Chapter
Seventeen
Galantia Present day, Deepmarsh Castle, Galantia’s chamber
alms pressed to my ears, I startled when another flare of light illuminated my chamber, lengthening and distorting the shadows that moved across the floor, creeping, crawling.P “Stop acting like a scared child,” I mumbled to myself, my pulse thrashing wildly right above my sternum. “It’s just a storm. Nothing but lightning and—”
A roar shook my bed.
My spine snapped straight, tossing me onto my back just in time to watch hazy black tendrils fade from the ceiling. Righteous terror settled cold onto my skin, slithering all the way to my bones with the wails of the wind.
Within seconds, my bladder seemed to fill to bursting. Gods damn this place! Not a single fucking tree to break those constant howls scratching along the castle, loud enough I heard them through the violent crashes of thunder that echoed across miles upon miles of open marshland.
The next lightning strike nearly blinded me, putting black and white specks into my vision—and they weren’t the only things that shifted in the room. Right there, on the little square cutout where wall
met ceiling, the tangles of leather strips shifted. Maybe the wind.
Maybe not, because a fading flicker of light reflected a set of beady eyes. They filled in the shadows of the nares that sat at the top of a long black beak.
A raven.
I yelped, legs frantically kicking until my back pressed against the wooden headboard and my quilt gathered around my naked feet in a crumpled mess. “Go away!”
The raven took flight, only to land on the floor near the glowing hearth. In one quick move, too fast for my eyes to follow against the ebb and flow of light, it shook the water off its feathers. Then, the beast hopped toward me.
I scooted toward the edge of my bed. “I said, go away!”
The raven stopped and tilted its head, revealing something that sat clasped in its beak, shiny and long. The animal watched me, turning and angling its head as though it listened to the frantic little breaths that fanned along my lips. What was this thing doing here? Where did it belong? Or rather… to whom? Malyr?
When the bird remained still, I dared a glance at the cutout, its purpose now painfully clear. No doubt the Ravens had equipped every room with these, and I just hadn’t noticed. But no more birds followed, the leather strings that kept the wind out once more calm and unmoving.
Slowly, the black-plumed bird spread its wings, its head bobbing up and down. A warbling sound resonated from the back of its throat like a ballad of gentle croons. Why was it acting so strangely?
“Go! Shoo!” I quickly grabbed the edge of my quilt, letting the fabric ripple and whip across my bed. “Leave me alone! Go back to where you—”
Lightning struck, fading my surroundings until nothing but white remained for one second. Wings flapped. My muscles tensed. Where was it?
Thunder boomed.
I jumped out of bed with a yelp, stumbling back into the wall just as the bird landed on the quilt.
“S-Sebian…” I mumbled mindlessly, all pride and bravery bled away from my veins as I called for the only person in this place who might help me with this stray bird. “Sebian!”
What felt like an eternity passed in flickering lights and creeping shadows as I pushed myself out of the corner and along the wooden partition. I’d rather run in my nightshift through the castle than have this bird maim me.
The raven mirrored my sideways movement, hopping along the length of the bed, and more crooning sounds followed. Opening its beak ever so slightly, it let a string of some sort fall onto the
quilt.
What was this? Why did this animal— With a flap of its wings that sent a storm of panic through me, the bird hopped to the floor. It leapt toward me faster than I could dodge, disappearing under the flowing train of my shift as I stumbled along the partition. Claws scurried over the stone. Feathers brushed across my ankles. Something hit my calf. The beak?
With a cry, I kicked at the air or the raven or both. I spun around, only to trip over the leg of the table that held my wash basin. Wood moaned. Water splashed. Coldness licked at my chest before pottery shattered.
I ignored it all, raced toward my door, and ripped it open. My naked feet slapped the stone as I hurried across the hall. I slammed against Sebian’s chamber door, pounding it with my fists.
“Sebian!” I shouted, screamed. “Let me in. Oh, gods, please let me in! Open! Sebia—”
I fell forward, and perhaps I would have tumbled straight to the ground, wasn’t it for how he
caught me, pulled me against him. “What on earth is going on!?”
“There’s a raven!”
“What?” He glanced into the seemingly empty corridor before he stared down at me from eyes heavy with sleep. “What are you talking about?”
