Chapter
Thirty-Eight
Galantia Present Day, Deepmarsh Castle
he soft morning sun cast glimmers over the powdery snow that blanketed the meadow beside the castle, except for the muddy-brown, circular trail Liual had stomped into the groundT beneath us. Each of his trotting steps jostled me around on his back, making me look like a straw doll as I slipped and shifted in the saddle.
Not so much Malyr, who sat behind me, gracefully flowing along with the choppy steps as he let a disgruntled exhale blow into my hair and tug on the strands. “Go with the movement.”
Another jolt tossed me a few inches out of the saddle and, when I came back down, made my ass bump against the upthrust of the gelding’s spine, which had me curl my hand around the pommel.
“There’s nothing flowing about—”
“Hands off the pommel.” He slapped my hand away—for the fifth time—sending a searing pain into knuckles already red from previous punishment. “There is no balance to be found there. It has to come from your spine when it aligns with his.”
My molars ground together in frustration. “Oh, I’m aligning myself with his spine perfectly,
coming down with my ass on it each time he seems to lift it, which catapults me right back out of the saddle.”
Another sighing exhale, then Malyr gave the command that let Liual slow into a walk. More jostling followed, the disappearance of forward thrust so sudden, my upper body hinged at the hip. It nearly tossed me over the horse’s neck, wasn’t it for how I grabbed the pommel.
“You are concerned about your rear, whereas I am starting to fear for my horse’s back.” Malyr ripped the reins from my fingers, fisted them about two hand-widths above their ends, stopped Liual, and—whack! “Hands off the pommel.”
My whipped fingers splayed out and my hands lifted off the saddle, stiffly hovering over it as the most curious pain spread across their backs like icy-hot tendrils. On the right one, where the leather ends had struck the hardest, the reddened skin started to welt ever so slightly. The sight injected a thrill into the pain, amplified by the way Malyr lifted one hand to my throat, making my head tilt sideways with no more but a little stub of his thumb against my jaw.
“I want you to loosen up those stubbornly stiff hips of yours and start rocking them like you did in the bathtub when you fucked me, and make sure your ass stays glued to this saddle for an entire circle,” he growled along the exposed side of my neck, letting his warm breath caress me through that tingle between my legs. “But if you separate even an inch from the leather, I will carry you into the stables, bend you over the saddle rack, and whip that delicious ass of yours red with these reins. Then I’ll put you back on the horse, and I swear by the goddess, Galantia, every time you lift from the saddle, you will be punished with hellfire the moment you come back down.”
His words, though harsh, were swathed in sensuality, a tingling caress that sent shivers down my spine. What if I wanted to know what that particular pain felt like? Not like the broad swats of his palm when they’d come down on my rear, that much was certain. How then? Sharper? Rippling?
Presume I would have to bounce and jostle some more to find out… Pulling away from his clasp, I retook possession of the reins. “You’re an insufferable teacher.”
But a good one; one who had thrown the heavy saddle into my lap right after a shared breakfast of oat porridge. He’d watched me struggle the heavy thing toward Liual’s back, offering not a single finger of help but plenty of snickers when I ended up dragging a trunk beside the horse so I may get it
done before spring.
It was vexing.
It was empowering.
Because for the first time in my life, I didn’t just watch life from within the safety of gentle hands.
Malyr’s hands were rarely gentle, but they certainly never coddled. No, they shoved me straight into
life, demanding I participated.
And I loved it.
“I would rather canter some more,” I said and, with a bump of my calves, sent Liual back into a walk along the muddy circle. “It’s much easier to sit.”
“Which is exactly why I have you practicing the trot,” Malyr said, letting one hand run from my waist, down over my hip and along my fur-lined shadow dress. “A horse can trot for hours, but a canter will tire it out quickly. Now try again, and you best put some effort into it.”
I took a deep breath and shortened the inside rein to keep us on the circle the way Malyr had shown me, letting the cold air fill my lungs and stir my determination. So many times, I’d asked Father to let me ride, but he hadn’t cared, leaving the final decision with Mother. Too dangerous, she’d said,
you may fall.
But I wouldn’t.
I refused to.
Guided by a rush of resolve, I gently pressed Liual back into a trot. His powerful muscles shifted at my command as his large body moved beneath me, offering a first rise of his shoulders and spine,
challenging me to stiffen against it.
