“Can’t I find one good man in Coban?” I’d groused. “A girl has needs.”
Laleh had giggled, still sated and flush from her adventures with not one buttwolovers in the broom closet of the tavern. “There’s always Cyrill.”
“Bite your tongue, wench!”
With an eye roll, Laleh had mimicked kissing the air. “Then for tonight, I guess you’ll have to be satisfied with your imagination. Maybe you should wish on a star for the best dream-railing of your life.” And just then, on the heels of her words, a silver streak had arced across the heavens. “Star gods! Hear our plea for the sake of finicky virgins everywhere!”
“Laleh!”
I’d snorted as we dissolved into drunken giggles.
That had been the night—the very first night—I’d lain in bed and silently wished for the other half of my soul to appear in my dreams if I couldn’t have him in reality and if he even existed. Embarrassed heat drizzles through me at the recollection. Because my perfect dream loverhadcome in bursts of starlight and shadow, and I’d woken shaken and spent... from a starsdamned dream.
Only it hadn’tjustbeen a dream.
“It was you,” I say. “All those times.”
“Yes.” His intense focus is on my mouth. His shadows flutter around me, and I feel my own magic rise to their gentle touches. “I want to kiss you. I want to know if your lips taste the same as they do in all my darkest fantasies.”
My core goes liquid.
Stars...
I have to be smart and strong—giving in to my desires and the melting invitation in his eyes won’t get me the answers I seek. “But you said you intended to reject the bond. You didn’t want this then, so don’t pretend now.” Anger douses the embers of lust. “You said so before.”
Onyx eyes flash. “I was protecting you!”
“You were protecting yourself,” I say, stepping sideways and walking to the window, where I can breathe air that isn’t him. “You didn’t want me.”
He scrapes a hand through his hair. “I do want you, that’s the fucking problem.”
“You have a poor way of showing it.” I narrow my eyes. “Why should I even believe you when all you’ve done is push me away? Why, Darrius?”
“Because as much as I crave this, you will be the fucking end of me!”
The bitter admission explodes between us, and my heart feels as if it has been torn from my chest. Gods, I can’t breathe. “If I’m so fatal to you, why keep me here? Send me back home.”
“Because you’re not safe there.”
“Good thing I’m not your problem,” I snap.
He scowls, eyes flaring gold again. “Why couldn’t you have stayed where you belonged? None of this would have happened if you hadn’t come here.”
“So it’s my fault?” Hurt blooms beneath the blades of both our words. “Did I ruin your precious plans with your Aspacana bride?”
“Gods, how are you this obtuse?”
I rear back. “I don’t know. How are you such a fucking coward?”
The smallest flinch catches my eye. Guilt surges, but the hum of victory runs through me, too. The formidable, fearsome nightmare king is capable of being hurt. There’s a foul power in it, but I revel nonetheless. That fathomless stare glitters, his shadows writhing as he stalks toward me. Chin aloft, I hold my ground in front of the windowsill even when he invades my space.
“Is that so?” he snarls, peering down at me, eyes dark with resentment, embittered lust, and fury as tenebrosity lashes like a knot of inky serpents around him.
A similar cocktail wars inside of me, only my starlight wants to burn everything to the ground. Sands, I’m sinking so deeply into an abyss of anguish and anger that it makes me heedless of the danger. “Yes.You’ll tuck tail and run at the first sign of trouble. Darrius Nightsong, the craven king.”
“You speak of things you do not know,” he grinds out. “I. Am. Cursed!”
“And yet in spite of said curse, your manticore fights for what he wants. Can you say the same?”
