I pin my hair into a pile on top of my head and twist the lever that makes water rain down from the spigot overhead. My thoughts linger on the Vatruke, on Vos and her mate. I brace myself with my arms outstretched on either side, my head tipped down between them, walls of cool, slick marble beneath my palms. Water cascades in streams between my shoulder blades and down my back. My mind spins like the endless flow of water swirling down the drain.
I am going to die. I wonder how many Drakai witness the moment the fates clip the thread of their life. I always thought death would come faster. That I would be on a battlefield and lock eyes with my fate before the end. Never did I imagine something like this. To be hated and hunted for taking what was hers.
Will she make it quick? I wouldn’t.
I hardly know the male I share a bed with and have already killed for him. How much greater would that rage have been if we had shared many mortal lifetimes beside one another? How much more precious would that life have become to me?
I startle when the general’s lips find the crook of my neck. “What is troubling you,mi’ajna?”
“Nothing that can’t wait until morning,” I say.
His lips linger, his hands falling to my hips, and his thumbs kneadthe dimples in my lower back.
“Tell me.” It isn’t a demand, rather a simple request for a glimpse inside my mind.
“Vos,” I admit, aware that she occupies his thoughts as much as my own.
He tenses, even as his hands move to soothe my own muscles.
“She will never reach you inside the palace,” he assures me.
I huff a disbelieving laugh. Tonight, I have learned enough to know that the Vatruke are nothing if not incredibly powerful.
“Even if you believe that, do you really think you’ll be able to keep me here? Locked up like a prisoner?”
His hands still. “It’s hardly a prison, Shivaria.”
“A gilded cage,” I say, turning to face him.
He sucks in a breath, swallowing whatever retort he’d conjured, and I say, “Even if Ichooseto stay here, do you truly think she will let me live out my life? Silken pillows and a full belly until I die of old age?” I sigh. “I wouldn’t, not if I were her. Not if it had been…”
Too much. You give away too much. My heart falters a beat, my stomach turning inside out, and suddenly I’m back on that ship.You’re letting your guard down, Shivaria.
I break from his touch, intent on letting the male bathe in solitude. He stops me with a hand around my wrist, before my feet can take me from the water.
“One day,mi’ajna,you will trust me,” he says it so matter of fact. “It doesn’t have to be today. And in truth, it will only ever be the day that you decide I am worth the risk of whatever it is you fear from me.”
I can’t trust him. Just as he can’t trust me. I won’t debate him and remind him that there are still things he doesn’t tell me. Secrets that he is wise to keep.
A fine muscle ticks at the edge of his jaw.
“Ask me,” he pleads, “I will tell you anything you want to know.”
There it is. Every moment in A’kori has led me to this. I should seize it, take every speck of what he’s offering. This is the way I complete my mission. But haven’t I already given up every opportunity I’ve had to do justthat?
Perhaps Vos will send me to the afterlife before I succumb to the insanity of my mind. Maybe this is it. My last chance to have every question answered before the end. But when I think about how my life might end, and how I’d like to spend my last days, hours, minutes, I find that it isn’t his answers I want.
It isn’t about trust when I lean in, brushing my lips against his. It’s not about my mission when I encourage the firm press of his body against my own. When he cups my jaw, his tongue delving deeply into my mouth, every fear I have of what could be is stripped from me.
“I want you.” I repeat the same words I spoke to the male before he left.
“You have me.” The heat of his breath tickles my lips, his hands cupping the globes of my ass as he picks me up, hooking my legs around his waist.
I think he might be taking me to the bed when he passes it altogether, laying me on the thick grey pelt splayed out in front of the fire.
His lips envelop my breast, and I suck in a breath. His teeth gently teasing before the soft caress of his tongue. His hands roam across my flesh, exploring my form. The cinch of my waist, the curve of my hips, the shape of my thighs.
When his mouth begins to travel down past my navel, my toes curl expectantly. The slow drag of his tongue as it slides across my core iseverything.