“Malyr’s raven. Or… I don’t know.” Malyr had left me blissfully alone these last few days; in fact, I wasn’t sure he’d been in the castle. But what if he’d returned with a vengeance? “A raven came into my chamber through that… that… hole thing in the wall. It wouldn’t leave. Then it… it pecked at my feet!”
He squatted, lifting the train of my shift ever so slightly to look at them, only for his gaze to return with one brow lifted. “There isn’t a single wound.”
My mouth turned dry. There wasn’t? But that bird had attacked me… had it not?
“It was just a nightmare, Galantia,” he said as he rose.
“It wasn’t—”
My mouth snapped shut. He was nearly bare. A detail I must have missed when I’d stormed in here in my terror.
Instead of a shift, he wore nothing but light brown cotton trousers that showed every damnable inch of the outline of his cock. The stretched waistband sat low on his hips, where two valleys rose in the shape of a V toward the sides of his stomach. One of which was partially covered in burn marks, the puckered skin reaching all the way up to his shoulder, from where it encapsulated his entire arm. I didn’t want to imagine the pain of such a widespread wound… “I wasn’t dreaming.” I averted my gaze. “There is a raven in my chamber.”
He turned toward the corridor. “Wait here.”
The moment he disappeared, my eyes wandered to his hearth and higher from there. Until they settled on yet another cutout by the ceiling. The entire castle was full of them, wasn’t it?
“Your chamber is a mess but it’s empty,” Sebian said, closing the door, but it was the sight of him, his nearness, that smoothed away my chills of dread.
“There was a raven.”
He walked up to me until he stood close enough that I could smell sweet remnants of wine on his grinning lips. “Extraordinary…”
My teeth clenched at the sarcasm lacing his tone as more thunder rumbled nearby. “It shouldn’t be in my chamber.”
“So you thought the best course of action was to storm into mine…” his gaze took a stroll down my form before his eyes finally settled somewhere on my chest, “looking like this?”
I stared down at myself, only now realizing I must have gotten my shift wet when I’d stumbled into my wash table, given how the fabric clung to my body like second skin. And a sheer one at that, showing the rosy dark areola around my nipple.
“I called for you, hoping you might hear me.” I quickly folded my arms in front of my chest as a spluttering sound escaped my lips. “So much about amplified senses…”
Scoffing, he lifted his hand, combing his fingers through those long black strands he carried loose for once, brushing them over to one side to reveal the sheared part on the other. “My anoa isn’t with me right now. I sent him away so I could fall to sleep with this dreadful storm. He’ll be back soon.
Anoas hate separating from their unkindness for too long.”
“So that damn bird in my chamber was yours?”
“Did the idiot stumble over its own two legs and fly straight into a wall? Because that’s him.”
“No, but it acted… strangely. Spread its wings, crooned and bobbed its head.”
He squinted, the reaction amplified by a strike of lightning that flickered across the slits that remained. “That… doesn’t sound like my anoa at all.”
“Who, then?”
“Malyr? Some drunk? What does it matter? The bird’s gone, sweetheart.” One step brought him closer. “I think you should leave, too.” He pressed his lips together, and he wetted the bottom one before his voice returned darker, grittier. “It’s not becoming of a lady to be here with me. Alone.
Remember? Something to do with… indecent things.”
My breathing altered at the taunting mirth in his voice, rousing a nervous tingle in my chest. Right at this moment, I wasn’t sure what would be worse—being with him here, or being alone there. What if the raven returned? But I could hardly stay here, could I?
The way I glanced around the chamber must have given away my thoughts, because Sebian stroked a scarred finger along the underside of my chin, bringing my eyes to meet his. “Unless you want to stay?”
It was treacherous, that sense of relief that settled on my lungs as I slowly exhaled. “Would you let me?”
“Depends.” A swipe of his thumb over my bottom lip. “What will you give me in return?”
My guts tied into a knot. “What do you want?”
He took my wrist, pulled my hand away from my chest and placed it on his hardening cock.
Before I managed to pull back, his fingers curled around mine, enclosing his hardening shaft sitting behind cotton. It swelled against my touch, rocking against my knuckles as moisture appeared beneath my fingertip.
“You’ll leave as much a virgin as you arrived,” he all but groaned against the side of my neck.
“Trust me.”
I pulled my hand away and stepped back. “I can’t.”
His long black strands fell along both sides of his face, filling the area beneath his cheekbones with shadows as he stared at me. For a moment, I expected him to grab me, to force me.
