That did not stop me from wanting her.
From needing her.
My feet hit the floor. “I will come with you.”
Silence.
It was too dark to search her eyes. But a few steps on the cold stone floor, and I was close enough to see the shape of her face, even with only slivers of starlight from the window to illuminate her.
Veyka was a master of masking her emotions. I’d watched her do it with Palomides, showing just what was useful, holding back what was dangerous. But here, between us in the dark, it was different. She was different.
The pout of her lips betrayed her—lips still swollen from where they’d scraped across mine. She was trying to harden herself, to create a protective shell around her heart. Her bottom lip trembled. She was failing.
For a moment, I thought she would refuse. Simply disappear into the darkness, into the void, where I could not follow.
Then into the space between us, she held out her hand.
59
VEYKA
The castle was certainly warded to protect from intruders, but that had not stopped me from moving through the void and landing on the battlements. I hoped that reasoning would hold within the castle itself. I had not yet encountered any ward or room that could hold me. Only Arran.
He could pull me back if he tried hard enough—had done, and saved my life, when I’d first fallen through the realms uncontrollably after our Joining.
But I doubted he could do it now. I had not even explained the tether of my power to our mating bond.
Arran had loved me at our Joining. I’d loved him, even if I’d been unable to admit it.
Now…
I did not want to test it.
After what happened… No. I would not allow myself to regret it.
I had been unable to stop myself. Together in that bed, even if he’d asked me to stop, I would not have. Could not have. The mating bond demanded. And I did not try to argue.
But afterward I felt… hollow.
Anytime our bodies came together, it was wild and eviscerating and earth-shaking. It had been all of that.
But it had also been empty.
A mockery of what should have been between us, of the way we had consummated our bond in the faerie pools. Even in those earliest days in Baylaur, the anger and hate between us… that had felt likemore. Something so solid I could almost wrap my hands around and hold it.
But this ephemeral echo of love… it was going to tear me apart.
So, naturally, I needed to tear something else apart.
I pulled us from the void and into a darkness that felt oppressive, rather than freeing.
Arran immediately released my hand, drawing the battle axe from his belt. I could not blame him; the black stones around us reeked of blood and decay. But I still wondered if the Arran before the Battle of Avalon would have kept hold.
We stood just inside a thick wooden door studded with metal reinforcements. One torch was pinned to the wall beside the door, casting the ground in front of us in flickering light. My stomach tightened at the sight. These might have once been the same black stones that built the rest of the Castle Chariot, but they were so crusted with dirt and gore that they were unrecognizable.
“I aimed for where the dungeons ought to be,” I said, nearly choking on the scent of the place. Clearly, I’d found them.
Arran moved on silent feet toward the corner where the wall turned and the light ran out. “Aimed?”
