The door burst open. I shot to my feet.
Eyes aglow, Aric stood in the doorway, seeming to take up the entire space. “I’ve waited”—his voice broke lower—“so long for you to be like this.” His accent was thicker than I’d ever heard it.
Then he was striding toward me. His mesmerizing gaze pinned me in place as he cupped my face. When his lips covered mine, I gasped. He took the opportunity to deepen the kiss, groaning into the contact. His hands tightened on my face. His sexy groans made my toes curl, muddling my thoughts.
Though he hadn’t undressed a woman in centuries, before I knew it all my clothes had melted off me, his shirt and boots vanishing as well. He broke the kiss to scoop me up, carrying me to bed.
Like Jack had. Don’t think of him.
Aric gazed down at me unclothed in his arms and hissed, “Great gods.” He laid me back on my bed, climbing in beside me. He still had on pants, but for some reason I wasn’t shy with him as he surveyed my every curve.
Probably because I’d felt nak*d in front of him for months.
His hunger was undisguised, yet when he dipped his head down to my body, he kissed . . . my healing arm. “My fierce Empress. I could not be prouder.” He bestowed a real smile on me, not a mocking sneer, not a grudging half-grin.
Glorious man.
His lips were flawlessly shaped, his teeth even and white. Though his eyes were starry, I could see their golden color. They were filled with warmth, with . . . love.
If he’d been gorgeous before, now he was devastating. My glyphs flared in response, drawing his gaze. “These used to fill me with confusion. I find them so beautiful, but whenever I saw them, you were usually about to strike.”
Jack had found them beautiful too.
Block that out! I was Aric’s wife. I’d wronged him in the past, had consigned him to misery for hundreds—no, thousands—of years. I needed to make this right. Like penance.
He rubbed his thumb over my bottom lip with a hand that had begun to shake. I got the sense that he was losing his polished control, his desire stoking hotter and hotter. “You could not be lovelier.” He looked like he was about to devour me, giving me both shivers—and chills. “I am a patient man, sieva, but tonight . . .”
There was something vaguely threatening about his words. Misgivings about this arose. Too fast.
Yet then he leaned down to kiss me, taking my mouth until my thoughts had blanked again. When he trailed his lips to my neck, flicking his tongue over my skin, his mouth was so hot, it was dizzying.
He’d always been polished and sophisticated. Now the raw force of his need staggered me. Between kisses, he murmured in Latvian.
“What are you saying?”
He drew back, curling his finger under my chin. “That you taste like life. You are my life now.”
His words felt so final. If he’d looked possessive in that far-distant past, now he looked as if he’d lost himself.
In me.
I was about to ask if we could take this more slowly, when he lowered his head to my br**sts, kissing me there. The pleasure was so intense, I had difficulty recalling my misgivings, could only sigh his name.
When I arched my back for him, he groaned around one tip, then the other, pulling with his lips, flicking with his clever tongue.
Had penance ever felt so right?
Against my damp skin, he rasped, “Better than millennia of imaginings.” When I squirmed with need, he lifted his head. Eyes smoldering, he said, “I’ve imagined other things as well.”
His grazed his lips past my br**sts, down my belly, his warm breaths ghosting over my skin. He nuzzled my navel, then continued his path lower. Lower.
“Uh, Aric?”
With a desperate groan, Death . . . kissed.
44
I stared up at the ceiling, limbs sprawled, mind dazed from the pleasure he’d just given me. “I . . . you . . . where did you learn that?” Was there anything he couldn’t do?
Quaking with eagerness, he gave a pained laugh. Eyes brighter than I’d ever seen them, he said, “You’ve never wondered what I think about as you dance for me? I pretended things were different and you craved my touch, my kiss. I fantasized a thousand things I wanted to do to your beautiful little body.”
Mouth back at my br**sts, he snatched off his pants. I caught glimpses of him nak*d—and the mere sight of him made me weak with need.
As he moved over me, between my legs, he shuddered out three words: “At last, sieva.”