Instead, he turned around, took his bow that leaned in the corner, and pushed it into the clasp of
my hand. “Whack it.”
“Wh-what?”
“The raven, sweetheart.” Now he grabbed me, led me toward the door, and opened it. “Should it come back, just aim at the head. Try not to break my bow. It’s plumed.”
“What?” I braced against the way he shoved me into the corridor. “But—”
A startling strike of lightning illuminated the corridor. Shadows crept and crawled over the ground, along the walls, along the ceiling toward me. Thunder crackled in the sky like whiplashes, deepening into rolling bellows that slowly penetrated the basalt rocks until the entire castle shook with a desperation that matched my own.
“I don’t want to go back to my chamber.”
Not alone. Not on such a night.
But most of all, not alone!
He stepped closer once more, and I sensed his hard cock against my backside. “Sounds like a predicament to me…”
“You’re still angry with me,” I said. “Because of the argument at the market.”
“You know who’s even angrier with you? Malyr. Perhaps you want to knock on his door? Ask if you can climb under his covers?”
That suggestion was starting to put things into perspective. If he promised that I would remain
unblemished, was this not worth it? Justified even, in light of the fact that the bird might have been Malyr’s? What if he came to my chamber? Was staying with Sebian not better? Safer?
His breath fanned my earlobe where he rasped, “I’m not going to hurt you, Galantia. You have my word that you will leave here with your maidenhead intact.”
My muscles quivered as I clung to the calmness in his voice, the reassurance of his words. No, Sebian had never hurt me, had never lied to me. At least… I didn’t think he had.
“Be honest with yourself just once, Galantia. You want this. And if Malyr was here right now, chances are that you’d want him, too. But he isn’t. It’s just you and me, and I don’t get off on hurting you. I get off on pleasing you.” He pressed a finger into a taut muscle along the side of my neck, rubbing away the tension. “I’ll make certain you enjoy this, just like in the library. That felt good,
didn’t it?”
My pulse fluttered. “Yes.”
Little panting breaths heaved from my chest as his palm glided down my arm, removing the bow from my hand and letting it clank to the ground before he clasped my waist. He gently kneaded toward the barely-covered flesh of my hip until it warmed, heated, then hiked up my shift.
“Sebian,” I breathed, hypnotized by the way his fingers explored and mapped the shape of my body as he slowly slid the cotton upward. “I’m not sure if—”
“Shh…” Hushing me, he pushed the fabric up and over my head, exposing my naked body to the chill of the night. “Am I hurting you?”
I clenched my thighs and hid my breasts behind my arms. “No, but—”
“No. I’m not hurting you, am I?” Arm slung around my belly, he walked us backward, and slammed the door shut. “All I want is to touch you, sweetheart. Make you feel good, like I did in the
library. Is that a bad thing, hmm?”
“No.”
“No,” he echoed as he walked me over to his bed, his hard shaft pressed tightly against my lower back. “And you’re going to come for me again, aren’t you?”
His fingers skimmed down my belly, climbing between my thighs until they pressed down over my clit, letting rich shivers ripple across nearby muscles. My whimper found voice when his fingers adopted a circling motion, rousing an overwhelming heat.
“Fuck, you’re sensitive, already twitching beneath my fingertips. I barely touched you, sweet thing. Turn around and sit.” The moment I did, he pushed his trousers down, freeing his erection.
“Look at me.”
He clasped my chin before I managed to avert my gaze, lifting my eyes without saying another word. For long moments, he just stood in front of me, demanding that I take all of him in—the hard slabs of muscle that rose and sank with his breaths, the perfectly smooth skin that draped over them, the defined ridges and deeply-cut valleys along his abdomen.
Gods, he was beautiful, scars and all.
He lifted my hand to his cock. “Touch me.”
His bulbous, slick crown pressed into my palm, letting worry and excitement coil deep in my belly. His hard shaft was thick and long, twitching beneath my touch. How soft the skin was. How the raised veins lining it pulsed with blood.
“Lie down.” He climbed onto the bed, making me scoot back until my back hit the furs. “Spread those legs for me, Galantia.”
Before a word of objection crossed my lips, he pressed one knee between my thighs, then the other, prying my legs apart. “Sebian, I don’t—”
“Stop fussing,” he said as the heat of his body lowered onto mine, bringing with it the scent of nature. “It’s not like I get to fuck you the way I want.”
