In an instant, images of a cherry-red splotch running down porcelain skip before my mind. “The library scribe.”
“He was so close to his end, it took minimal effort.” His tone is bored, but his body isn’t. Not with how his breathing quickens the longer I trace his jaw. “I merely made a slight…adjustment.”
Adjustment.I file the information away, alongside the hint that he can probably bring back the dead. Every limitation he admits to is a crack in an armor I’ll eventually have to pierce.
I slide my touch to his cheek, letting my thumb trace the corner of his mouth. “What happened to her, then? The farm girl.”
“What happened to her is that she will remain a farm girl,” he murmurs, his gaze sliding to my lips before it finds my eyes again. “And you will remain queen in her stead.”
The words land too neatly, too knowingly, to be casual.In her stead.
My thumb stills at the corner of his mouth, and for a heartbeat, the grave feels even narrower, the air thicker—because that’s not the language of a god who stumbled into a trap. Kael may have fooled him in the throne room, but Vale is not stupid. Oh yes, he knows exactly what Kael meant to do.
WhatIam meaning to doin her stead.
I trace my fingers up along his cheek, slow enough that he could stop me if he wanted. He doesn’t. He lets my fingertips find his hair, those too-neat curls damp at the roots from the fog.I comb through them gently, then my fingers drift to his mouth, thumb tracing his lower lip.
He stays perfectly still, allowing the touch, but a dark, taunting smile curls the corner of his mouth against my skin. “Trying to distract me from that wish, little queen?”
“Is it working?” My thumb pads at his bottom lip like one would at a blade to test if it cuts, fingertips tingling with how fast my pulse grows. “Maybe I’m just curious.”
He chuckles, but there’s a mean, vicious edge to it. “Curious.”
His hands shoot up, clamping around my wrists with bruising force. In one fluid, terrifying motion, he wrenches my arms up, pinning them into the dirt on either side of my crown. He rolls, his weight crushing the air from my belly, his hardness pressing against me.
“Curious!” he spits, the amusement gone, replaced by a gaze that burns cold enough to freeze blood. “Or cunning?” He dips his head, his nose brushing against mine, his voice dropping to a lethal whisper. “Do you think I don’t know what you’re doing? Theseduction. Theluring.” He tilts his head, his lips hovering inches from mine, tantalizingly close. “You think you can beckon me into your bed and make me vulnerable enough to bleed over that crown? Little queen, I won’t give you the reaction you seek.”
I buck my hips. It’s a brazen, reckless move, grinding the center of me straight up against the hardness straining beneath his trousers. “I don’t know, but something sure is reacting.”
“A biological imperative,” he snarls, pressing down harder to stop me from moving, which only increases the friction. “A flaw of the human form. Do not mistake this as any progress on your goal, Elara, for I could fuck you right here, and it would merely be an itch scratched.”
“Then do it,” I challenge, lifting my chin. “Scratch the itch.”
He stares at me, chest heaving, sense warring with sensuality. “Infuriating woman!”
He crashes his mouth down on mine.
It’s not a kiss. It’s a collision.
It’s teeth and tongue and a hunger so ancient it feels like it might swallow me whole. He devours me, his grip on my wrists tightening until I’m sure I’ll have bruises in the shape of his fingers. I kiss him back with equal desperation, arching into him, using the slide of our bodies to fuel the fire.
We grind against each other, the wool and velvet creating a maddening barrier.
This better count…
“Has it occurred to you,” he pants, his voice rougher with each grinding stroke, “that yourbelovedKael was wrong? That whatever fairytale logic you depend on is nothing but the hopeful scribbles of a desperate man?”
For a split second, doubt blooms cold in my chest. What if he was wrong? What if I’m debasing myself, stripping my pride raw in a muddy grave, for a solution that doesn’t exist? But then, why is he so damn angry?
No, this is the way.
I yank my hands free. Before he can stop me, I shove my skirts up. Cool air hits my thighs, followed by the searing heat of his weight. I reach between us, my hand fumbling with the fastening of his trousers.
“Elara…” he warns, but his hips betray him, pushing forward into my hand.
I only get two buttons undone. It doesn’t matter. I shove my hand inside, fingers wrapping around the velvet-hot steel of him. Come on…
“I want you inside me.” I tug, struggling against the tight fabric, managing to free only the head of his cock before the waistband traps him again. “Please.”
