Malachi raised a doubtful brow. Like the ass he was, he then asked, “Can you really call him your former betrothed if Rishaud for damn sure won’t relinquish you? He made that clear at your wedding.”
The entire cursed conversation had fire raging in Kadeesha’s veins. Why did she ever think a private meal with Malachi would achieve the opposite of that? It had occupied her mind from dwelling on Samira and the day’s trauma, but it had only amplified her aether magic roaring inside her to be unleashed. To destroy. To consume. To burn.
She took a generous swig of her cognac to try to quiet the more destructive urges caused by the magic. Slight to moderate inebriation—or sex as an outlet—often helped. She was in no way giving Malachi the satisfaction of climbing on top of him right now, so mild intoxication it was. “You’re playing with fire,” she muttered the quite literal warning to Malachi.
He didn’t growl at the threat as she expected. He leaned forward in his seat instead, curiosity lightening his stare. “When I am supremely pissed off,” he murmured, “I can feel my void magic prowling just beneath the surface of my skin. And when it does, it howls to be let loose and wreak total devastation. I’vealways assumed it’s a natural part of possessing void magic, since it is innately destructive. You have this look about you at the moment that reminds me of those times, however. You displayed it earlier at the blast site too. So now I’m wondering about another thing: Does your aether magic feel similar when you’re enraged? It is a destructive force as well.”
How spot-on Malachi was threw Kadeesha off-kilter—a thing that was becoming a habit when she was around him. “It does,” she told Malachi, unsure why she divulged the information. No, that was a lie. She handed him the truth because she’d never been around anyone else who grappled with such horrible urges and had to work hard to temper them. Or, in Malachi’s case, she suspected he instead worked hard to lean into the destructive urges when they served him and made his reputation all the more frightening and lean away from them when it benefitted him to employ a different tactic. “Part of why I agreed to have a meal with you is because I’ve been wrestling with the feeling since taking Samira to the infirmary, and I thought the usual hostility that exists between us would provide a good, safe outlet to let off some steam and get it under control. But I was wrong because you’ve broached an especially infuriating topic tonight, and I’d very much like to not produce an unintended firestorm that leaves the deaths of innocents on my conscience,” she told Malachi.
There was no mocking or cruel quip from him. Rather, he nodded as if he understood and said, “That’s happened before.”
It was an observation, not a question. “When I was much younger,” she said quietly. “Before reaching the age of maturity, I’d have troubles controlling the deadly power of my aether flames when certain emotions were heightened.” She drained the remaining contents of her goblet after one particularly horrificmemory surged to the forefront of her mind. Since she was already oversharing—perhaps it was induced by all the cognac—she told Malachi, “When I was sixteen, I burned one of my tutors alive after a fight with my father. It was the first time I’d worked up the nerve to beg Sylas not to marry me off to Rishaud, and my pleas fell on deaf ears.” Like always, Malachi’s demeanor turned positively murderous at the mention of her father. “He’s already dead,” she said glibly. “You can’tre-murder someone.”
“The fact that necromancy is a long-extinct magic among the faefolk is regrettable,” Malachi returned.
A deep-seated instinct made Kadeesha want to hurl molten flames his way. Yet, she swallowed down the reaction because Malachi’s response wasn’t unwarranted. She knew the history between his parents and the southern monarchs. The lot of them, her father included, had orchestrated and successfully achieved Malachi’s parents’ assassinations. If she were in Malachi’s place, she would’ve sought vengeance against Sylas, Rishaud, and the rest of the Six Kingdoms’ monarchs too.
Sticking with the new direction of their conversation, Kadeesha asked Malachi something she’d been wondering since she’d found out the full range of the vengeance he had planned. “I get your need for blood where the monarchs are concerned, but I do not understand your need to make those who had nothing to do with your parents’ deaths pay alongside the monarchs. At my wedding, you stood aside and allowed Rishaud to murder the folks of my court and then did the same to his court. You slaughtered dozens of innocents. That wasn’t vengeance; that was mass murder. How do you justify it?” She couldn’t help but for it to come off as an accusation—a castigation. It was an act she couldn’t forget.
