right.” His breath brushed her ear, sending a tickle of sensation through her that made her shiver. Made her ache. “I do want to remake the world so that I can be with you. So that I can get down on my knees and ask you to be my wife. So that I can put a crown on your head and make you my queen. So I can build a shrine and worship you as my goddess. I want all of these things, yet I face a future withnoneof them, and I don’t know whether I want to fall on my own blade or burn everything to ash because I do not want to let you go.”
An impossible future, and yet his words made her blood sing even as the visions he painted flitted across her mind, twin to the forbidden dreams she’d had in the darkest hours of the nights. Dreams that had driven her fingers between her legs in search of release, but when the waves of pleasure had faded, had left her with only grief, because they could not be. Not unless both of them abandoned everything. “You have me now.” She tangled her fingers in his hair.
“It’s not enough.” His hand slid down her back, curving over her ass and jerking her closer. “A lifetime wouldn’t be enough. Eternity wouldn’t be enough. Not when I want to map every star in the sky with you in my arms.”
For a heartbeat, Zarrah felt like she couldn’t breathe as the weight of what it would be like to lose him hit her with full force, driving the air from her chest. Making her eyes sting. To live a lifetime without his voice in her ears, to never again feel his touch or taste his lips…
Tears threatened. And not just tears, but great heaving sobs that would tear her chest apart. Except she didn’t want to spend any of this precious moment grieving. “This is the time we have. And I forbid you to squander it, Keris Veliant.”
He didn’t speak, the only sounds the grumble of distant thunder and crash of the ship breaking through the rough surf. His head turned, their lips so close they shared the same breath. “There is nothing I wouldn’t give you,” he said softly. “Nothing I wouldn’t do for you.”
Her skin was ablaze, every brush of the mist-soaked breeze sending shivers across her body, her thighs already slick. “There is only one thing I want from you right now. Only one thing I need.”
Keris’s lips met hers, and rational thought departed.
Whether it was weeks of being denied his touch or his touch itself, Zarrah wasn’t certain, but the taste of him on her tongue unleashed a wildness she hadn’t known herself capable of. Like a feral creature, she tilted her face, consuming him as surely as he consumed her.
