He shakes his head, staring at me as though I am a lost hope. “Desire is only desire, prince. Until you’re willing to sacrifice something of yourself for another, it is nothing more than that. Nothing deeper. Nothing real.”
“Nothing real?” I glance at his mouth, take his face in my hands, and press my lips to his. He doesn’t stop me, much to my surprise. Instead, he opens for me, as though this is what he’s wanted all night.
It’s strange, this. I remember the feel of his mouth on mine. The sweet taste of him, of dark wine and temptation. It’s so unexpectedly enchanting that I trace his lips with my tongue, each dip and lush curve still devastatingly familiar after all this time.
He grips my hips, tugging me closer. I kiss him the way I’ve dreamed about kissing him nearly every night these last weeks, the way I dreamed about kissing him for years before. After longing to forget him, and after wanting to hate him with the passion of an immortal enemy, I’m now reveling in his breathlessness, his eagerness, his hardness. The way his body answers to my kiss.
“This is real,” I say against his mouth, dragging my hands into his hair. “You cannot tell me it isn’t.”
He kisses me once more, as though needing a final taste, his tongue sliding along mine, his full lips so soft and hungry, I might think of nothing else after this.
But then he pulls away and presses his forehead to mine. “That is desire. Only desire. If you want more than that from me, you must prove it, and that means not hurting the people I love. It means not hurting people at all. It means not standing at Thamaos’s side because you’re standing by mine.”
He lets go of me and steps back, half stumbling as though he’s as drunk from that kiss as I am. I watch him move toward the door where Thresh awaits outside to escort him back to his cell.
Before he goes, he turns to look at me from over his shoulder. “What you want, prince, is love. Something you don’t understand in the least, and something I haven’t given away in a very long time. I could, though, I think. If you were a different sort of man, the sort of man I think you might’ve been once upon a time. The sort of man I think you could still be. If you could be him, I could love you.”
With that, he opens the door, and I let him go.
“It hasn’t been seven days,” Fleurie says as she walks into my chambers later that night.
Her bare feet whisper across the woven rug spread over the stone floor. She looks fully healed, her hair somehow an even brighter shade of red, bold against the white tunic she wears.
I give up trying to eat and stand, turning up the glass of wine in my hand. Nonchalantly, I flick a finger for Thresh to leave.
“No, it hasn’t,” I reply, “but this isn’t about that,” I tell her as my captain closes the door. “I had a conversation with your father, and the plans have… changed a little.”
In Rite Hall, Fleurie had stood so calmly. Tonight, she begins roaming around my room, touching all manner of things, as though inspecting my life.
I’ve had enough inspection tonight. Time to tuck in my feelings and focus on the matter at hand.
“Changed how?” She drifts her finger over my desk. Casually, she lifts a book, reads the spine, and lays it back down.
“You and I are going to have an adventure.” I turn, following her with my gaze, the heat of the hearth warm against my left side. “I need a way to subdue Alexi of Ghent once I get him here. I’ve thought about it for weeks.”
Colden will hate me for this, but I’ve come too far to turn back now, especially for love, because the more I think about it, the more I realize he’s right. Love isn’t something I know how to feel. Only want and hunger and need, the basest emotions stemming from a long life as a Soul Eater, another part of me I cannot possibly change, a part I’m certain Colden could never live with.
Fleurie pauses her perusal at my antiquities cabinet and faces me. “You cannot subdue Alexi of Ghent for a few minutes, let alone any significant amount of time. Even if I can find a way to bring him here to fulfill my end of your deal, he will destroy you. He will destroy Min-Thuret.”
“As I said, things have changed, and I have a plan,” I tell her, and I do. A plan that Thamaos presented recently in Rite Hall. “You and I are going to make a trial run of your power. I have somewhere I need you to take me. It would be a dangerous excursion for anyone else because the people there can nullify magick, and we need to bring a few back with us. They’re fighters, but they’re no danger for a godling, I assume.”
She lets out a long breath, her jaw twitching, her fists tightening at her sides as she realizes what I mean to do. “I’m a portalist. Not your warrior. I didn’t agree to such terms.”
I hold up my finger. “Oh, but you did. You agreed to help me locate a sorcerer and to bring them to my palace for safekeeping, no matter what that might entail. This is part of that. I can’t keep Un Drallag here if I don’t have the means, just like you said. Once he’s here, however, with the plan your father helped me discern, we can subdue him, and then my Brotherhood can conceive a more permanent solution.”
Honestly, I expect to stoke her ire, but instead, she just looks… forlorn. And perhaps… defeated. As though she knows there’s no reason to fight me.
Her face does flush, however, her usually pale white skin changing to a rosy pink. “You want me to take you to the Summerlands.”
I narrow my eyes at her. “I do. How did you know?”
She just shakes her head, her eyes downcast. Again, her entire presence is saturated in deep sadness and more defeat. “A guess,” she says. “So tell me what you demand of me. Where exactly am I to take you?”
Reaching into my vest, I withdraw the small map tucked away there and cross the room, where I unroll it on the desk. Fleurie comes closer, and stands at my side, studying the drawing.
I tap the area located in western Itunnan, in the Summerlands, a world I’ve had no access to for decades. Until now. “I need you to take me to a place called Aki-Ra Quarter.”
62
