Her wicked touch makes me bite my lip as I try real fucking hard not to jerk up into her palm. “I don’t know, but I have a feeling we won’t be leaving this room for a while.”
I feel her cheeks pulling up into a smile. “Good.”
Chuckling, I stroke her golden hair, then my touch grazes down her back, over every single ribbon. Goose bumps spread across her skin as I stroke through them, letting my fingers tangle with their lengths. Some of them come up to twist around my cheeks like a loving caress.
“I love you, Slade,” Auren whispers as tears fill her eyes.
My heart swells, and I hold her jaw as I kiss away her tears. Then I tilt her face so I can look into the eyes of perfection.
“Oh, Goldfinch. My love for you consumes every part of my soul. It’s in every word, every movement. With each morning that dawns and every night that falls. You are completely mine, and I am yours, and that is all I ever need in this life and all the others.” I kiss her forehead, tears burning in my eyes. “I love you, Auren.”
She falls asleep with a smile on her face and her ribbons curled around my body. I hold her, letting her rest, until she awakens with more ravaging need, and the bond pushes us again.
And again.
And again.
CHAPTER 36
EMONIE
Normally, I love going ina fairy ring. It’s pure magic, traveling straight through a vein of Annwyn, like drinking fresh water from the source. You can sense the magic and the connection with the land, and it makes you feel powerful and alive.
But as I get sucked through it with the Stone King, I’m not invigorated and I don’t feel powerful. Just terrified and reeling.
I watched Auren run toward me with fear and anger, but she couldn’t get to me in time. The world crumpled away, and the king kept hold of me.
It feels like we’ve been stuck in this ring for ages and it still doesn’t want to let go. Like the vein we’re traveling in is pinched. Suffocating. Trying to keep us in its fist.
My stomach roils, my head pressurizing, and all the while, Carrick’s grip is clamped down painfully on my arm, refusing to let go. I fight, trying to get out, but the logical part of me knows it’s impossible. You can’t stop it once you’re in it. The only way through is out the other side.
Finally, after who knows how long, we come to the end. My body topples over as we abruptly land. The king’s off-centering hold makes me lose my footing. My knees slam to the ground, though he still keeps my arm wrenched in his grip.
I gasp through the pain, and then immediately I notice the packed and parched ground we’ve settled on.
Where are we?
I expected to travel back to the palace where he’d throw me toward some guards and lock me up in the dungeons again.
But this isn’t anywhere near Glassworth. We aren’t even in Lydia anymore.
With shallow breaths, I take in the sight of a desolate earth that stretches further than I can see. Everything is gray and lifeless, and the ground itself feelswrong. It doesn’t feel like the rest of Annwyn.
It’s drained. Maybe that’s what was wrong with the fairy ring. The land here isn’t powerful, isn’t alive with magical connection. There’s just…nothing.
“This is the deadlands,” I say out loud to myself, my eyes gone wide as fear soaks into me, weighing me down.
My eyes instantly swing around to find the infamous Orean bridge. I’ve never actually been this far out to the end of Annwyn. Never saw the broken bridge or the ruined lands around it. Most of us consider it cursed, since the land is dead and fae near here started being born without magic.
And I’m hereinit—with my knees shoved into the gray dust.
I shudder.
The king suddenly hauls me up to my feet, nearly pulling my arm right out of its socket. Hissing in pain, I try to yank out of his grip, but his hold is unrelenting.
Just like my guilt.
My mind spools, pulling in everything that just happened.
