Chapter
Thirty-One
Elara
don’t look back.
Not at the king slumped against glass and iron. Not at the shardsI glittering on the stone like teeth. Instead, I run.
I run until my lungs burn, past a startled guard, past the dark windows, and I don’t stop until I crash into my chamber. My hands shake violently as I throw the heavy bolt, locking the door.
Leaning against the wood, I slide down until my knees hit the floor. My breath comes in jagged, tearing gasps that sound too loud in the silence.
A silence interrupted by a voice coming from the dark, low and smooth, scraping down my spine like a cold knife. “There you are.”
I scream, scrambling up and spinning around. “Who—”
Vale is sitting in my wingback chair by the dying fire, one leg crossed over the other, his black riding boots gleaming in the low light. He holds a book in one hand, his finger marking the page as if I’ve interrupted a quiet evening of reading.
The firelight kisses his cheekbones and leaves his eyes half-shadowed— moss-green, unreadable, calm. “Did I startle you?”
“How—” My voice is a wreck. I can’t breathe. “When did you get back? What did you do?”
He closes the book with a soft thud and places it on the side table. His gaze drifts over me—the broth on my skirt, the trembling in my hands.
“Why do you look panicked? What happened?”
“Answer me.”
“Very well.” He rises in one smooth motion that makes my pulse trip, arms clasped behind his back as he slowly walks toward me. “I returned only now and came straight to see you. As for what I did…” He stops a few paces away. “I’m afraid my brother has been fooling both of us all along, feigning that he’s coming to his senses, only to keep me distracted from his own scheme.”
When he takes another step toward me, my finger digs into the bolt behind my back. “Scheme?”
“That foolishness he calls a plan to break the curse.” His lip curls slightly. “Kael has convinced himself that there’s a loophole—a secret back door to the curse that involves dragging a distant relative into this mess, a
cousin a million times removed.”
My throat goes dry. “The infamous her.”
“Yes, her,” he says. “I found a farm girl with no idea of the anvil Kael wanted to drop on her head, no understanding of his delusions about how Death could be outwitted if one only”—his mouth twists—“…arranged the proper theatrics. So I dealt with it.”
My pulse thuds in my throat. “Did you kill her?”
“Why would I kill an innocent girl over my brother’s madness?” His eyes narrow. “I found her at the place where he hid her and simply relocated the girl to somewhere far from Kael’s nonsensical delusion. Perhaps now he
will come to his senses.”
I look at Vale.
He stands there, solid and composed, his breathing even, his expression one of mild, weary annoyance at his brother’s antics. He sounds so
reasonable. So terribly, seductively logical compared to the raving, broken man who just passed out drunk at the greenhouse. What if Kael is the one lying? What if the king, drunk on desperation and wine, invented a nightmare to hurt me? To punish me for ruining his foolish plan?
My gaze drifts past Vale’s shoulder, seeking the windows, seeking the moonlight that Kael claims will bring out the truth. Where’s the outside?
My breath hitches in my throat. Heavy cotton curtains draw across the windows, the threadbare tassels motionless.
I didn’t close them. I left with them open earlier and hurried to Daron right as the sun set, its stark spills of purple and orange still vivid in my
mind. But the curtains are shut now.
He closed them.
Vale’s gaze slides over his shoulder to a window, to a narrow strip of moonlight cutting the floor where the curtains don’t quite meet. Something tightens at the corner of his mouth. Then he looks at me again as though the sight merely bored him.
“Why are you like this tonight? Tense. Trembling.” He creeps toward me, slow enough it pretends to be harmless while the air seems to thin, growing sharp and cold. “Don’t let this get under your skin, Elara. Kael’s little…farce is over. Even he will realize it.” He lifts his hand, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear, fingers hovering a breath from my cheek.
“One way or another, we can still somehow feed the crown.”
My shoulders stay pinned to the door, bolt biting into my spine. I can’t tell which madness to believe. My eyes flick to the curtains again. Only a lunatic would put such a ridiculous thing to the test—and that I want to might make my madness the worst of them all.
“We can use his desperation.” Vale strokes his fingers down my side until they reach my waist. He pulls me into him, burying his face in the crook of my neck, where his breath ghosts over my pulse. “With the girl gone, he has no other moves to make. He’ll come around now. It’s not a defeat, my love. It’s barely even a delay.”
My love. The words land warm at first, soft as a blanket pulled up over shaking shoulders, so familiar in his mouth that my body tries to melt into it before my mind can protest.
And then the echo twists. It crawls backward through my skull and catches on Kael’s voice, raw and furious in the greenhouse. That bastard doesn’t have a heart!
Does he not?
My hand lifts of its own accord and lands on his chest—flat palm to warm skin through linen, right over the steady thud beneath.
