“It’s not your fault,” Griff attempted to reassure me.
I turned to look at him. I knew my eyes were wide with unshed tears, but I couldn’t help it.“I did this.”
“No.”He was firm.“Hedid this. The enemy did this. And we will stand against him, together.”
Hours later,the council was dismissed. The fatalistic knowledge of all we had to lose rippled through us as Griff and I charged through the hallways. Every second felt borrowed now, stolen from an hourglass that was running empty too fast. And if we were counting down in hours and minutes, we weren’t going to waste a second of it.
“Come on.” He grabbed my hand and all but tugged me up the stairs after him.
“I’m still mad at you.” I attempted to make my voice sound convincing but it came out breathless instead.
He paused on the stairs and the look he gave me was pure challenge. When I joined him on the step, his hand didn’t just slide around my waist, it clutched my back like he was trying to fuse us together.
“Yeah, well, I’m still mad at you too.” With a glance to ensure wewere alone, he kissed me with an urgency that made my heart race, fear and desperation running through us.
“Forgive me?”His mental voice was caught between command and plea.
“No.”But I kissed him back just as desperately.
His chuckle was strained.“Liar.”
When we got to our door, I slipped in front of him, but he immediately pressed against my back, pinning me to the door. The ward forgotten, I spun in his arms to face him.
“You could have died out there,” I said fiercely, my hands fisting in his shirt. “You could have died and I would have felt it and there wouldn’t have been anything I could do except feel your light fade away.”
“But I didn’t,” he said just as fiercely, his hands cupping my face. “I’m here. I’m alive. I’m yours.”
There was a frantic energy to both of us as he took my mouth, driven by the time apart, the confessions of love before we had been rudely interrupted, the memories brought up this night, and the state of the world falling to pieces around us.
“Now open that damned door.”
I spun back around, struggling with the wards as his hand snaked around to cup my breast. I somehow managed to get the door open, and he crashed us through it. Slamming the door shut behind us, he shoved me against it and covered me with all six-foot-whatever of aroused male.
I needed him. Now.
We tore at each other’s clothes, desperate to bare our bodies as we had bared our hearts. Shirts were thrown off. He yanked my pants down so hard they ripped in two as I struggled with his belt, before he took over and undid it himself. Cupping my leg behind my knee, he lifted it up to wrap around his hip, as his finger sought my entrance. I heard a whimper—was that me?
He grabbed my other leg, and with a boost, I was wrapped around him. Reaching between us, I took him in hand and guidedhim into me. He seated himself with a single, frantic thrust. The frenzy fueled us, a white-hot urgency that scorched away everything but this moment, this closeness, proving to each other that we were here. We were alive. And we were in love.
“I will never get enough of you.”His mouth covered mine as he spun us, placing me on the table, the wood cracking and straining against our unhinged movements.“Not if we have forever. Not if we only have tonight.”
I wrapped my entire body around him, knees locked behind his back, arms around his neck, chests pressed together so tightly there was no space between us as we moved as one.
“I need you to survive this. I need us to survive this,”I said.
My fingers bit into his shoulders as he pounded into me, every movement desperate, like he was trying to brand himself into my very soul. But he was already there. He already owned every fragment. I felt the storm building up inside as frantic as the energy consuming us, wild with the need to claim him as thoroughly as he was claiming me.
Never stopping his motions, never stopping his mouth moving over mine, he told me,“I love you, Lexa Andrever. In this life and whatever comes after.”
The words caressing my mind caused that storm to break. As I cried out, clenching around him, I felt him shudder inside me, our yells muffled by each other’s searching lips.
“Always,”I managed to think back, the word carrying every promise I couldn’t speak aloud as the bond between us flared golden-bright, bathing us in the light, sealing the vows we’d made with our words, our bodies, and our souls.
They had takenover the Great Hall. My eyes met Griff’s over the horde of darkness. He was literally kicking people out of his way to get to me, dual swords flashing and cutting through thebodies. I fought off the hands that continually sought to grab me, but there were too many of them. They tugged me backward, away from Griff.
They had separated me from my weapons but I was never without weapons these days. I tunneled into my power, but while I felt it there, bubbling beneath me, I couldn’t summon anything.
“Griff!” I screamed as they dragged me out of his sight.