However, if Malachi was insulted, he didn’t show it. Heonly wore his usual imperiousness like a second skin and said, “Nobles within one’s court are not without power of their own. It is a structure that all fae courts share. Therefore, I consider the nobles as guilty as their monarchs. And even if they had no knowledge, well there is also something to be said for the sound strategy of underscoring the point to others not to fuck with you and yours.”
He decreed it with such finality, such utter remorselessness, that his words sent a chill skirting along Kadeesha’s spine. She didn’t let it keep her from responding, though. “Posturing and the finer politics of who wields power and who is crushed by it are poor excuses to massacre dozens of people who are guilty of no crime.”
An uncaring shrug was all Malachi gave her. The food she’d consumed soured in her stomach, because was she really sharing a meal of her own volition with this male? She pushed back from the table and stood. She wouldn’t extend the courtesy of a good-bye; he was reprehensible and he deserved no such pleasantries. Before she could march toward the exit, Malachi spoke low and gravelly, “Tell that to the seven-year-old boy who had to be sealed behind a rune ward while watching his mother and father have their heads hacked from their bodies. Yes, it was my father’s own high cleric that betrayed and killed them, but I do not believe he would’ve mustered the nerve if the southern monarchs hadn’t worked to amplify his fanaticism and fear of the bullshit prophecy about me.
“I am well past the age of maturity now, and I have not been that terrified stripling in a long time,” Malachi added. “My father was a man whose political and governing approach leaned heavily toward pacifism. He used to counsel me toward understanding the carnage my void magic could bring forth and curbing mybaser instincts. But following such a philosophy got him and my mother killed. That very same night, my void magic howled to be let loose. To be allowed to tear through the clerics. If I hadn’t been so afraid of releasing it, perhaps my parents would’ve survived. I am a boy no more, and I hold all of the power to avenge my parents. I will do so, and I will achieve it in a way that quells any future thoughts of coups from inside my court or attacks that originate outside of it.” He gripped his goblet and it dented in his hands—not that he seemed to notice. He only stared at Kadeesha intently and silently willed—no,demanded—that she understand.
Well, she didn’t. Not when it came to the scale of mass murder he intended. It wasn’t something she spoke aloud. However, she raised her chin, squared her shoulders, and stared at Malachi right back in that penetrative way.
They remained as they were, her standing, Malachi sitting, both of them locked in a silent battle of wills. The too-familiar destructive call sparked in her blood, more ferociously than it had ever done. The intensity stole her breath. It would’ve chilled her to the core if not for the fact that it was directed solely at Malachi. She wasn’t consumed by some need to eviscerate the entire world around her like during the other times she’d wrestled with this aspect of her aether magic. The unscrupulous king before her, Malachi, was its sole focus, the singular target it roared to be let loose on.
His grin was a curved blade. “Do it! Hit me with your best effort,” he said from across the table. He stood up and spread his legs slightly apart, massive hands planted atop the marble in challenge. Shadows swirled around him and then shot toward her, surrounding her. They hovered a hairsbreadth from her skin, as if threatening to caress her without invitation, tauntingher. She lost it. She let go of the reins on everything she’d been holding back. Her aether flames rushed out of her in a fiery storm that hurtled toward Malachi.
“That’s it, Princess. Just like that,” Malachi crooned and then darkness and writhing shadows crashed into her aether flames, entangling with them in a savage dance in the center of the table. Lost to the all-consuming allure, Kadeesha let more of the violent urges she kept locked down pour forth. With them came hotter and denser purple flames. Malachi’s shadows responded in kind. The air around them burned at molten temperatures even as it descended into unsurvivable frigidness. She yelled—it was a barbaric sort of cry that shook the room’s windows and blew out the glass. There was a heartbeat of a moment where Kadeesha’s pulse raced and she stared at the windows in horror, terrified the uncontrolled version of her magic would spill out into the exterior environment and scorch everything in their path—she retained enough clarity to be aware that innocent people of this court had suffered enough today. But between that heartbeat and the next, a thick, impenetrable band of darkness covered the windows, sealing the room off.