A heartbeat. Relentless. Real.
But what if it’s not?
My gaze slides past his shoulder again. I have to know. Have to open those curtains somehow and let the moon show me just where the madness lands.
“I missed you.” Vale’s mouth finds mine.
He kisses me slowly, with patient pressure that turns into certainty the moment my lips part. His hand cups the back of my head, fingers threading into my hair, and the warmth of him presses against me. His other arm bands around my waist, drawing me off the bolt and into his chest until I’m no longer braced for flight.
“There,” he murmurs against my mouth. “That’s better.”
I should shove him away.
Instead, my hands lift and settle against his shoulders like they belong there. Like they remember him. Like they don’t care what he is, only that his closeness makes my panic soften at the edges.
He tilts my chin and kisses along the hinge of my jaw, down to my throat, mouth warm at my pulse. “Take me to your bed.”
I swallow hard, gaze flicking to the window. There’s one beside the bed, but there has to be a better way.
It’s not difficult to make my voice sound strained when I whisper,
“It’s…hot in here.”
Vale hums against my throat. “Mm-hmm.”
“I need air.” I make it light, casual. Nothing but discomfort. “Let me open the window.”
I start to turn my head toward it, shifting my shoulders as if I’m about to step away. My fingers slide from his chest, reaching— Vale catches my wrist.
Not painful, but firm enough that my bones feel held. He draws my hand back to his body and pins it there as if it never belonged anywhere
else. “The wind is biting.”
My breath stutters. “Is it?”
He answers by kissing me harder. His hand leaves my wrist and slides under my dress, palm pressing to the bare skin at my waist. The contact is a
tingling shock. He drags his hand up, slow and sure, as if he’s taking his time to teach my body where to respond.
I hate that it responds. Hate that my breath catches and my hips press forward without permission.
Vale feels it and makes a soft, pleased sound against my mouth. His other hand finds the tie of my dress and tugs it loose with maddening patience. The flimsy thing parts and falls to my hips, baring skin to his gaze.
“Vale…” My voice is thin, half protest, half surrender. “It’s stifling in here.”
His hands slide down my sides, pushing the dress to the floor, letting it expose my body to the firelight. He leans down, warm lips closing over a nipple with a slow pull that snaps a sound out of me before I can stop it.
My head tips back. My fingers clutch at his hair, and I force myself to keep my eyes open, to keep looking past him.
Window. Bed.
It’s the only option.
I pull back just enough to lift my hands to the collar of his shirt. My fingers tremble as I work the first button, then the others, before I shove it down his arms. I undo the buckle on his breeches with frantic haste, working the leather down until he slips out of his boots and kicks it all away.
I close my hand around his cock, the flesh hard, warm, and weeping in my grip. “I want you inside me.”
Vale’s breath grows heavier as he lifts me, hands sure under my thighs, and carries me toward the bed. He lowers me onto the mattress, climbs over me, and the weight of him pins my breath in my chest in a way that feels like safety and a threat tangled together.
He settles between my thighs, the heavy wool of his trousers rough against my sensitive skin, but the heat of him is searing. There’s no muscle- trembling patience this time. He simply lines himself up, thick and heavy against my entrance, and pushes forward.
I gasp, my back arching off the mattress as he fills me. He’s massive, stretching me to the limit, a blunt, overwhelming invasion that feels agonizingly good. He sinks in to the hilt in one slow, relentless slide, reclaiming every inch of space inside me until there’s no room left for air, for thought, for fear.
Vale groans, a ragged, broken sound dropped against my neck.
“Saints…Elara. I needed this. Needed to feel you around me again. It’s been on my mind for days.”
He withdraws and snaps his hips forward, burying himself deep again, and a shudder rakes through his heavy frame that vibrates straight into my bones. He moves with a predator’s grace—efficient, powerful, deeper than any man has a right to reach. Each thrust is a calculated collision, hitting a spot deep inside me that makes my toes curl and my vision blur.
“So perfect,” he grits out, his voice thick with pleasure. He catches my lip between his teeth, biting down just hard enough to sting, grounding me in the sensation. “You feel…there are no words.”
I whimper, my hands clutching his shoulders, my nails digging in. My body is singing under him, melting around him, treacherous and eager. But
my mind is still screaming.
The curtain!
Through the haze of lust, I spot it. The heavy panel hangs just to the right of the bed. I reach out. If I can just snag the fabric…if I can just pull it
back…a…few—
Vale thrusts.
Hard.
The impact shatters my efforts like glass. A moan punches out of my throat, and my hand falls uselessly back to the sheets, my grip failing as pleasure blinds me white. He grinds against me, his hips rolling, hitting that nerve with merciless precision until I’m utterly wrecked beneath him.
