Page 24 of Severed Heir (The Serpent Heir #2)

Hadrian tapped his fingers against the table, leaving faint scorch marks in the wood. “If Severyn marries my son,” he said smoothly, “then, and only then, will I gift the sun. I suggest you decide soon.”

But I barely heard him. The bond roared in my head. The betrayal burned beneath my skin. Maybe it had always been the bond, this false affection stitched into my veins. Maybe none of it had been real.

I stared down at the shattered glass in my lap. Always glass. Always sharp enough to bleed on, but never whole enough to heal. If Archer wanted to break me, he had. And he hadn’t even needed to touch me. He’d just let them do it for him.

Hadrian clapped a hand on his son’s back, shoving him forward with a smug grin. “Introduce yourself,” he muttered.

Caius scoffed but said nothing .

Slowly, deliberately, I turned—not to Hadrian, but to Archer. “I choose Ellison,” I said. The truth was, I found Ellison rather annoying. So really, this felt like a punishment for us both.

Archer stiffened, shadows rippling across his knuckles.

“The guards get two days off a week,” I added, my gaze shifting to Hadrian now. “I’m sure he can visit me in Night.”

And maybe it was petty. Maybe it was cruel. But I knew how to shatter someone, too. Archer made his choice. He chose fear. He chose power. He chose duty over me.

So I chose power for myself. Possibly even dragging out that inner Herring ruthlessness inside of me.

Because if no one was coming to save me, then I’d save myself, even if it meant burning every bond to ash. And from the pure rage on Archer’s face, I knew whatever was between us was gone.

The Serpent hostel in Tyvern was grander than the last three I’d stayed in, with two actual rooms and a real bath that didn’t reek of rust or mold. Archer hadn’t said a word as the guard left us there.

I spent an hour in the bath, fingers pruned, letting the heat soak into my aching skin. But even then, I couldn’t stop myself. I tilted my head under the doorframe, searching for the curve of his shadow moving through the common room.

When Kamila’s spare silk pajamas brushed against my skin, and the new flight leathers she’d gifted me were packed neatly for tomorrow, I thought—what would I even say to him? What could I possibly say, knowing he had bartered a date with another man just to prove he didn’t love me?

I should’ve been furious. Should’ve slammed every door in this gods-forsaken hostel. But instead, I stood frozen, heart pounding, fingers trembling on the wooden knob. Slowly, I eased the door open wider.

The common room was empty. No Archer.

I darted across the floor, skidding into the second bedroom and slamming the door behind me. My back hit the wall as I scrambled for the bed, diving under the covers and tugging the sheets up to my chin. With shaking hands, I lit the lantern on the bedside table.

I didn’t see him at first.

Not until I heard his voice. “Who is Ellison?”

I shot upright. He stepped from the shadows like a god carved from wrath, his jaw clenched, his hands flexing at his sides as if it took everything in him not to cross the room.

I swallowed. “He’s just a guard I met.”

His knuckles whitened. “Ah,” he sighed. “Well. Isn’t it lovely how perfectly that barter worked out.”

My temper flared. “Don’t start. You’re the one who offered it.”

“I know,” he murmured, stepping closer. One step. Then another. Each one splintered something deeper in my chest.

“I didn’t realize,” he said roughly, “how fucking unbearable it would feel to imagine you with someone else.” His voice dropped to a lethal rasp. “To imagine another man touching you. Kissing you. Claiming what’s mine.”

He stopped inches from the bed, towering over me, his body strung tight. “Your father needs sunlight,” Archer said. “And Hadrian’s sons are... convenient.”

“You bartered me, Archer.”

The words split the air between us, sharp as broken glass. “I know.”

His hand twitched at his side, like he wanted to touch me but didn’t trust himself. Didn’t trust that he wouldn’t destroy us both .

I pushed to my knees on the bed, rising to meet him. “I don’t plan on taking that date any further,” I said, voice shaking.

“Why not?” he asked. Shadows unfurled at his feet, curling around the bedposts and winding up the sheets. Then they slipped around my ankles like black silk.

“Because I don’t want anyone else,” I whispered. “I don’t know what to do.”

The bond between us cracked wide open. Archer sank to his knees before me. “Severyn,” he breathed.

