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“Not cruel, you say?” His hand slipped from my neck into my hair, fisting my strands until the roots ached. “Do you have any idea what it feels like to see his treasures on your wrist? The lips of myanoaleypressed to his?”
Probably the same way it had felt when he had kissed Lorn in front of me, almost as if a part of me had known then. “You didn’t seem to have an issue with the concept of sharing when you gave me to Sebian.”
“I don’t see much sharing being done here,” he hissed. “Did you let him fuck you, hmm? Are you writhing on his cock at night when you should be withme?”
“What hypocrisy, considering how Cici had come out of your chambers with her hair looking tousled, right before—”
“I never touched that woman.”
“Maybe you did, maybe you didn’t. But you sure as fuck dressed her inmywedding gown!” I shouted, not believing a word he said. “What I do with Sebian ismy choice.”
“The illusion of choice is a comforting lie that we succumb to while fate guides our every step. Trust me. I tried to avoid fate for years, only for it to end up in my arms.” He yanked on my hair until my head tilted back enough for him to lick from my collarbone to my earlobe, where he whispered, “I’m not sure if you have taken note, but my shadows are growing restless, and that’s never a good thing.” His lips lingered against my skin, his breath caressing my neck like a winter breeze until I shuddered. “Open your void for me. Let me siphon them into you.”
I clenched my eyes shut, focusing on the light blue and silver glimmer of a glass box standing in the center of blackness. I couldn’t let his shadows pour into me, turning me into a brainless, moaning thing like they had in the orchard.
“Does it anger you that I didn’t turn out to be a deathweaver?” I asked. “You have to be disappointed.”
“On the contrary, Galantia, I am utterlydelighted.”
“I don’t believe you for a second.”
“I don’t give a damn what you believe.” He nuzzled the side of my face on a trembling exhale that sent a spark of energy into my core. “Open your void. Let me in.”
“No,” I ground out. “I will ne—mmm…”
A rush of shadows seeped through my clothes and into me, like slick oil spreading on water. Dark tendrils prodded and probed at the edges of my focus, seeking cracks in the delicate material of my resolve. They pushed and pressed, testing the resilience of my mental barrier, chiseling hairline cracks into the glass of my core. One slip of focus and my void would gape open.
My entire body trembled, but I refused to succumb. I sucked in a lungful of air, sealing it behind my clenched lips.Do not absorb. Reject.
“So starved for my shadows,” Malyr crooned, and the darkness intensified, invading my senses with a force that felt like a physical blow. “Swallow them, little dove, until you are sated. Open up. Let me in. Take as much of me as you need.”
“Do not absorb,” I mumbled to myself, clinging to the fraying ends of my determination. “Reje—”
Malyr’s lips crashed onto mine with feverish intent, letting his tongue slip into my mouth. His kiss sent waves of pleasure radiating up my spine and around my body, igniting an insatiable fire in my core that blazed deep within me. My skin tingled and trembled with anticipation as the heat between my legs surged into an uncontrollable need.
Glass cracked.
I gasped.
“You are losing your impressive focus, little dove,” he rasped, stroking his hand between my legs, letting the fabric of my dress shift over my clit. “I just want to siphon into you.”
Something shifted inside me.
It was a tug—a wrenching sensation in my chest, much like the one in the orchard—as if someone had tied a rope around my heart and was attempting to yank the organ out. I whimpered, a hand instinctively clutching my chest. Was this… the bond?
Panic surged.
Summoning the last bits of my mental strength, I searched the deepest, darkest, most primal parts of my core.Shift,I commanded into it.We need to escape! Now!
A familiar tingle crept under my skin. In a blast of white shadows, we fluttered up and up, higher and higher toward that cone of light, leaving the darkness behind.
ChapterTwenty-One
Galantia
Present Day, Tidestone
We soared over the cerulean-frosted landscape, our wings beating against the biting breeze with the same desperation our little hearts beat beneath our feathers. Our sharp eyes scanned the vastness beneath us, diving toward the forest, where we weaved around trunks and thorny underbrush, only for a white burst of tingles to ruffle our feathers until—
