The woman surged across the table, her hands around the man’s throat before he could get out another insult. Gwen was inclined to let her at it; one less human to convince. But Sylva intervened.
“Release him, Tally. His brother will not forgive the loss,” Sylva said.
For a moment, Gwen thought the woman from Emberhaven—Tally—would ignore the older woman’s appeal. But what Sylva said must be true, and Tally must have realized it. Gwen could not even remember all of their names. Meanwhile, Sylva understood the political machinations from a decade serving on the village’s Council of Elders.
Tally slid back across the table, but she kicked her chair out from behind her instead of resuming her seat.
“Say it again, and I will slit your throat,” she promised, addressing the table at large, before storming out. The force of the door slamming shook the entire house.
Bruises were already forming around the Wraithwood man’s throat.
“Come. Hot tea and a poultice, or you won’t speak again for days.” Sylva left the room without waiting for the man. He glared at Gwen, but eventually followed, as did his Thornbriar counterpart.
Which left Gwen and the Ferndale delegate, who’d yet to say a single word.
“If we do not fight, we will die,” Gwen said. She did not have any fancy words or promises to give. She didn’t even have any more amorite to bargain away. Maybe she’d been wrong to stay behind in the human realm, to even think this was a possibility.
A minute later, the delegate from Ferndale stood without speaking and returned upstairs to the room he’d been given.
Gwen’s forehead dropped to the table. She owed Arran and Veyka a report. But only one word repeated steadily in her mind.
Failure.
62
ARRAN
Sleeping without her was impossible. I kept close watch on that golden thread between us, monitoring its strength. It was steady, which meant she had not gone far. But despite the visceral need in my chest, building with every breath, I did not reach out to her with my mind or try to follow the connection to find her.
I was being selfish and I knew it.
But how could she even ask it of me… to sit by and watch her give her life… and donothing.
A better husband would have held her hand and supported her. I could have asked how she was feeling and held her while she cried. But I did not need to ask—I could feel her as easily as I felt myself. Veyka did not want to die.
Yet she was willing to, because that was the cost demanded by the power in her veins and the prophecy made thousands of years ago in Avalon, by a priestess who’d been too cowardly to choose life for herself.
Fuck prophecies.
Fuck all of it.
I stopped myself just short of charging out of the tent to find her.
Be what she needs. At least for tonight.
I forced myself to undress and climb between the furs of our bedroll. Then I forced myself to wait. It was fucking agony. There was absolutely no sleeping. Not without her. I recalled those nights I’d slept alone in Eilean Gayl, my faulty memory robbing me of precious nights I should have spent sheathed inside of Veyka.
I rolled to my back, my traitorous cock lifting the bedsheets up and away from my body. Ancestors, I needed her. Not just physically, though that demand was growing with the minute. But I needed her soul wrapped around mine, her words warm in my ear.
It was too much to resist. Maybe if I took the edge off now, I’d be able to think beyond my own selfish physical desires when she did come to me. My fingers gripped the base of my cock, stroking up to the tip and back down again in a motion I’d perfected over the last three hundred years.
As I stroked myself, I thought of her.
Those leather leggings she wore beneath everything now that it was winter were absolute torture. The revealing gowns she’d worn in Baylaur were bad enough, but to see that leather gripping her thighs, curving around her ass? I was jealous of fabric. Ancestors, how was that even possible? And her hair… I’d enjoyed wrapping the waist-length braid around my wrist and yanking her head back when I had first fucked her. But now the ends were just long enough that they brushed her nipples. Even when clothed, all she had to do was move, the ends of her moon-white hair swishing, and all I saw in my mind was the dusky pink of her nipples begging for my mouth.
I was going to come hard and fast. My fingers pinched the tip of my cock, trying to slow the building pressure. My balls were already throbbing with need. I imagined how Veyka would dragher tongue over them, sucking one into her mouth while she palmed the other—
The tent flap opened. A second later, the scent of plum and primrose reached me.
