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And then my prince was on his knees before me. Hands fell onto my shoulders and I flinched, yet it wasn’t smoke I smelled, but saffron. And oranges and warmth and comfort andRen.
“Mi corazón,” Ren whispered, pulling me into his arms, and I let him, not caring that Ren was wet with hot blood and tasted like metal because that meant we were safe and Kolya was fuckingdead.
He held me without uttering another word, rocking us both gently.
As control over my own body steadily returned to me, I clutched back at him with a grip hard enough to bruise, and Ren didn’t say anything about that, either.
*
Chapter Eighteen
The cold, once so bitterly hateful, was now a balm to the red-hot rage blistering through my veins. I wanted to tear the whole Blessed continent to the ground for what it had allowed to happen, the heavens and my god along with it.
Because for that monster to have…
As much as I liked to claim otherwise, Mathias was never dull when he was scowling or sulking. He always had a hidden spark which danced in his gaze, one which flared even more fiercely when provoked or teased, and I delighted in drawing it to the surface.
But Kolya Panarin had dared to steal that spark.
The expression Mat wore now was not his usual grumpy countenance. For that would have required emotion, and the man slumped on the ground beside me had none. Just an empty, cold stare as the night passed in silence around us, his eyes not leaving the cooling corpse as if committing the sight to memory.
Every now and then Mathias twitched, his lips peeling back from his bloodied, bared teeth in reluctant confession of his discomfort, and I could see the way his hands balled into fists as he tried to resist the lingering stimulation of Panarin’s Touch on his body. When I’d gently suggested that bringing himself some relief might help it pass quicker and wouldn’t mean anything, Mat had shot me a scathing glare and returned to his vigil over the body. I’d silently cursed myself. Because of course it meant something tohim:it was one last fight against the bastard dead at his feet, and if anyone could wager their willpower against the physical impulses of arousal and have a chance of winning, it was my stubborn little wildcat.
I wanted to apologise. For bringing him with me on this ill-fated quest to recover my country, for ever putting him in a position where this could happen. For our love, which bound us so tightly that he’d faced a horrendous fate and still hadn’t saved himself by leaving me to mine.
But me saying sorry obligated him to tell me not to worry about it, or that it wasn’t my fault or that he forgave me, and why should that shit be onhimto say?
“You memorised the slip knot,” I said instead, after his breathing began to ease and his shoulders slumped from the effort of denying himself for so long. “You’re so fucking good sometimes, you know that?”
Mathias raised his head, tears having forged gruesome tracks through the blood splattered across his face, and brushed his thumb underneath each of my eyes to wipe away the wetness on my own cheeks.
Fuck me, I should have been able to escape sooner. While I’d tied slip knots myself often enough, no occasions more delicious than those around Mat’s wrists or ankles during our playtime, it was always on others rather than myself. And with my fingers numb from cold, my body having only just recovered from imminent death, and the bonds being linen instead of rope, I’d taken far too long.
My lover gave a long, resigned sigh and abruptly stood, walking away into the darkness without a second look at me or Panarin’s corpse. Realising he wasn’t just stretching his legs when he didn’t reappear after a long minute, I hurriedly snatched up our discarded supplies and raced after him, thankful the sun had now risen enough to see our way.
I could only hope that was an omen.
-
It was twenty-seven hours before Mathias ate or drank anything other than the water he obsessively gargled and spat as if to purge Panarin’s taste from his mouth. Two days before he looked up from the ground before his feet. Four before I saw him smile.
During that time we continued to pick our way north, living on the gold I’d found in Panarin’s pockets, and when that ran out, what I made from pawning my rings. Perhaps I should have had a fit of misplaced pride at using either source – the gold for it being blood money owned by a man for whom death was too kind, or the jewellery for the symbolism that selling it signified. But fuck that. Pride didn’t put food in our starving stomachs. Didn’t buy extra furs from a street market to wrap my wildcat up in for the night Mathias started trembling and didn’t stop until dawn. Didn’t purchase a tent from the small town we passed through for us to take shelter from the thickening snow each night as we held each other for warmth, lying together in painful silence.
Spending the money didn’t mean we owed that fucking rapist anything, or that I’d given up on the hope of retaking my throne.
Far from it.
All it meant was that I was holding to my dual vows of doing everything and anything it took to protect my man and my country. I might have failed to stop Panarin from hurting him, but I’d be damned if I was going to let Mat waste himself away out here in this Dios-forsaken wilderness like he seemed inclined to do without me pushing him to eat, sleep, and walk each day.
And it was five and a half days before he spoke again.
“You must think it stupid,” Mathias said in a voice hoarse from underuse. “He didn’t even...it was just my mouth. It didn’t count.”
I was silent. I knew he didn’t believe that, but I also knew it wasn’t on me to tell him what he did or didn’t think.
“And I agreed,” he hissed, kicking at a root underfoot that had clearly pissed him off in a previous life from the way he was viciously toeing it with his boot. “What Blessed right do I have to complain when Iagreedthat he could have me?”
“You said no.”
