Always, Rumple. No matter if I had to fly for a thousand years across the void, I would still come for you.
For a moment, pain flashed across his face, and I saw into his thoughts. Saw what he had planned. He was going to sacrifice his life to save me and Gavriel, pay the price to open the Great Gate. He thought he had it all figured out.
I’d always sucked at chess. Rumple loved the game, and in between lives, after my pain had faded enough that I could think again, he would try to distract me with a game, using an enormous mental chessboard. I never won, never even got close. He said it was because I was too compassionate and had trouble giving up a single pawn, even if it meant saving the queen. I was almost sure it was because he was an ancient being, capable of almost anything and with thousands of years of practice under his belt, but he’d disagreed.
“You must learn to be not only selfless, but ruthless,”he’d said.“At some point, you will need to save yourself—or someone you love—by making a cold, calculated decision. One that benefits the game as a whole, and not the individual pieces. One that does not result in you, little queen, being taken off the board.”
I knew I would never do that. But I also knew Rumple had shown me again and again how to set up a move that ensured a win: checkmate. And I had exactly what I needed to make certain he didn’t give up on us. Or on himself.
I leaned over his hard shell, ignoring the bite of sharp edges on my skin, and nibbled at his ear. “I will never give up,” I repeated, lifting my hands to his horns and tracing teasing lines over them, until he writhed in delicious torment underneath me. “And I’m going to fuck you until you believe it.”
“I thought we were going to make love,” he said, his voice hoarse.
“That, too,” I agreed, rubbing myself over him and using the energy I had left, along with the little the yogurt and mochas had given me, to coax his armor to soften. I hummed a love song as I kissed my way over his forehead and down one cheek, and paused with our mouths next to each other. “It’s always a kiss, in the fairy tales,” I whispered. “It’s a kiss that ends the nightmare.”
And then I slipped a thread of my soul between my lips, in the way Mikhail had taught me, and pressed our mouths together.
He opened his lips, and I plunged that thread deep inside him. It was a golden filament in a well of darkness. But it shone with all the light of my love for him, and I believed it would be enough.
That I would be enough for him.
Chapter 23
Seraphiel
“It’s a kiss that ends the nightmare,” she said, before my body yielded to her energy. I tasted my sulfur and charcoal on her lips, mingled with the hints of roses and spice that were her own addictive perfume. A single thread of soulfire, connected to a small pool of power inside her, tunneled into my soul and took hold. Like a fishing hook and line, or a tightrope, binding us together.
I wasn’t at all certain what she had done. But I could undo it when the time came. I could untie that line and let her go, free and whole.
She pulled back, those innocent but wise eyes holding some secret that I was not privy to.Huh.I found myself frowning. “Are you hiding something from me, little one?”
“Would I do that?” she teased, not answering. She patted the sheet next to her. “Well, get up here on the bed. I’d better figure out which part of you I need to kiss before I explode from the four hundred years of edging you gave me.”
Gingerly, wincing at the terrible streaks of gray tar I was leaving on the white sheets, I settled on one side, folding my wings as tightly behind me as I could manage. I grabbed my long tail—which was twitching toward her like it had designs of its own—and tucked it under my lower leg, wrapping the end firmly around my ankle.
“So, about your tail…” Feather murmured. “Is it fully functional?” She chewed at her lower lip, eyes alight with mischief. “Is it sensitive like your horns?”
“Yes,” I ground out. “As far as I can tell, the horns and tail were formed from imbalances of lust…” I groaned as she tugged at my tail, unwinding it and lifting it to her mouth.
“Better see if this is the spot to kiss.”
“Don’t. It’ll tasteterrible.It’s not clean.” Before I could get the last word out, she’d wrapped her pink lips around the thickened tip of my tail and sucked. Somehow, the little thread she’d hooked inside me resonated, like a harp string being plucked. It reverberated in my soul, sending waves of our combined power through my body. There was a great cracking noise as small pieces of the armor began to slough away, falling to the sheet and the floor.
“Oh, that’s a very good spot,” she mumbled, her lips still grazing the sensitive flesh of my tail. “I wonder if it likes it alittle rough.” She sucked it again, moving her mouth up and down a few times before she let her teeth scrape lightly over the tip. When I yelped, she stopped, blowing a cool breath on the dampened end and batting her eyelashes at me. “Should I keep going, baby? You like that? Should I see how hard I can bite before you beg me to stop?”
I couldn’t answer; I could only moan. This time, as she sucked and nibbled, I felt her soulfire moving on the outside of my form as well, dancing around mine. Her energy was graceful and teasing, plucking at the slabs of filth that still coated me, setting up that gentle music inside as she played. Everywhere her soulfire touched, the armor began to change. Transform, even.
I reached down and felt what was falling away. “Sand?” I held my hand up to my face, unsure of what she had done. But it wasn’t sand. It was tiny, sparkling scraps of deep purple and charcoal gray.
Of course it was. This was Feather, after all.
“What the fu—” Her fingers landed over my mouth, silencing me.
“Shhhh. I know I’m making this look easy, hot stuff, but no cursing. Don’t add to this mess.”
I lay back, writhing beneath her touch, covered up less and less by armor, and more and more by a shifting heap of glitter. After a moment, I made an undignified squawking sound as she climbed up my body—she was so much smaller than me, it made me feel like a mountain—and grabbed hold of my horns firmly.
“I’ve been wanting to do this ever since I saw these beauties,” she crooned, licking up one side of my right horn.
