Page 67 of The Poison Princess and the Lord of Misrule

And I?—

Well, I came here to do the same, didn’t I? Far worse, admittedly, by putting a rusted blade into Aldric’s heart before his whole court. I’m no innocent in all this. I’m a murderer who simply hasn’t yet managed the deed.

To wit, my dagger vanished from the chamber floor. Aldric has kept it again, my rusted little murder hinged on the moment he choosesto produce it.

Who am I to flinch from her, then? Who am I to look at the dark thing in her—this daughter of poison, raised in a court of thorns, sent into a cruel king’s house to destroy him—and question it? She’s of a different realm, a goddess in her own right. And who am I to question a goddess’s appetite?

Admittedly, I’ve wanted nothing more than to see the king perish—but I also see how satisfied she is, having us both serve her.

And if feeding her appetite requires my compliance, my utter surrender, then I fear I have little choice in the matter.

Shamefully, I’ve never been more aroused, more desperate with want than the moment Aldric commanded me to fuck her—and I watched him take her with the same breathless want, her body pushed to the brink of pleasure.

By giving in to the king’s lecherous desires, we’re both falling further into a den of lust. All three of us bound to feed our fleshly cravings.

Just thinking about it has my cock achingly hard and pressing into her, my touches turning rough as I pin her to the floor, letting my weight fall heavy on top of her body.

“Goddess, yes…please…” she moans into the kiss, and I deepen it, working the closure of my trousers open and rocking into her with hastened movements.

I didn’t fall in love with a gentle woman. I fell in love with a blade.

“You are the goddess, Sera,” I breathe against her mouth. “My goddess of poisons and devastating ruin.”

She tips her face up to mine. Her dark eyes are searching, vulnerable in a way she only ever lets them be here, with me. “And what does that make you, then?”

I thrust deeper, drawing the sweetest sound from her. “Ruined,” I tell her honestly. “Completely. Utterly ruined.”

The sun is starting to set by the time we’re spent, the candle guttering low, and I know she’ll be slipping out of my arms soon. I hold on regardless, her body warm and loose against mine in the aftermath of our reckless lovemaking.

She’s tracing my face in the candlelight, and her fingertips find the scar. She doesn’t skate past it the way everyone else does. She follows it, slow, like reading a line of text in one of her books.

“You still owe me an answer to a question, Renick Ashbourne.”

“Do I.”

Her chin comes to rest on my chest, her dark eyes lit with wicked pleasure. “I’ve waited long enough to collect.”

“And I presume a Thorn Court woman never forgives a debt.” I sigh, mournful as I can manage. “Go on, then.”

Her finger settles at the top of the scar, where it splits my brow. “How did this happen?”

I look at the ceiling a moment, at the shadows the candle makes of the shelves, and I find I don’t dread telling her.

“I was nineteen,” I say. “It was during a bad winter, right after the third levy, when the grain wagonswent to the palace under guard and Harrowglade was left empty. Kammy was eight, and she’d stopped complaining about being hungry, which was worse.” Her hand goes still on my chest. I cover it with mine. “There was a grain merchant two villages over. I went over his wall on a moonless night with a sack and every intention of keeping my record as a thief never caught.”

“You were caught,” she says.

I tap the scar. “His guard was stealthier than me apparently. Blade opened me brow to cheek before I even heard him move.” I feel her flinch, and I rub her arm. “Still, I kept the bread. Went over the wall with two loaves inside my coat, and I’d do it again.” I grin down at her. “It was very good bread.”

I earn a sweet smile from her. She’s quiet a long moment, then she rises over me and presses her lips to my brow where the scar begins. Then to my eyelid, over the pale eye, so gently, then to my cheek where it ends.

“One dark, one light,” she murmurs against my skin. “I thought, that first day in the throne room, that some god had marked you.” Her mouth curves. “I guess I was right. You were marked for feeding someone you loved.”

She says it like a blessing. She has no idea she’s read my future off my face as easily as my past, and I hold her closer so she can’t read my eyes, letting her think the shiver that runs through me is the cold.

I trace the line of her spine as I change the topic. “Threnmere. The Thorn Court. Tell me about it.”

And she does. She tells me about the keep of black stone, the gardens that grow things that grow nowhere else, the great hall lit against the dark, her mother with her steady voice and her steadier hands. She tells me about the soil, damp and acidic, perfect for the things she loves.