I didn’t.
I relaxed my hips and followed it upward, only to come back down with it. Up again. Down. Up.
Down. The ebbs and flows of the horse’s motion became an instinctive pattern, my body surrendering to its quick rhythm. I melded with it, my hips and knees absorbing the momentum like the sway of a ship riding the ocean’s swells. My muscles began to move in tandem with Liual’s, the sensation grounding and invigorating me, as if we were two halves of a whole.
“There we go.” There was something very light to the sound of Malyr’s praise, almost as if I could hear his smile in the slightly elevated consonance of his voice. “Keep going and finish that circle.”
Oh, but I had no intention of finishing it.
Right before we reached the tree stump that marked the end of this round and the beginning of a new one, I pressed my calves tightly against Liual’s sides, blocking my own motion. Bouncing followed, leaving me no other choice but to grab the pommel with one hand before I hushed Liual into a walk from which he meandered into a halt. A dead quiet halt, aside from the occasional flutters of arriving and departing ravens above us in the clear blue sky.
Until Malyr’s long, exaggerated exhale almost resembled a groan in my ear. “Little dove… why did this look as though you failed on purpose?”
I glanced over my shoulder at him, finding his smoldering gaze going straight to my lips. “Maybe you need to rethink your punishments and stop making them sound like rewards.”
His lips curled up at the corners as his gaze lifted to lock with mine, something almost ardent coming over his eyes. The longer he stared at me, the more his look turned pained for reasons I couldn’t fathom, his chilled palm settling against my cheek.
“You were not supposed to be quite so perfect, little dove,” he rasped, letting plumes of his breath rise between us as his eyes slipped to my lips once more. “Not only enjoying the pain but seeking it
out, making me wonder if…”
“If?”
His jaws first hardened, then shifted, lips parting and closing several times as if, for once, the Raven prince wasn’t certain what to say. He kissed me instead, deep and drinking, sending such flutters into my chest I could barely draw in air.
“I can’t help but wonder if I am about to make a grave mistake,” he whispered between one kiss and the next. “Because the more you enjoy the things I do to you, the less I want to inflict them. And that is a problem.” His mouth disappeared, immediately replaced by the cold lick of shadows and the sound of wingbeats, only for Malyr to reshape standing beside Liual. “Get down and wait in the stables for me, preferably draped over something at a convenient height for me with your skirts gathered up by the hip. If you thought I would let this one—”
“My prince…”
Malyr’s attention drifted to Cici, who suddenly stood several feet away from us in the snow, the train of her green velvet dress a radiant speck of color in the white vastness. “What is it?”
Cici’s eyes settled on me and tightened strangely, though it might as well have been caused by the reflection of the sun on the snow, but only for a brief moment before they found Malyr’s again. “May I have a word with you?”
“Now?”
“It is rather urgent, I am afraid, as it pertains to the… grains currently being carted to Tidestone.”
When Malyr merely groaned, she added, “As well as Sebian, who was spotted flying south.”
Malyr’s body turned unnaturally stiff then, but only until he turned toward me, looked up, and gave a pat on my knee. “Take him by the reins, lead him back to the stables, and hand him to Olivar. Wait there for me.”
He turned away, stomping through the snow toward Cici. Their shoulders aligned as they walked toward the archways that lined the gardens together, words hushing between them that I couldn’t hear.
What about the grains? And what did Sebian have to do with it?
I dismounted, letting myself sink to the ground in the same way my heart sank in my chest at the memory of how Sebian and I had argued three days ago. How his face had drained of all color when I’d told him to stop fussing over me, his eyes glancing around as if, for just a moment, he hadn’t known what to do with himself. All because I’d snapped at his deep-rooted need to care and protect where he’d once failed, which now, shamed me deeply. After all, how could I expect tender, caring Sebian to understand that there was love in pain?
Was it the love I had dreamed of, full of gentle caresses and words of affection? No. But it was real, tangible in a way that nothing else had ever been. There was a love in Malyr’s punishments, a sincerity in his cruelty that stripped me bare and made me feel more seen, more understood than ever before. But the worst, most confusing part of all this?