His cock pressed against my mound, sending my mind into a dizzying spin. More intoxicating was the way he rounded his back as he thrust his hips forward, sliding his hot flesh along my clit.
A string of moans parted my lips as liquid heat pulsed between my legs. “Oh, gods… Sebian…”
“There we go. That’s my good girl, moaning my name so nicely.” He kept the weight of his strong chest off me with one arm as he rocked back and forth with an intensity that shook my breath. “Does that feel good, sweetheart? The way my cock is rubbing along your clit?”
“Yes…”
The tip of his nose brushed the fine wisps along my temple, sending a wave of gooseflesh across my skin that hardened my nipples. His fingers found them, taking turns in circling them, pulling them, teasing them until they ached.
He rolled his pelvis against mine, sending one delicious shiver after the other across my body until my skin buzzed. The tantalizing pressure, the devastating rhythm, the way his crown sometimes slipped against my center, only to glide upward again without entering me… Gods, this Raven could move!
“You’re so beautiful, Galantia,” he murmured. “Fuck, I want you so badly.”
My heart sang in my chest.
He wanted me. Badly.
Nobody had ever wanted me at all.
His words emboldened me, making me shift my hips, letting my pelvis join his rhythm. I even dared a glance down between us, watching his crown emerge, shiny and plump, from my curls. A glistening string clung to the slit, dripping into my curls. Seed?
“That’s it, sweet thing.” Deep, masculine groans shook the air. “Roll your hips with mine.”
At those sounds of his pleasure, I rocked against him with more vigor, causing his crown to slip to my entrance once more. To press against it. Dip into me slightly. How would it feel if he pushed inside me? Would it burn? Would it tingle?
“Easy…” Sebian hushed and pulled back, angling his hips just so before he thrust upward and over my mound. “You want me dead, sweetheart? Because Malyr’s going to kill me if I get in there.”
Sebian kept his rhythm for a long time, thrusting at a sensual pace, gliding his shaft over my throbbing bud until tingles sparked through the pool of heat. Sweat broke across my forehead and my toes curled.
“Are you going to come for me, sweetheart?” He slowed his motion, pressing his shaft right on my clit where he pulsed his hips. “Come for me, Galantia. Come for me so good.”
“Sebian…” I cried out as waves of convulsions crested over me, washing them across my body, stringing every muscle tight for several torturous seconds.
“Fuck, I love it when you say my name like that,” he hummed as his pace quickened, letting his moans come closer together, faster, more desperate. “I’m going to make such a mess on your belly, sweetheart.”
Mind drowning under the flood of pleasure and bliss, I barely noticed how he lost his rhythm, stalled, picked it up again, stalled once more. Only when wet warmth splashed against my belly to the sound of his oomph, did I look down, watching how ropes of glistening seed shot from his crown.
Lots of them. They coated my belly, hit the flesh of my breast, pooled in my navel.
Sebian breathed hard for a while, his cock twitching, until he nuzzled the top of my head. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
Muscles numb, mind dazed, I watched how he fished his trousers from the floor. He wiped his seed from my belly with it, gave his still-jutting cock a quick wipe down, then tossed it into the darkness.
“Come on, under the furs with you.” He lowered himself down next to me, pulled me close against him until my head rested on his chest, and draped several large furs over us.
“What if Malyr finds us like this?”
“He’s been pretty preoccupied these days,” he said. “Besides, he won’t bother you while you’re with me, I promise. Just… try to sleep for once.”
I nodded, inhaling the musk of his skin. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Where is your fated mate?”
Time passed in strikes of lightning and rumbles of thunder before he finally said, “Sparkling
among the stars.”
Dead.
At that realization, I remembered how shaggy one of his ravens had looked the day Sebian had captured me. Had he ever met her? Or had his ravens started pulling their feathers out one day, announcing her death before he ever had the chance to find her? That one person he had been fated to love forever?
My heart ached for him when I closed my eyes, the storm drowned-out against the even beat of his heart. As my body grew lax, I found an unexpected sense of safety in the embrace of this Raven—the one who’d suffered immense loss at the hands of the man who would hold me next… At that thought, I curled myself tighter against him. “Thank you for keeping me safe tonight.”
His chest stilled, skipping a breath, until it returned its rhythm to the tousling of his fingers in my hair. “Sleep.”