“Nothing is leaving this room,” Malachi rumbled, “if that’s what your stricken look is about. I said I can take whatever you throw out, Princess. Is that it? Are you done?”
She gnashed her teeth, was about to spit that she wasn’t close to fucking done. But then she realized the call to destroy, the violent fury that had erupted inside her, had dulled and was rapidly fading more and more. She heaved in a few breaths, her aether flames swirling above the table vanishing when she calmed. Malachi’s shadows in the same spot disappeared at once. The darkness covering the window remained. They stood on opposite sides of the table, staring at each other, both breathinghard and visibly drenched in sweat. “Not nearly,” she snarled. She didn’t even know what she meant by it.
She also didn’t know who moved first.
All she knew was that between one labored breath and another, her and Malachi’s bodies were colliding in the center of the room, and they were enmeshed in a kiss as violent and furious as their magics had been when they clashed. The burning, molten need she’d felt to destroy was replaced by a different raging, uncontrollable need—one that had her tearing at Malachi’s tunic and pants while he did the same to her flying leathers until they were both nude. Shadows swept across the table beside them, reducing the food and platters on it to fine silt. Then Malachi was throwing her atop the marble, the silt covering the cool slab like a silken caress at her back. The sculpted muscles of Malachi’s chest and abs pressed down on her in a way that was nothing close to gentle. His calloused hands moved roughly over her thighs, her hips, up her sides to knead her breasts. In response she dragged her nails down his corded back, drawing blood, and along the tight, defined globes of his ass, digging them into his flesh. He growled. So did she. And then he was sinking into her, burying himself so deep that a cry tore from her that she couldn’t hold back even if she’d wanted to. In the moment, she didn’t desire to attempt to curb anything. She let herself relish in the sensations, in the lapse of control, because in this manner it came without fear that she’d harm something or someone who didn’t deserve it.
I can take whatever you throw out, Malachi had arrogantly informed her. It was a crass statement that was utterly true, and so she didn’t hold anything back. When she tightened her legs around his waist and he held her left hip in an iron grip while banding his other hand around her throat and squeezing whilemoving furiously inside her, she gave herself over to it. She lifted her hips to meet him brutal thrust for brutal thrust, and she didn’t hold back the fresh purple flames that sparked and flowed around them. Malachi’s eyes were locked on hers, yet he surely felt their heat. But his gaze never strayed. Shadows encircled her flames, both of their magics giving off the effect of a double-layered cocoon. And all the while, Malachi never broke the rhythm of the delicious, brutal strokes that had her eyes rolling back and stars exploding across her vision. She moaned Malachi’s name, and the lush darkness of a moonless night glittered in his eyes. So did a smugness that was all male. Then, he somehow buried himself deeper, moving harder and faster within her, a feat she didn’t think possible before. Her screams rent the air. His name became a refrain that she might’ve been mortified to sputter if she wasn’t completely lost to the excruciating rapture of his strokes.
At some point, amidst the relentless assault of rough stroke after rough stroke and the sweet burn at her neck that had her breathing raggedly, she squeezed her eyes shut, floating among oblivion, a fresh orgasm building.
“Eyes open, Princess. Don’t look away from me, Kadeesha,” Malachi demanded. Her eyes flew open, her body automatically keyed in the moment to obey Malachi’s every carnal command. The pressure around her neck intensified as he squeezed tighter, while his thumb caressed her pulse point as if in tender reverence. The stark contrast—the delicate circles his thumb drew against her neck and the iron, merciless grip he had on her throat while fucking her with wild, reckless abandon—was a heady mix that left her gushing around him.
“That’s right,” he growled into her ear. “Keep gripping mejust like you’re doing and come all over my dick. Make an utter mess of us both, Princess.”
She moaned.
“You like being filled with my cock, don’t you, Kadeesha?” Malachi asked, voice gravelly and chock-full of male satisfaction. “You like it rough and hard and deep? That feel good? You want me?” Malachi underscored each question with furious stroke after stroke.
She was beyond words, could only cry out his name.
“Youneedme?”
