A deep growl comes from the dyre wolf behind us. Rivern interjects the roughened sound, asking, “What are you doing, love?” My eyes flick for the briefest moment to the others. Moyrie has halted halfway to us with Rivern’s hand on her shoulder, Calypso nonchalantly watching on, not having moved a muscle.
My vision returns to Dove, my gaze wholly focused on that dagger, where it leans against the veins under her skin—a delicate, erratic beating underneath. The life force that could take her from me at any moment.
I won’t allow it.
I am a God. She is bonded to me for eternity.
She will never be taken from me.
forty-one
Dove
Thedaggeratmythroat is cold and unyielding. I don’t know why I did it. It just felt like the right thing to do.
I could sense the mayhem in Fury. He was going to do something we would all regret. The song wasn’t working. For whatever reason, this isn’t the key to him leaving the island, and he is unwilling to admit it.
“It’s not the song that will free you. It’s not the blooded heirs. I need you to see that this isn’t working.I won’t have you destroy these people because you can’t admit defeat.”I say the last sentence through our link. He’s not letting me in. I feel the trickles of overflowing anguish directed towards me because of one word:defeat.
It slices through us, opening a torrent of emotions Fury usually carefully guards.
“I will not be defeated.” He pushes his words out forcefully. My head has to crane back to see his sharp features. “The last thing Oona will see is my face before I rip her life force from her.”
He is a torrent of emotional upheaval—a rage and sadness I know well. A fire that never goes out, only ebbing and flowing depending on one’s moods. Turns out, the emotions of a God are no different from their creations.
His black-tipped claws come to rest over mine on the dagger hilt, making the tip dig into my skin. Slightly, just enough for a wetness to streak down my neck and chest. The corset is fitted in a way that makes my breathing even more laboured to my ears at the feel of the slight pain created by the prick of the blade.
The bond is crying for a ceasefire, begging for us to kiss and make up, but neither of us wants that. Neither of us wants to be the nice person.
I release the hold I have on the dagger, leaving Fury with the opportunity to take it out of my hand and drop it to the ground.
It hits the floor with barely a thud, inconsequential in the grand scheme of everything. My eyes hold deep black spheres, set around silver lashes. Fury is a devastating sort of handsome. He’s not the male you would bring home to your mother and father, that is for sure. He is the one you would hide in secret—not because you’d be afraid of what people would think, but because you’d be afraid they would take him from you. He’s too unique, too extraordinary.Thank the Goddess he is a God because if he weren’t, he’d be too pure for thisworld.
I know that seems contradictory to everything he expresses himself as—that’s just the mask, his shield. I know what it is to be kept in comfort among the safety of his wings.
I hate the way we came together.
I hate that he tricked me.
I hate his smirks and quick wit.
I hate the way he wants me without abandon.
I hate it all.
I hate him.
Because I don’t deserve a God, and I don’t deserve to be a Goddess.
I felt it when he pushed all his power through the bond back in the underground mer caves. Fury was saving me, and he was also exposing himself. For the first time, I finally felt every niggling feeling of his heart. The authenticity of his emotions. The rawness. The realness. Fury would’ve given everything to save me.Me.He would’ve given up on his plans for revenge—valid plans, now that I’ve taken a glimpse into his soul.
The air shifts around us in an unsettling glide across my skin, the tendrils of my hair blowing out behind me. I’m trapped like prey within his ensnaring web. I used to think it was a web of lies until I could see what was in his heart and soul.
His eyes widen. A cold finger traces my collarbone up to the wetness on my neck. The small, bloody nick on my skin is a beacon to the fae and wolf surrounding us. However, neither of them makes a move to stop what is happening. Rivern knows Fury would never truly hurt me; he senses it down the bond. And Gideon still has enough faith in his God to know that, too.
“It was always you.” Fury’s fingers smudge the wetness, bringing it to his mouth. Redness coats his clawed tips.My blood.Opening his onyx lips, he places his bloodied fingers inside and sucks, groaning. “Fucking delicious, Pet.”
Another breeze moves over us—this time a whip, a cracking in the air that feels like … power? Breath returns to my lungs.Have I been holding it this whole time?My gaze sweeps the ashen hills of the island, seeing a shift of dust before moving back to Fury.