I can’t do this. His weight is a mountain pressing me down, pinning me into the sheets. As long as I’m beneath him, I’m powerless.
I need leverage.
“Vale…” I gasp, my hands finding his chest and pushing, shoving against the solid wall of him. “Let me.”
He freezes mid-thrust, his breathing choked. He looks down at me, hair falling into his eyes, his pupils blown wide so the green is merely a thin, burning rim. “Let you what?”
“I want to be on top,” I whisper, the lie sliding over my tongue with terrified ease.
Surprise flickers across his face, followed by a flare of dark, possessive heat. He withdraws slowly, agonizingly, leaving me empty and aching for a
split second before he shifts. He falls back against the pillows, spreading his arms wide in invitation, looking up at me like a man about to be devoured.
“By all means,” he rasps. “Take exactly what you need and want.”
I scramble over him, straddling his hips. The change in dynamic is instantaneous. Beneath me, he looks devastating—throat bared, slick chest heaving, his body a sprawling landscape of muscle and shadow.
I sink down onto him.
He hisses through his teeth, his head tipping back into the pillows, his
neck arching. “Yes…”
I begin to move.
At first, it’s just to find the rhythm, to keep him distracted, but the sensation is overwhelming. He’s so big, so hard, filling me so completely that I forget to breathe. I ride him, grinding down, and his hands come up to
grip my hips.
Not to control me.
But to anchor himself.
He watches me for a moment, his gaze dark and heavy with adoration, before his lashes flutter shut. The sight of him unraveling is intoxicating— the sheen of sweat on his skin, the flushed heat of his throat, the way his lips part on a silent groan as I pick up the pace.
I lean forward, bracing my hands on his chest, dropping my head so my hair curtains us both. I ride him harder, faster, chasing the friction, chasing
the way his hips snap up to meet mine.
I’m close. To the edge.
To the truth.
“Elara,” he groans, his voice ruined. He reaches blindly for me, his
hands sliding up my ribs.
Now.
My hand shoots out. My fingers tangle in the heavy fabric of the curtain. I grip it tight. I look down at him one last time—at the beautiful
man beneath me.
Then I yank. Hard.
The curtain rings shriek against the rod, letting the heavy fabric fly open. And the moon, sharp and brilliant as a blade, slashes across skin more pallid than a corpse. It stretches across exposed ribs in some places; in others, only sinew, wet and ropey, banding across a frame where strings of flesh cling.
Shoulders broaden with a deep, cracking roll. Limbs lengthen beneath me, joints stretching, bones clicking into new angles as if the shape of a man was never more than a cramped garment he finally shrugged off.
I freeze, perched on Death, my thighs braced against something that is no longer soft flesh, but unyielding bone—mandible, sternum, ribs, and tendons that don’t give.
A scream rips out of me—raw, too big for the size of my throat. It’s just
air shredded into pure terror.
He’s a monster!
I scramble off him. My feet find air where floor should be, and I tumble, hips slamming down onto the boards, the impact jolting through my spine and knocking another sharp cry from my mouth.
The bed lurches under the sudden shift as he jumps out. The rafters shrink around him.
“Elara…” His voice is bone and wind and something ancient dragging itself through a throat, coming from a skull where a man’s features should be: cheekbones hollowed on one side, nasal cavity a shadowed notch, pale skin draping in patches over sinew exposed and shifting at the jaw. “Do not—”
“No!” I scoot backward on my hands, frantic, breath coming in ragged, choking bursts. “Don’t come near me. Don’t…d-don’t touch me!”
His eyes take me in.
Not green.
Not even eyes.
Just black, endless pits that swallow the moonlight instead of reflecting it. Long fingers unfurl, bone and tendon moving under strain, and the motion alone detonates my panic.
“No!” I scramble on hands and knees, nails scraping wood, and throw myself under the table by the hearth like it's a sanctuary. “Don’t touch me!”
The words tear out of me ragged and shapeless, more sound than language.
“Don’t—get away, get away, get away—“ My own voice is unrecognizable, pitched too high and climbing higher, the kind of sound that fills a room and bounces back wrong. I press myself into the corner where the table leg meets the wall and pull my knees to my chest. “Go away, go away. Go away!”
A bare heel bone grinds against the wooden floorboards. Darkness bleeds together, weaving into black cloth. An exposed knuckle clicks as he
turns away. A skeletal hand reaches for the door.
The latch lifts.
Cold air rushes in.
The door slams shut, the terror that screamed through my blood pitching down, dropping from panic into a heavy, suffocating shock.
I curl my knees to my chest and rock, back and forth, hands clawing at my arms, fingers digging into dead-cold skin. The room blurs, the shadows beneath the table stretching up to pull me down.