Wait, something was wrong . . . what was missing? My eyes widened. “Do you have, um, protection?”
He tensed. “At this particular moment, are you truly asking me to go fetch something for you? Perhaps you’d like a glass of wine as well?”
“No, it’s not like that. What if I got pregnant?” Jack had been so careful. Stop torturing yourself, Eves. For the best . . .
“It might not even be possible for me to help create a life,” Aric said. “But we’ve nothing to lose by trying. If you want to end the game, this is one move that’s never been tried. How could we ever harm each other if we started a dynasty between us?”
“Aric, I’m too young!”
He rested his forehead against mine. “You are not. Now that we are together, the game will lag on. We will continue to age as long as more than one Arcana lives. Already seventeen of your brief mortal years have passed. Twenty-three of mine.”
He was talking about starting a family? When I wasn’t even sure the sun would ever rise again? This was too intense. He was.
Too carnal, desirous. His manly needs.
No, don’t think of the witch! “I can’t do this tonight.”
“Are you jesting?”
“Things are moving too fast.” Spinning, flying, like the days here. Maybe I needed to get back out into the world, stop eating the lotus, and then find my footing with this man?
Aric raised himself on straightened arms, his gaze narrowing down at me. “Your hesitation stems from another cause, does it not?”
Did it? I’d accepted that there were serious obstacles between me and Jack. But he’d said the two of us could get past anything—and at the time, I’d believed him. He’d asked me to give him a chance just to get to me.
If I did this tonight, I wasn’t giving Jack the chance I’d promised him. Didn’t I at least owe him the opportunity to tell me his side of the story?
I knew this thinking was naïve, ridiculous even. It could never work out between us, not after what he’d done. Hell, I was probably too far gone in my feelings for Aric.
Then a simple truth struck me: by sleeping with Aric, I was making a decision about my life—but I didn’t yet have enough information to make that decision.
And no one could make me choose anything before I was ready.
No one.
“It is because of him.” Aric twisted around to sit on the edge of the bed, squeezing his brow so hard his arm bulged.
I sat up and touched his shoulder, but he flinched. “Aric, please. For whatever reason, can we take this more slowly?”
“Do you deny it?” Jealousy emanated from him in waves.
“I’m not saying that I don’t want something with you. But I made a promise to him. You said I didn’t keep them in the past, but I do now. I owe him at least one conversation about all this, before I decide to take things further with you.”
“I told you how he wronged you, and still you want him!”
“I could say the same about your feelings for me.”
With a brusque sound of annoyance, he rose to dress. “I thought you were past this. Past him.”
So had I. My life flashing before my eyes seemed to have jarred something loose. “Do you want me to always wonder about him? Don’t you want to start things clean with me?”
He yanked on his pants. “Damn you, Empress, you will choose me! You must. He can move on. I cannot!”
I thought back over Jack’s behavior, not certain at all that he could move on. À moi, Evangeline!
Pacing the room, Aric said, “You never gave your heart before. I was convinced you didn’t have one.”
I pulled the sheet over my chest. “I do, and right now it’s breaking in two.”
“Why is it that the first time I’ve vowed retribution against you, it’s the one time you were born like this? With honor and empathy? The sole time you are perfect for me—and you’re in love with another man!”
I whispered, “I’m so sorry.”
“After the Flash, if I’d gone to Haven and protected you and your mother, would you have chosen me to love?”
Before being on the road with Jack? Before learning what a complicated boy he was? Before he’d saved my life? I had to answer honestly. “Yes.”
Aric yelled with frustration, launching his fist into the stone wall. The entire turret rocked. Between heaving breaths, he grated, “I should have gone to you! I should have looked past my hatred and protected you.”
He didn’t say instead of terrorizing you, but I knew we were both thinking it.
“We can’t change that now.”
“No, we can’t. I’ve been patient with you. I’ve stretched the limits of even my eternal patience. I see now that the mortal must be taken out of the equation.”