How Sebian had disappeared after, leaving me to spend the night on Malyr’s chest, but… somehow missing the weight and warmth of Sebian’s calf on my toes. The familiarity of his even breathing rushing in and out of his lungs, those tingling fingertips in my hair, that scent of soil and pine needles I loved so much. Gods, I’d wanted him to kiss me so badly that day… As I wanted to fix this between us, but how, if he kept disappearing?
I grabbed the reins and led Liual back toward the stables, internally shaking my head at myself.
Perhaps it was my inexperience in such matters, but love turned out to be a complicated business.
Especially when one’s heart and body longed for two men, both equally complicated. How did that make any sense? How was that even possible?
At the stables, Olivar was quick to take the reins from me. “I’ll untack Prince Malyr’s gelding for you. I already have a nice bucket of oats waiting for him.”
When Olivar led the gelding away to the stalls farther back, I turned to the brown horse right beside me, Sebian’s gelding. His coat was a mud-crusted mess, his tousled forelock in dire need of a brush, and his head hanging low as he dozed through the commotion. They suited each other perfectly.
An uncomfortable twinge tugged beneath my breastbone. I rubbed at it through the thick fur that lined my dress as I turned toward the gardens, just in time to catch a glimpse of how Cici ran her hand down along Malyr’s arm in a way much too familiar.
He didn’t react to it.
Didn’t reciprocate.
My tongue pressed against my gums, anyway, causing a humming sound somewhere in my ears that quickly took on the resonance of Sebian’s words.
Do you know Cici came out of his chambers the morning I left? She looked a tad… disheveled.
The force of jealousy that rushed into my heart set my chest aflame, each cold inhale I pulled down into my lungs agonizing. I forced my gaze away from them. Malyr hadn’t reciprocated, hadn’t shown a single inclination that he had wanted her touch on him. And why would he? In less than a fortnight, we would be married. Was that a guarantee of a husband’s loyalty? Hardly, but the fact that
he spent parts of his day, and every single night, with me logically left no time for others.
“That red-haired one hates me, probably because I’m living in her castle.”
The sudden baritone thrumming the air beside me sent a jolt of straightness through my spine as I turned my head toward the stranger beside me. Short black hair, a dark dusting of stubble on his cheeks and chin. Faint remnants of a fading bruise dotting the area between the inner corner of his eye
and the bridge of his nose.
No, not a stranger.
I hinted a quick curtsy. “Lord… Batana, correct?”
Lorn’s fated mate.
“You can drop the lord for all I care for, Lady Galantia. It’s just Aros,” he said with a scoff and hoisted a saddle over the nearby wooden stall rail. “The prince figured I had better chances to entice my mate to bond if I had lands, a castle, and called myself a lord. If anything, that fucking title made her loathe me even more.”
My mind went back to how Lorn had punched him, how she’d refused him in the forest. “I didn’t know that fate could be quite so stubborn.”
“We call it urdvri,” he said and lifted his hand to the gelding’s head, rubbing beneath its forelock.
“When something happened in the past that shouldn’t have happened, usually because one of us fates interfered, trying for a different outcome in the future. It twists everything that should have been, making it a fucking impossibility. Fates may see the future, but the goddess never intended for them to
alter it. It only ever ends in chaos.”
“You can see the past?”
“Yeah, that’s just my fucking luck, that I get to see your father’s henchmen rape my mate over, and over, and over again. See her tears, hear her whimpers. And there is nothing I can do because the past is written in stone.”
I didn’t want it to, but a hairline crack slinked across my heart for her. “I’m sorry for the pain my father caused your people.”
“I’m sorry for the pain your father caused you, little white dove,” he said and walked off, but not without stopping and glancing back at me once more. “I cannot see how it fits together, but… the goddess showed me this moment of your life so many times during your kjaer, it seems relevant
enough to mention. I love you so much.”
I arched a brow at him. “Pardon me?”
“Your mother’s words to you shortly after your birth.”
My throat narrowed to the width of a hair. “That doesn’t sound like my mother at all.”
“She said it a dozen times as she gazed down at you, her bright blonde strand clasped between your chunky fingers,” he said and walked off, already having brought several steps of distance between us before he added, “Oh, and she said she’s sorry.”
“Sorry for what?” I called behind him.
He only shrugged.
