I walked slowly into the living room and stood there in the dark. I didn’t dare light the fire or any candles. I didn’t know if any of my mother’s guards were watching the cottage, or if Balor was.
I had been doing this every night since I’d healed. Coming here. Sleeping here, because it made me feel closer to him, even though this little cottage felt empty without him in it. Without his warmth and laughter and sweet smiles, and the kisses he’d so readily bestowed on me, as if I was worthy of any of them.
The first night I had come here, I’d found the potion he’d made on his bedside. In the kitchen I’d found his notebook, stowed in a basket with the candle I had given him, a collection of ingredients and his dagger. I’d opened the notebook to find the last potion he had copied out, tracing my fingertips over his messy handwriting, my chest aching.
When I’d realised what it was, I’d let out a weak sob. He’d been so close. This could have worked. He’d been so close to shedding his mortal skin on his own, here, where he was safer—where he would have been able to escape into the forest.
I’d spent that night clutching the little jar with the potion inside and crying on the floor beside his bed until I’d exhausted myself. I hadn’t cried since I was a boy, but now I couldn’t stop. It was as though allowing myself to love him had cracked open the cold shell I’d built up over myself since I was a child, and now everything was pouring out of me in an unstoppable torrent, leaving me empty and hollow.
If only I had come that night. If only I’d known he was going to do this. I could have hidden him somewhere safe until it was ready.
I could have gone with him, into the forest. We could have been together.
Instead, I had been desperately trying to delay my mother. To convince her not to act yet, to wait a bit longer, managing to scrape out that I thought he was close to doing it on his own. But she had sent Balor to retrieve Ash from his cottage anyway, and if I had followed to stop him, I didn’t know what she would have done. I didn’t know what she would have forced me to do if she’d known what he meant to me.
I couldn’t wear the acorn necklace he’d given me around the palace. It would have brought questions that I dreaded, that could have put him in even more danger. I’d seen his eyes dart to my throat that awful night. I’d seen the pain in them when he realised I wasn’t wearing it.
My insides had felt like they were dying as I was forced to stand there and listen to my mother taunt him. See him chained up and shivering uncontrollably, unable to do anything to help.
I’d seen the utter misery on his face when Balor had made it seem like I’d been playing my own game with him, making him love me for my amusement. Complete betrayal had crumpled his features when my mother laughed and asked how he could have ever thought that her son could truly want him.
I’d seen the burning hatred in his eyes when she had told him that I killed his parents.
The grief threatened to choke me as I stood in the dark, silent living room of the cottage. I had lost him. The only thing I cared about. All I had left were the memories—ones he no longer shared—and the ghost of him in this place.
I knew I should stop coming here, but I couldn’t, even though it achieved nothing. It wouldn’t bring him back. It wouldn’t break his vow. Nothing would break his vow. There was nothing I could do to make him remember me, to give myself a chance to explain. Not that I deserved it. I deserved nothing from him. I should never have touched him, never come here as the wolf or the cat to comfort him. I should have left him alone aside from helping him in the meagre ways I could.
But I’d been weak. I’d wanted him too much. I could hardly remember that first night I had touched him, under that tree in the dark. I had been frantic, desperate for him, terrified at first as I’d fallen to my knees in front of him, before the heavy throb ofwanthad drowned everything else out.
I’d tried to stay away after that. Tried to stop thinking of him constantly, which had been impossible, because I had been forced to watch him for my mother. I had grown pathetically jealous when I’d seen him that day walking into the village with that gancanagh prick. When I’d seen that sly, conniving fae wrap his arm around Ash’s shoulders and ask him to go for a drink as I’d watched from that same tree as a blackbird.
I’d followed them. I’d watched the gancanagh touch his arm as they sat down to eat on a little bench in the village. Murmur words to him, no doubt trying once again to worm his way into Ash’s bed. It had taken everything in me not to fly at him and cut off his fucking hands. I’d refrained only because Ash thought of him as afriend, and he already had so little here.
But I couldn’t stop myself from marching up and demanding that I walk Ash home. I’d needed to get him away from that fae. I’d needed to get him away fromallof them, back to his cottage where he was marginally safer.
I hadn’t intended to kiss him. I hadn’t intended to stumble my way inside and wrap my mouth around him again, my chest tight with desperation to justbewith him. To touch him. Taste him. Gorge myself on him while I had this second chance.
I’d fully intended to stay away again after that. But I couldn’t. I wanted him too much. Craved him too badly.
I reached up and rubbed at my face roughly, still standing in the cold darkness of the cottage living room. I knew I shouldn’t have spent another night here, but I found myself dragging my feet to the bedroom and stripping down to pull on Ash’s old, threadbare shorts once again.
I slipped under the sheets that no longer smelled of him. If I pressed my face against the pillow, I could only faintly detect the scent of lavender and rosemary. Of his sleep-warmed skin and soft hair. I breathed it in anyway, curling my fingers around the warm acorn at my throat.
Lying in his bed just made me think of all the nights I had spent here with him, pressed up against him with nothing between us. Inside him. A pulse of aching want warred with the hollowness inside me. I felt empty, so I tried to gorge myself on memories of him.
His long limbs and smooth, hot skin tanned and golden against my own pale colouring even before his mortal skin had shed. His beautiful golden-green eyes had always been so open and honest. He had given himself to me entirely, been so free with his body, and I deserved none of it. I wasn’t worthy to have breathed the same air as him, let alone touched him.
That didn’t stop the memories stampeding through my brain as I lay there in his bed, shivering until the heat of my thoughts chased away the cold and made my blood stir. The taste of him. The feel of his tongue on me. The hardness of his cock in my hand and mouth and pressed up against me when I was so deep inside him. His lips against mine while I clutched desperately at his hair, my fingers buried in the soft curls.
I wanted him just as fiercely now as I had before I’d ever even touched him. More so, because now I knew what it felt like. To be with him. To lie with him with nothing between us. To let myself be that vulnerable with someone, because it could have only ever been with him.
My cock pulsed insistently within Ash’s shorts, and I felt ashamed as I slipped my trembling hand under the material to grasp it. The shame grew as I stood up on unsteady legs and walked into the living room to retrieve the big bottle of rosemary-scented oil I had given him, now only half full.
I returned to the bed and pulled the shorts down, but not off, because I wanted to feel them against my skin. My cock throbbed harder as I slicked my hand, the rosemary scent bringing even more memories of him to the surface.
I fisted my cock and stroked, my other hand still clutching the acorn at my throat, squeezing it too tight, soaking up every bit of warmth that came from Ash’s fire within it. I shuddered as my thumb brushed over the head of my cock and spread the fluid leaking there. Squeezing my eyes shut, I pictured Ash over me. His teasing smile, his hazel eyes flashing with lust as he stroked me with long fingers. Warm lips and tongue trailing down my stomach, over my hip. The heat of them stinging the head of my cock before he sucked me in, moaning around my length.
I gasped, my hips straining as my cock spurted in release and splashed over my chest and stomach. The tender skin of my thigh pulled as I shook from the fleeting moments of pleasure before the hollowness returned, chasing away any warmth before my cock had even stopped pulsing.
Shame filled me again as I lay there panting, staring up at the dark ceiling. I shouldn’t have even let myself think of him that way. I shouldn’t have given myself these brief moments of pleasure to try and chase away the pain.
I didn’t deserve them. I didn’t deserve even my memories of him, but they were all I had left.