Unease churned in my gut becauseI knew. I knew where this story was leading and I wasn’t entirely sure I was ready for it. But Ineededto hear this because it was Davik’s story. I wanted to know every part of him, every happy memory, every darkened corner.
“She housed me and fed me. Truthfully, I do not remember much from that time. I was still deep in my grief. The world did not seem real without my family. Nothing did. The only emotions I felt were rage and despair. And Mala…she fed on those things. She fed onme.”
“She…” I whispered, swallowing. “Did she rape you?”
Davik flinched, his hands tightening around me. He went silent and I sat, frozen in front of him. The world started to buzz in my ears, the blood underneath my skin rushing restlessly.
“Lysi,” he rasped and I knew how hard it was for him to say that word. “But at the time, I do not think I realized that. In my eyes, I was exchanging sex for food. For shelter. In that way, I felt more like a whore. But Mala…she liked to be fucked a certain way.”
My heartbeat was pounding in my temple.
I want to be right for you,leikavi,he’d said, while deep inside my body. I remembered thinking he’d been using his strengthagainstme, not for me…that first time we’d had sex.
His breathing was ragged, his exhales filling the space between us. “She…she trained me to fuck her rough, to hurt her. She liked it. She craved it. Soon, that was all I knew too.”
Oh gods.
“Though it has been years and years since she last touched me…sometimes I still slip into the way I was with her. I was so used to fucking my rage and grief and fear into her that it is difficult to disassociate those emotions from sex.”
“Davik,” I breathed, my brows drawn, my throat tight.
“I did it with you,” he admitted. “You felt it. I felt fear with you and I slipped right back into that place. Ifuckinghate it. I hate that I hurt you.”
“Why did you fear me?” I whispered.
His jaw was tight and tense. Slowly, his hand reached up to brush my cheek, to smooth back my hair.
“Don’t you know why,leikavi?” he asked quietly.
The emotion that welled up in me was despair. Because I could never have him as my own. When I’d left the Dead Mountain, I had never expected to meet a male like…him. I had never expected for these feelings he stoked to come roaring to life like a fire, licking at me, consuming me, burning me up.
I felt rage all my own for him. For what he’d experienced when he was at his most vulnerable. I shook with it. Ihatedthe female that had taken advantage of him, that had used him.
“I cannot promise you that I will berightwith you. Not always,leikavi,” he murmured. “But I will always try to be. Though I will understand if you do not want this. If you do not want me anymore because—”
Leaning up, I kissed him to cut off his words, feeling my eyes prick with tears. How could he even think something like that?
Davik hesitated for only a moment and then his mouth was moving against mine, tugging me more firmly against him.
Against his lips, I murmured, “Rest assured that I will always want you, Davik.”
Those red eyes burned into me when I pulled back to look at him. His hand dove into my hair, gathering it into his palm, tugging on it gently until my neck was exposed to him.
My lips parted when his teeth bit at the column of my throat. I looked up at the night sky as he marked me—as if heneededto after what had just transpired between us—inhaling his warm scent that made my head spin.
Behind a dark mass of clouds, the moon peeked through, full and bright, and my lips thinned. Every night, more and more of it would disappear, melting into a single silver sliver. Then the black moon would blanket Dakkar. A black moon would blanket the Dead Mountain.
I wondered if I even had the amount of time allotted to me. I wondered if the poison would’ve already claimed me by then.
Even though he made me feel safe, Davik wouldn’t be able to protect me from the poison slowing the blood in my veins, thickening it to stone. Only another dose of it would save me, the dose I took every two weeks under the Dead Mountain. The dose all the Ghertun slaves took so we weren’t tempted to escape. Escape would’ve been easy. There were many paths, unguarded paths, that led away from the Dead Mountain.
But the Ghertun knew that they could control us with the threat of death. The poison was extracted from a plant thatonlygrew in the dark, acidic soil, deep in the mountain. And the death was agonizing. Slow and agonizing. I’d come close to it once, after all.
Davik stiffened, his arm tightening around me so much that it almost stole the breath from my lungs.
For a moment, I feared I’d said something out loud, something I didn’t want him to hear.
When I glanced at him, his head had raised from my neck, his attention was forward, peering into the darkness, towards a grouping of rocky pillars, pillars that jutted high all over the eastlands. Worry flowed through me—thinking he was seeing another shadowed spirit, histwinperhaps—but when I looked in that direction, I froze too.
