13
ARWEN
OU DIDN’T HAVE TO WAIT FOR US,” I SAID TO FEDRIK.
The streets were empty at the strange hour—too late for the now-Y weary revelers, too early for the morning risers. We were alone save for a sleeping beggar and a stray tabby cat. I could smell the freshly caught fish and garden-grown kumquats from the nearby taverns, and I sucked in a lungful.
“I was too worried to go back with your brother and friend,” Fedrik said, placing a hand on the small of my back. Griffin pushed off a stone column he had been leaning against to walk beside us. His expression was tight, being stuck outside with Fedrik clearly not how he wished to spend his night.
Fedrik guided me down a narrow alley on the way back to the palace. I had hoped his palm against my back might soothe me, or elicit something pleasant, but it didn’t. Only that same suffocating hollowness settled back
into my bones.
“What happened in there?” he asked.
“We got a map to the blade,” Kane said to him, stepping into pace beside us.
Kane wiped his brow against the temperate night air. His shirt was coming unbuttoned and revealed a glistening, broad chest, and his sleeves had been rolled up to allow for seamless violence. His raven hair, so befitting of his namesake, curled at his neck from the humidity. A petrifying nightmare and bewitching dream all at once.
“And,” he continued, with that tilted, murderous curve of his lips, “I killed Crawford.”
Words lodged in my throat. Was he gloating?
Fedrik looked bewildered.
“Told you,” Griffin huffed to Fedrik.
We weaved through a couple of disheveled fishermen making their way home from a tavern after what—given the rich odor of rum that permeated the air as we neared them—must have been a raucous night of heavy drinking.
Jealousy swamped me. I wouldn’t have minded another glass of that orange wine myself.
“For men who could be tried for murder, you both seem quite glib.”
Prince Fedrik’s words were coy but his tone was cutting. I stepped closer to him, and Kane studied the movement as if it were a personal insult.
“For someone who just lost a gambling buddy,” Kane said, “you don’t seem all that bereft.”
“He wasn’t my buddy. He was my parents’ friend.”
“I didn’t know there was a difference,” Kane hissed, and then, before Fedrik could defend himself, “You weren’t aware he traded stolen goods?”
“You think petty thieves deserve to be murdered? You really are as ruthless as they say.”
“The trafficking of young Mer girls isn’t petty thievery.”
I shut out the unfathomable images that flooded my mind. Fedrik, too, said nothing, rendered silent by disgust.
Kane only nodded, his eyes cold on the prince. “Some ruler of the kingdom you are. Commander Griffin can escort you back to the castle. I require my healer’s assistance.” Kane lifted his hand to us, knuckles bloody.
Fedrik turned in my direction. “Do you need me to stay?”
“She’s fine,” Kane thundered.
But Fedrik’s eyes stayed on mine, and an incomprehensible giggle nearly burst from me. Maybe at the raw fury Kane would unleash if I said yes. Or maybe at the naive idea that if Kane wanted to hurt me, there was anything at all Fedrik could do to stop him.
“He’s right,” I finally said. “I’m fine, thank you.”
Fedrik lifted my hand to his mouth, pressed a single kiss there, and retreated to the palace without so much as a look to Kane. Griffin watched
him go but made no move to follow.
“Pathetic,” Kane spat.
Under flaming turquoise streetlamps, the city was bathed in uneven tones of blue and black and gold that painted him like angry brushstrokes.
I folded my arms against the wind as it sailed through the city streets.
“What is? Leaving when I asked? Respecting someone’s wishes? Can you even fathom such a thing?”
“No,” he snarled. “Not when it comes to your safety.”
“Clearly the only thing I need to be kept safe from is you.” I gestured to the café and the dead body that was still cooling within its walls.
Kane sighed, drawing a hand over his forehead. “He had to die.”
“Funny, I’ve heard you say that before.”
“Probably because it was true.”
“Or because you get off on it. Because you’re sick.”
He prowled toward me, eyes black. Pure poison black. When he was so close I could smell his leather and sweat, he murmured, “I’ll show you what I fucking get off on.”
“All right,” Griffin cut in, jolting me and slicing the tension between us. I had forgotten he was standing there. “I think that’s enough for tonight.”
“Go home, Griffin,” Kane snarled, eyes never leaving my pursed lips.
“We’re fine.”
“You could have turned Crawford in to the king and queen. Why did you murder him?” I pressed. “Do you like it?”
“He knew who you were. He also traded little Mer girls like candies to his friends. You don’t think a man like that deserves death?”
I spun on my heel with his words and walked away from the narrow courtyard, out into the wider street where I could breathe. “That’s not the point. You will always find the worst men and kill them. Not because they deserve it, but because you want to hurt.”
Kane stepped into pace beside me, Griffin already strides ahead, sick of
our bickering.
I was, too.
“And what?” Kane pressed. “You’ll save every trembling asshole who says please until one of them turns around and slices you clean through?”
“There is nothing wrong with showing people mercy. I shouldn’t have expected a savage like you to understand.”
“You know what? That’s good. Be angry with me. I’m angry with me.
About Siren’s Bay. The prophecy. Your mother—”
I stopped cold. “Don’t you speak of her—”
“I welcome your anger. Relish it, in fact. Much better than watching you walk through life like a corpse. So give me the worst of it. I’ll take anything you’ve got. Just stop putting yourself in situations like that to feel something.”
Shame coated my throat. “Situations like what?”
“Drinking recklessly, taunting Crawford, taking your damned clothes off —you’re going to get yourself killed trying to feel alive.”
“You think I want something to happen to me?”
“I’m starting to think that’s exactly what you want.”
“That’s not— I’m not— You know nothing about me.” I tried to cut around him and nearly toppled into his chest. Looking past him, I realized we were alone. Our only company the distant sound of waves crashing against the shore and crickets chirping in the lush cypress trees.