As Matthew had said. In a tone like ice, I said, “If you hurt Jack, whatever this is between us will end. Do you want us to be enemies once more?” My claws began to turn.
He noticed, scowling. “No, I do not.”
“You should feel grateful toward him. If it weren’t for Jack, I would’ve been captured by the Lovers, tortured and killed.” Saying this out loud only cemented my decision to go to him. He’d saved my life; I owed him a conversation.
“If you have feelings for him, fight them,” Aric commanded me. “By going to him, you’d be stoking them once more. Don’t you understand? He can find another woman—I cannot. If you choose him, you’ll be consigning me to a hellish fate. As you’ve done again and again. No, this will be even worse, because I’ve had a greater glimpse of what I’ll be missing.”
“I just want to talk to him. I’m leaving this weekend,” I said in an unwavering voice.
“No, you will not.” His arrogant demeanor back in place, he said, “Understand me, I’m not surrendering the one woman who was born for me alone. Not to a human, not to anyone.”
“You can’t keep me here against my will any longer. What are you going to do? Put that cuff back on me?”
“I regret that—”
I held up my hand to stop him. “I understand why you did it. But I won’t be a prisoner anymore.”
He snatched up his shirt, threading his arms into the sleeves. “You say you keep your promises now? You made a vow before gods to be my wife. In this life, you will keep your promises to me—before you ever honor one to him!”
“You can’t stop me from leaving. I have my powers back. I earned my powers back.”
With a cruel curve of his lips, he said, “You promised never to harm me, Empress. Know that you’ll have to kill me before I would ever let you go.”
As he strode out the door, I said, “And know that you’ll have to put that cilice on me to keep me prisoner again.”
Alone, I called for Matthew.
—Empress lived today.—
Was there doubt on that score?
—A battle that fraught. So many tree limbs. Eddies.—
His way of saying he couldn’t always see the thousands of ways a fate could unfold. You still sound upset, Matthew. Confused. Too much so? I need to talk to Jack. If I leave this place, can you get me back to you?
—The Fool guides your way. . . .—
45
DAY 369 A.F.
Lark was asleep in her new room, looking so young, with her mammal sleep pile dozing in the bed all around her.
Two days ago, the medic had given her an air cast for her broken forearm, another for her snapped ankle, and a sling for her busted collarbone. Then he’d confined her to bed rest.
The wolves healed apace with her, presently laid out in front of the room’s fireplace. Since Cyclops couldn’t yet manage the stairs, he remained down here with his pack. Her on-the-mend falcon nested in a nearby laundry basket.
I was worried about leaving Lark behind when I departed. Somehow that little punk had become my friend.
Good, bad, good.
Weren’t we all? Jack, me, Aric.
He’d been avoiding me, as if it pained him to look at me. He didn’t even share meals with me. Despite my driving need to talk to Jack, I pined for Aric.
On my way back from yesterday’s visit with Lark, I’d run into him.
“How does Fauna fare?”
“She’s getting better.”
With a nod, he’d turned to walk away.
“That’s it?” I’d called. “How much longer are we going to do this? We have to talk about what happened.”
With a harsh laugh, he’d turned to me. “It’s very simple. I want you, you want another, and I’m owed a wife.” Struggling to regain his composure, he said in a rougher voice, “If our situation were reversed, you would never let me go either.”
I’d fallen silent, unable to deny that. Then I’d stared after him as he left me.
The strain in the manor was almost worse than when Ogen had been jonesing for offerings. Aric’s thoughts must be in utter turmoil, because his training had intensified more than ever before. The last time he’d been like this, I’d felt like I was watching a berserker. Now?
A bomb sequence ticking down.
—Empress!— Matthew called.
I’m here. I pulled Lark’s comforter up to her chin, then crossed to the fireplace to add a log for her and the animals. The temperatures continued to drop, the winds whipping. My turret would sway in the worst of them. But now’s not a good time, Matthew. Have a lot on my mind. Too much, and most of it centered on Aric.