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Clean rain,a touch of leather and salt, soothed my heart. I nuzzled the warmth of his skin, drawing in a long, greedy breath.
Gods, there was nothing so euphoric as lying beside the naked body of the Ever King. His laughter, deep and rough, rumbled from his chest when my foot threaded around his calf, like a needle pulling thread, and tugging it closer.
“You’ll break your toes if you keep doing that, love.”
“Then stop trying to sleep with such distance between us.”
“Distance.” Erik laughed again and rolled onto his shoulder, his weight sliding me across our bed, until my chest was smashed against his. The shock of his crimson eyes sent my pulse fluttering. His callused fingertips traced my jaw, as though restoring a memory of every line, every curve. “I am as close as I can be without being inside you.”
“Ah, but that is the trouble here, Serpent.” I brushed my lips across his throat. Heat pooled in between my thighs when Erik palmed my ass, rolling me on top of his strong body. “Why are you not inside me?”
He brushed my hair off my brow, tucking it behind my ears. “Gods, you’re beautiful.”
There was a broken edge to his voice, like a shard of glass. Through the shattered pieces, something dark and dreary pounded in my head. A distant memory, breaking through my beautiful illusion.
This wasn’t real.
“Find me, Erik,” I whispered.
“I am trying, love.” His palms slid down my spine, touching each divot, until they came to rest on my thighs, straddled over his waist. “Tell me, at least, this moment means you are safe. For now.”
I closed my eyes, afraid I would destroy the peace, yet desperate to recall what was going on around me. “I am hidden.”
Erik’s fingers glided along my inner thighs, close to the heat of my center, but like a damn villain, he’d pull his hands back before he touched. By the bleeding grin on his mouth, he knew exactly what he was doing. “You’re so flushed, Songbird.”
He was a villain, but I knew how to bring a villain to his knees. I reached between my legs and wrapped my fingers around his swollen cock.
Erik drew in a sharp breath. “Woman.”
“Yes?” I stroked my hand up the shaft, grinning. It felt so real, so close.
Erik removed his hands from my legs, pressing his palms to his face, and groaned as his hips slowly started to buck against my touch. After a moment, he let out a rough sound, a sort of growl, and gently urged my palm off his length.
Erik pressed my fingertips to his lips. “I cannot hear you.”
“Nor can I.” I knew what he meant. Wherever reality lived, back there we were notthis. Not close. Torn.
“I know how to find you, Songbird, and I will.”
Call it the dream, where rules of understanding did not apply like they did in the waking world, or perhaps it was a bit of fate pulling us together in this moment, but I spoke without thinking. As thoughsomewhere, deep in my mind, I knew what he was doing. As though I could still hear him through remnants of our broken bond.
“Aim for the heart, Erik.” I pressed a palm over his scarred chest. Beautiful lines of his strength, his resilience. I kissed several before lifting my gaze. “You’ll find me in the heart.”
Bleak dawn greeted me when my eyes fluttered open. The space beside me was not the warm silk of our bed at the palace. Only dried leaves, damp twigs, and cold soil remained. Erik had never been there.
I rolled onto my side, running my palm over the place I wished he’d be, and let a steaming tear land on a brown leaf. There, the dagger and knife from Gavyn were still hidden in brambles.
After I’d fled from the beach, I’d found refuge in a natural bower of trees, but this was not the same structure I’d claimed last night. Now, the branches were bowed in a dome around me.
I’d built something similar as a girl. Alek and I would set up our war camps in the wood behind my family’s castle, playing Rave heroes, and I’d crafted us quite an impressive forest longhouse once.
Over the turns, Mira, Jonas, and Sander, the lot of us, added touches to it—a leather pelt for a door, windows with clay edges, even a table and sleeping mats to rest our weary warrior heads.
I gaped at the arched branches now, then my palms, studying each finger like they were new to my hand. Had my fury commanded Natthaven? Heat from fury magic dripped beneath my skin. Whispers, imagined or real, breathed into my lungs—you are the Ever Queen.
I was not powerless, no matter how Larsson and Fione tried to make it seem.
With my king, we’d cleared knolls and townships, rocky vales and deep ravines of blight when not even the Lady of Witches could find a cure. I was born of warriors, a daughter of earth fury, and I was not powerless.
