Images that don’t belong to me.
I touch his face, worried for him.
“I’m fine,” he assures me, reading my face. “I’m more concerned about you.”
“I will survive,” I sign. “But you lie. You are not fine.”
He isn’t panting like me, and when I touch his forehead, there’s no slick of cold sweat. There isn’t even so much as a quiver in his ancient bones, and had I not awoken, he might’ve slept through it all. But I felt his torment.
Ruthless, raw, and real.
He lets out a long breath. “It isn’t a lie, Raina. I swear I’m all right. Nightmares are so common for me. I have over three hundred years of memories. Sometimes they unearth themselves as they please. Facing Thamaos again must’ve triggered this one. He was there that day in the dream, the first time I ever met him. But that particular event in my life was just… an unhappy experience. A test.” He slides his hand across my waist. “Now come. Lie with me. It’s cold.”
The thought is tempting, but I stop him from drawing me back to our pallet. I know what I saw in the dream was a test. I know how hard he cried when the proctors from the School of Night and Dawn came during the rainy season, pried him from his parents’ arms, and carried him on horseback to the outskirts of a city called Yura. I remember his fear as though it were my own when he realized where they were taking him, the scalding-bright terror that flashed through his ten-year-old body as King Gherahn’s men lowered him into one of the ancient wells at the Un Moritra monastery, better known as The Death Pits, and left him in the pouring rain to prove his skill. A little boy who couldn’t work water magick.
Pass or fail. Escape or die.
I’ve never been to Yura or Quezira, yet thanks to this nightmare, I now remember what every nook in those cities looked, smelled, and sounded like over three hundred years ago. I can picture the dilapidated buildings cast in the shadows of new construction, and the ancient city that sits near the temple. I even recall how Alexi used to say that there were two cities of ruin in Tiressia, the one in the Summerlands and the one that time left behind in Quezira.
I also know that Alexi from the tribe of Ghent would’ve called the School of Night and Dawn a scholarada, a word I’ve never heard him use before, and that when he was sixteen, he advanced from the Order of Dawn to the Order of Night. I know they took him from Yura and sent him to the elite school newly erected in Quezira, and that he hated it so much he wanted to burn it to the ground, but that in time, he made friends and came to consider it home.
Then there’s Min-Thuret. Thamaos’s temple. The original kingdom seat. The awe Alexus held for that place is palpable. The structure now lives as a fresh memory in my mind, its glass and golden domes visible from the school, high upon a grassy knoll near the ruins, surrounded by rain-dampened air and marigolds trembling in the wind. I even remember the smooth cuts of timeworn carvings on the outer walls, protective archaic runes Alexus admired with a child’s wonder. I recall his little heart thudding like an anvil tapping the bones of his chest as he crossed the threshold of those massive doors, strolled the cloisters, and later knelt in Rite Hall before that opulent throne.
So yes. For him, perhaps the nightmare was just an unhappy memory. For me, it’s a slice of Alexus Thibault’s long life that feels so real I could’ve lived its every second.
“What happened was torture,” I sign. “It haunts you.”
“Many things haunt me, Raina. This is the least of them.” He takes my chin in his hand. “Which is why you need to hear me. I may be your hero now, but in another story, I was the villain. The worst kind. Men like me and the prince learn to live with our miseries and sins, even if that means being haunted by a legion of ghosts.”
My chest tightens. Compared to the Prince of the East, Alexus is a saint, yet I understand the two men were cut from the same cloth. They’ve both hurt people for the eastern throne. They’ve both fought in wars, and on the wrong side at that. And they’ve both used their power to break the laws of nature and cross into the Shadow World, walking where only death dares trod. The line separating them may be thin, but they are not the same.
I can’t believe they are.
Alexus grazes a touch across my cheekbone and pushes his fingers into my hair. “Listen to me. I’ve loved every night we’ve shared since Winterhold. Every conversation. Every kiss. Every touch. But if we continue exploring this bond, continue allowing it to fuse our lives together, I fear you will learn firsthand how haunted I truly am.” He pauses, swallows. “I can’t say that the thought of you witnessing my old life doesn’t scare me. Because whether you like it or not, facing the ghosts of my past will make you see me differently. Are you prepared for that?”
“I do not know,” I reply honestly. I wasn’t prepared for any of this, but… “When I said that our darknesses could be friends,” I sign, “I meant it.”
My heart pounds as Alexus presses closer. “I fear you might not understand what you’re saying.”
“I am not scared of you,” I tell him. “Not even Alexi of Ghent or Un Drallag.”
He stares into my eyes for a long moment, then he kisses me, trailing his fingers down the slope of my breast, caressing my nipple, his rough fingertip circling the sensitive flesh. That strange vibration I’d felt the other night on our walk returns, lingering in the wake of his touch.
I press against his hand, wanting his palm on my breast. Alexus responds, gripping me hard as Mannus whinnies from across camp, alerting us that sunrise is a couple of hours away.
“Are you sure?” Alexus asks. “We don’t have long before you must return to your tent. If we’re to keep up our ruse, that is. I cannot say I care anymore.”
The heat of his breath on my mouth sends a chill across my skin as he drags my lower lip between his teeth and kisses me, a kiss as tantalizing as it is teasing. Slow and deliberate, sensual and sweet.
I need him one more time before we reach the valley. I don’t know what that confrontation holds, if Finn or his father will want to accompany us or not. If they do, I can’t imagine many nights in Alexus’s arms between here and Malgros.
“I am sure,” I sign and take him by the wrist.
Holding his heated gaze, I slip his hand beneath the blankets puddled around my waist and place it where I need him, and where I know he wants to be. With soft lips, he seizes another kiss and glides his hand over my sex, his fingers playing along my center, until he slides one inside me, then eases another, matching every motion with his tongue.
I endure him for as long as I can, but I jerk away to catch my breath, each inhale coming shallower and shallower as he works me into a frenzy, plundering my body until I’m clinging to his shoulders and panting harder than when I woke from the dream.
Carnal longing guides me as I rock against his hand, needing more, needing him, already seeking sweet relief.