“Don’t I? I know what you fear. I know what you pray for. I know how you like to be touched, how you taste . . .”
When his eyes lit with something raw, something primal, I raised my hand to hit him. To channel my fury into something palpable and tangible like his smug, male face. But my fist collided with his palm instead of his jaw. He held my hand in midair as he stepped closer, invading my senses.
“I let you do that once, bird,” he murmured. “It won’t happen again.”
We were pressed together now, and I could feel his body against mine, warm from wanting and hard like stone. His thumb stroked softly along my still-wound fist, and I hummed involuntarily at the sensation.
His eyes emptied of all silver. Pure predatory pupil.
And I could admit it to myself.
How badly I had missed his body. His smell. His muscled chest—both comforting and deadly powerful.
But now there was something else, too. The need to follow that surge of pure heat. The rush expanding my lungs, the fire funneling through my blood when he looked at me with that excruciating, near-predatory lust—I was spellbound by it. And a bit insatiable.
I reached higher on my toes, needing to feel that heavy, thick weight that was pressing against my stomach a little lower. Just a little—the friction at my core as I pressed myself against him brought another hum from my lips.
He grunted. “What happened to don’t touch me?”
“Who said anything about you touching me?”
“Such a cruel, wicked little bird.”
“Maybe so.” I wasn’t sure what I was asking for, but still I said, “Please, Kane.”
“Fuck,” he groaned, finally, blessedly, releasing my fist to run his hands up my sides—those hands, like they were made for my body—and scoop me into a bruising kiss.
All I could make sense of were our tongues, and our mingled, hissing breath, and my hair, twisted in those massive hands of his, and him, as he cradled my head, coaxing rushed breaths and whimpers from me— I knew I had missed the curve of his lips against my own, knew I had been craving him like a habit I couldn’t kick, but had never expected—never known—it would be like this. Like breathing again after weeks and weeks and weeks without air.
Kane backed me against the sandstone wall beneath a covered balcony— long dress tangling underfoot as he maneuvered me by the rib cage to exactly where he pleased—and palmed my ass and hips hungrily, lifting me against him. Kissing roughly as if at any moment, I was going to change my mind.
The shameful truth was that I could do nothing of the sort—I was already damp for him between my legs, and each soft groan that rumbled from his broad chest made me wetter, that pulse in my core more demanding.
He deepened our kiss—a raw, searching, messy thing—taking his time, slowing to be more thorough, and when his thumb lazily circled my pointed nipple through the sheer fabric, I groaned into his mouth.
He hissed in pleasure, aligning our bodies so his cock pushed harder against me.
I writhed along him, clawed at him, nails scratching at his neck so hard I thought I might draw blood. The image only ignited me further. Under the vines above us, cloaked in night, I swirled my tongue along his, swallowing his grunts and sighs, feeling his hands work their way lower, lower, lower— “Can I?” he ground out against my lips, when his thumb grazed between
my thighs.
Yes, yes, yes.
Sparks and flames were rushing through me, lighting me from the inside
out.
Wild, reckless, stupid, but alive— I nodded my head vehemently, my lips wet against his. He was breathless as he groaned my name. Like he was suffering interminable torture.
I fished for his leather laces. I felt no shame—he wanted me. And that single truth thrummed through my entire body like liquid lightning.
His lips found the base of my throat—licking, lapping, teeth and breath— as he rubbed me, making me mewl. I whimpered again as he sucked my collarbone, palmed my breast, holding my body like it was precious—
Delicate— Something worth worshipping.
The kiss was turning. Becoming emotional. Intimate. He was cradling my face with such reverence, fusing his body into mine with care and effort.
Giving me such space, such freedom with his body . . . Poignant, personal, so much so that I could almost hear his heart— “Stop,” I rasped. “Let me go.”
He shuddered, but lowered me to the ground instantly, pants still half- unlaced. His breathing was as heavy as my own.
I stared at him, unable to form words around the piercing ache in my chest.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he managed. “I can’t breathe when you look at me like that.”
All the boldness in those eyes—all that lust—gone. The moon was a bath of light across his charcoal hair, his knotted brow, his heaving chest.
“What do you want from me?” he asked, voice too low.
Angry tears burned behind my eyes. I swallowed against them. My lips
stung.
I felt like screaming.
He shook his head, gazing toward the harbor, where the moonlight was fading, making way for a prying sun.
“I don’t know . . .” I shuddered in a ragged inhale. “You broke—you broke my heart.”
He flinched at my words. The look of shock on his face would have been priceless an hour ago. I would have reveled in the triumph of surprising him,
of eliciting such a reaction from him.
But not now.
“You asked me once if I thought love was a weakness,” he said, too low.
“You, Arwen. You are my weakness.”
“Then I’m doing you a favor.” My voice sounded cold even to my own ears.
My whole life I had been all too weepy. An easy crier in both joy and despair.
Now, I couldn’t produce one single tear.
I sucked in a steady inhale, the confusing emotions already retreating.
Spinelessly slinking under that foundation of numbness.
Kane’s eyes were as hard as granite and just as sharp. “You’re scared. To be with me, to feel something, now that you have to face all that I tried to protect you from.” He inhaled, too, running a shaking hand through his hair in exasperation. “I understand, I do. Just don’t say you’re doing this to save me the pain. It’s too late for me.”
I wanted to say it was too late for me, too. That I was doomed. That I wouldn’t have enough time left in this world to heal from his lies, his betrayal, from the trauma of the last few weeks, and then, after I had repaired
all the parts of me that had shattered, to see if there was anything left inside that was capable of giving him another chance.
Giving us another chance.
Under the last dregs of pure moonlight all I found to say was “I’m sorry.”
