Page 19

KYRIE

H e doesn’t take me to my rooms, where I’ve been sleeping most nights since… since I lost those days to blackness.

I make a noise of protest as he continues to carry me through the halls of his castle, which Shae and her helpers have made increasingly hospitable over the last few weeks. Where cobwebs and dust hung on rough stone, colorful tapestries now add color and warmth. Where grime covered the floor, pretty rugs soften his footfalls.

“I don’t want to go to your rooms.” I force the words out.

“Then I suppose it’s a good thing we’re not going there.” That mischievous glint shines in his eyes, and it makes my heart squeeze a little.

I side-eye him all the same, which is a bit difficult, considering he’s still carrying me around like I’ve suddenly lost the ability to walk.

“You know, I still don’t know what to call you,” I tell him.

His stride breaks slightly, but it’s the only sign that he heard my statement.

“I want to call you the Sword,” I tell him honestly. “That’s the default. Then I get angry, because you weren’t even that—you were the god of death the entire time. Then I think, Hrakan.” I pause my diatribe long enough to make a sound like a cat hacking up a hairball before continuing.

He cracks a smile at that, and the corners of my own lips turn up in response.

Not because he’s smiling at me.

Because I made myself laugh, too. That’s why.

“And I can’t call you that. It just doesn’t roll off the tongue, you know?” I continue, and he nods his head seriously. “Besides…” I trail off.

Hrakan isn’t the male who’s carrying me right now.

Hrakan is the name of a deity I’ve feared most of my life. The god of death, the one who metes out final justice, a figure who looms so large in the mythos of Heska that most are afraid to mention his name.

It’s hardly the one I’ll use when we’re in bed together?—

I cut off the thought.

Or try to.

Just because he’s good in bed doesn’t mean I need him in mine. Ever.

“You’ve called me Arek more than once.”

I bite my lower lip at the heat in his words, knowing that he’s thinking of the same thing I am: the other night, when he made me unravel in the kitchen, of all the fucking places.

It’s been off-limits since that night.

Mostly because every time I merely walk by that room, desire makes me clench all over.

“I don’t know this Arek,” I finally respond, narrowing my eyes at him. “But I can walk, you know.”

“I want to hold you,” he says simply.

A beat of silence passes and I sigh, caught between annoyance and frustration with him and our situation, and pure physical enjoyment of being held like this.

In my past, touch was fraught, pleasure only ever a means to an end, for both myself and anyone I took to my bed. Or blanket on the forest floor. Whichever.

But with him, this man whose jaw twitches as his hands grip me tenderly—I don’t think it could ever be just about pleasure for either one of us.

As much as I tell myself I would like to deny there is a connection between us, that he’s lying or manipulating me again… I can’t.

I swallow around a lump in my throat.

I don’t know what would be easier at this point: if he betrays me again, or if he’s being truthful.

“You do know Arek. Same as you know the Sword. Arek is who I was before. Arek is who I still am. You can call me the Sword if it makes it easier for you…” His voice trails off, and he takes us around a corner into a corridor I’ve yet to walk through.

“Or?” I prompt, because I can sense the or just beneath the surface of his speech.

“Or you can get to know me, the male who I am underneath the titles.” He arches a silver brow at me, and the expression of hope in his eyes forces my gaze away.

I press my palms against his chest, pushing him away until he allows me to stand on my own.

“You don’t know where I’m taking you.”

“Is that a threat?” I ask, tilting my head, hackles fully up.

“Kyrie,” he says, then shakes his head, stalking away. “I wanted to show you one of our castle’s secrets. I know you well enough to know you want to get clean before your friends show up here.”

Our castle.

My friends.

“They’re your friends,” I tell him, bitterness stinging in the words. “Lara knew what would happen between us, and she let it.”

“Lara did as she thought best to ensure your survival, Kyrie.”

I frown, hating that he’s right. Hating that he’s so much harder to needle these days.

“Arek seems to be a lot more even-keeled than the Sword ever was.” I narrow my eyes at him, wanting a reaction. Waiting for one. “He also talks a lot more.”

He continues walking down the corridor. It’s more humid in this part of the castle, and sweat beads between my shoulders, my body still out of shape from everything it’s been through in the past weeks.

“The Sword had to lie to make sure you survived. I don’t. I don’t have anything to hide from you now.”

Strange how such simple words bring me to the brink of tears.

I blink furiously, swiping at my eyes with the back of my hand.

I am done crying.

“I’m done talking,” I bite out.

“That’s alright, you don’t have to. I don’t mind the silence.”

I grunt at him, doing my best impression of the Sword. I mean for it to be insulting, but he just flashes me a grin over one shoulder.

Like he knows what I’m doing.

How is it that he can still have the upper hand in this shit?

I’ve made a life out of having every exit marked, having multiple back-up plans, to be run straight into a corner.

Ugh.

