Page 106

“You could leave this place,” Farra suggested. “Find some other ice palace to live in.”

He smirked. “Tempting. But I cannot. Vasteel would search for me, and I will not live out my remaining days in hiding.”

“Your remaining days?” Farra repeated slowly. “You make it sound as though they are numbered.”

Thaddius’ fingers tensed around hers. “All our days are numbered,” was his reply. “If I were honourable, I would shorten my stack.”

“Glacians do not age,” Farra argued, frowning. “Your days are innumerable.”

“I’ve come to believe that nothing should last forever, malishka. While the outside remains pristine, the inside rots and decays.”

“Malishka?” she repeated, taking the word and turning it over.

Thaddius only shook his head. “An old language word,” he said simply.

A gamut of emotion ghosted the Glacian’s features as they sat there in the waning torchlight. Farra had never seen one so haunted by their own existence. It pained her to watch it – the way he sliced himself open to get out the ugliness.

She leaned forward, bracing herself on the bed. Her shoulders gave a shallow twinge of pain, but it was easily ignored. With one hand she grasped his chin – how she had longed to feel her way along it – and turned his face back to hers. She viewed the planes of his face and marvelled. “You said nothing should last forever,” she accused, her voice sharper than her stare. “As though youintendto shorten the stack.”

He seemed too captivated to answer. His lips parted, erringly close to hers, but no words escaped.

“But you are not rotten within, Thaddius,” she told him. “You do not scare me.”

Thaddius swallowed. “I have done terrible things,” he said hoarsely, his voice hardly more than a whisper. “You should be scared.”

Farra’s hand moved unbidden to the Glacian’s throat, feeling the rapid pulse beneath her fingers.

He sighed, as though resigning himself. “Keep your distance from me, malishka.”

“My days are numbered too,” she replied, her lips glancing off his.

“Not yet they aren’t.”

She continued as though he hadn’t spoken. “I might use the precious few I have any way I choose.”

He cursed. “Last chance.”

But Farra had never met a challenge she could not face. She counted the beat of blood beneath her fingers.One… two…

There was a low growl that made her insides ripple and then his mouth was on hers.

He was softer than she anticipated, not made of the stone she had imagined him cut from, but he was as cold. A shiver thrilled through her as his hand pressed into the small of her back. She was filled with something heady and exasperating. She was rid of all thought as his lips explored hers; there was only feeling. He seemed hungry for her. His tongue slid along hers and she sighed. Her hands wound around his neck and pulled him closer and it stirred a feral noise from him, rising from somewhere deep in his chest. His hands wrapped around her back, and he pulled her into his lap.

She wore very little. She had precious few garments and had taken to sparing them upon returning to bed each evening. Her scrap of tunic fell low, past her hips, and she wore nothing beneath. Her bare legs wrapped around the Glacian’s waist, his fingertips skirting up her thighs slowly.

“God,” he murmured into her neck, so quietly she barely discerned the words. “Have mercy on me.”

Farra spared no thought for the Mother at all. She had not come to her aid on the Ledge, nor here in Glacia. She had not stepped in to save those who had sunk to the bottom of the pool. This bed, this moment, was not the design of a god, and Farra preferred it. This bed was wicked, unnatural, and she would delight in it to spite the Mother and all Her idleness.

She lifted the ragged hem of the tunic slowly, revealing inch after inch of skin, until the fabric rose over her face. She discarded it to the side.

And Thaddius’ eyes turned wild.

He revered her naked form, hands skating over her flesh, heavy exhales escaping his lips and hitting her skin. Another shiver thrilled her, and he felt it.

“Do you fear me now, malishka?” he asked her, in a voice that should be feared, in a way that should quell her.

Instead, she only felt want. Greed. Lust. And the dark glint of his eyes trapped in her stare revealed he was no better, no more controlled. “I don’t fear you,” she said. With her own hands, she cupped the weight of her breasts, kneading them without looking away. “Do you fear me?”