The Sword’s muscles bunch under his tight pants, the firm bubble of his ass flexing with each step.

Even in my irritation, I find him attractive. Which makes me more annoyed.

My molars grind against each other the longer I stare at his ass.

I close my eyes to give them something else to do, and I keep putting one foot in front of the other.

Which means I run smack-dab into his broad back when he stops.

“Oof.” Air whuffs out of me from the impact, and he makes a noise of amused surprise as he turns to watch me regain my balance.

“Just couldn’t stand to stay away from me, could you?” he drawls.

A smile threatens before I can clamp down on it and scowl again.

He gives me a knowing look and I do my best to look threatening, which only serves to draw another laugh out of him.

It shouldn’t make my heart beat faster, but the sound of his laugh is rare enough that it does, anyway.

I tear my attention away from him, my emotions a tangled jumble I should be used to at this point.

My eyes widen.

“For once, I’ve succeeding in having you at a loss for words,” he says. “And here I was thinking that only happened when I had my cock deep inside you.”

Heat spirals through me, and I can feel a blush rising all the way to the roots of my hair.

Walking away from him so he can’t see it, I choose to ignore that particular comment as best I can.

The room is a bath—the likes of which I’ve only ever heard of. Dyrda’s followers are supposed to be huge proponents of this sort of thing, but the priestesses of Sola were never allowed such frivolity.

Blood baths are the only thing I was raised with.

Colorful clay tiles line a rippling pool of water. Cloudy steam curls from the surface, and when I inhale, the scent of herbs fills the air. Huge pots of them are grouped in pleasing formations around the room, thriving rosemary and mint and thyme. Sunlight streams through circular skylights overhead, illuminating the plants beneath.

Falling water muffles the sound of my footsteps as I walk around, taking it all in.

The Sword— Arek —isn’t far behind, and I have to admit, he’s picked the right place if he is sincere about trying to win me over.

Win me back over.

My stomach clenches, a heavy weight settling over my shoulders.

I am tied to him, more than ever before now, the spiderweb-delicate threads of fate binding us together.

I can’t deny that I care about him, can’t deny that I crave his touch, his taste.

My hand reaches up to my heart, rubbing the small star-shaped scar that’s all that remains of the damage he did when he killed me to save my life.

“I understand why you did it.” My voice is pitched low, but I know he hears me over the steady sound of water, over the pounding of my heart. “I understand that you felt you couldn’t tell me the truth.”

The words die in my throat as a savage hand grips the back of my neck, cradling my head as he tilts it up to look at him.

“I know that what I did was wrong, but you have to understand, Kyrie, I am begging you to try to understand, that I did everything I could to avoid our fate, and when it was clear that there was no avoiding it—” He pauses, clearing his throat with a shake of his head. “Telling you would have introduced a variable of risk into our destiny that I couldn’t allow, Kyrie, because I can’t allow the possibility of having to continue to live without you in my life.”

My hands fist in his shirt, and gods help me, he just feels good against my body. A wall of muscle, broad shoulders and a jaw so strong and stubborn that I want to soften it with a kiss.

“It still hurts,” I whisper, the words surprising me, the truth of them. Tears threaten again, and I blink them back. I’ve never wanted to cry so badly as I have these last few weeks. “It hurts to think that the whole time I was falling in love with you, you were planning to shove a knife into my chest.”

“I resisted loving you for as long as I was able, Kyrie.” His gaze is desperate, flicking between my eyes. “I resisted acknowledging that you were the punishment and reward of every choice I’ve ever made.”

“I’m my own person.” My voice cracks, and so does my heart, and with it, a ray of understanding pierces deep inside me. “I’m not a reward or a punishment. I am not some destiny to be remade.”

I blink again, staring up at him, transfixed by both his masculine beauty and my words.

It’s not him I’m angry with, not really. Yes, I’m upset with him, and might be for a very long time.

But my anger is at the forces that compelled his hand and that knife.

“I am angry at fate,” I tell him, and fresh tears leak out of my eyes. “I am angry that these so-called gifts of Sola murdered my family. That this ability that’s plagued me my whole life meant that my brothers never drew a breath past childhood.”

Goosebumps pebble across my skin, the hair on my neck rising as the truth of my anger is spoken aloud.

The greatest truth and lie of my life.

That I was dedicated to Sola.

My gift was mine only to honor her.

That life, that version of me, is dead.

He’s watching me carefully, his hand still heavy on my neck, the back of my head.

I blow out a breath slowly, carefully, my tenuous grasp of what I am, who I am, solidifying the longer he holds me, the longer I look at him.

“I can’t decide if knowing it was because of me and yet wasn’t my fault makes it better or worse.” My voice breaks on worse, and I sag fully against him.

“It wasn’t your fault, love,” he tells me. “We are all helpless against the chains of fate.”

I close my eyes.

I don’t feel better.

But I don’t feel worse, either.