I reached for him. Gods help me, I would reach for him even if it was the death of me. “Why can’t we exist?” I whispered. “Help me understand.”

Slender ropes of shadow coiled around my wrists.

His voice, strained and low, brushed my ear as he pulled me closer to his chest. “I told you, if anyone suspects I kept that snake for you, I could be in trouble. The academy exists so heirs are chosen in good faith. I broke the sole purpose of the academy.”

“Archer,” I exhaled, leaning toward him. “I found the snake. I defeated it.”

“But I kept it. For you.”

His fingers brushed my jaw, curling around it—careful and devastating. Once again, I was a tealight. A fragile flame slipping through oil, always just out of his reach.

He rested his forehead against mine, taut and trembling, as if our skin might melt together. As if the shadow bath had fused us, ember and charcoal entwined.

“Then we lie,” I said. “We lie through our teeth and pretend we don’t care for each other.”

The death of us would not be sudden, but slow. It would wilt and decay, shrivel from a light that never dared to touch us.

“I cannot pretend around you,” he said. “You saw me nearly punch Rok. ”

“I know. But what happens next?”

He cupped my cheeks between his hands and pressed a kiss to my forehead. I stared through my lashes, at the slant of his jaw, the glacial blue of his gaze. Then tilted his face lower, until only a breath separated us.

“I’m dangerously close to kissing you,” he said. “That is what is next.”

“I wouldn’t tell anymore.”

His lips met mine—cool and sweet, with the faintest bite as his teeth grazed my lower lip.

He moved forward on his knees, caging my hips beneath his, our bodies colliding with the weight of everything we hadn’t said.

“I could make you hate me,” he growled. “It would be easier.”

“Try.”

A hand slipped under my silk top, kneading my breast as his other cradled the back of my head.

I memorized the feeling of him on me, the way his breath whispered my name, his nails tracing slow lines across my stomach, and the scrape of his jaw along my collarbone as he pulled my top away with his teeth.

My Serpent.

I skimmed his belt buckle, but he snapped my hands away. “We shouldn’t.”

“We shouldn’t,” I echoed, raising my voice an octave—daring him.

His chest pressed to mine, his knees pinned to either side of my hips. There was a moment, one breath, one heartbeat, where we both hesitated in the middle of our worst decision.

But the night didn’t fear us. The shadows were the only witnesses. And I’d long known most things delicate die without light .

I laid my hand flat on his chest and couldn’t help but notice the hard bulge growing in his slacks. I spread my knees, fully aware I wasn’t wearing anything beneath these pajamas.

“You can either fuck me or leave this bedroom. It won’t mean anything,” I said.

“Good girls don’t lie.”

“Then punish me.”

He tore my bottoms off with a shadowed force. His fingers dipped between my thighs and slid inside my folds, then he thrusted slowly. “You are devious, Severyn,” he purred, slipping a second in and curling. “And so fucking wet for me.”

“Devious?”

“Yes.”

Then he teased my clit at the same time, slowly unraveling whatever sense I had until it vanished into pleasure.

“Perhaps I’ll make this torturously slow,” he whispered. “Slow down midnight itself. Trap you in an endless night of pleasure until you hate me for it.”

The way he stroked my clit, knowing my body was singing through the bond, only made him more frenzied. He slowed just as I was about to climax, and suddenly I was grinding my hips into his hand.

He dragged his bottoms off, spreading my legs and staring down at my bare sex as if considering resisting.

I went to touch his shaft, but he pinned my arms back. “No. I want you to feel pleasure first,” he growled into my ear, nipping at my lobe.

Then his hard cock was nested between my folds, the head of it slowly stretching my entrance until I was begging for more.

“I want you… in me,” I said.

He shook his head before he lowered his lips, kissing the entirety of my flesh. “Not yet. I want to savor you. Taste you.” He went all the way down my body, every single part of me had been touched by him.

“I’ve never—”

Then his tongue slipped between my wet folds, licking and sucking. “I plan to haunt you, Severyn,” he whispered. “Fuck you until you no longer see light.”

Between his swirling tongue and thrusting fingers, I was a blur of indescribable desire, tethering on the edge of rebellion.

I cried as my stomach muscles clenched, the walls of my sex quivering around his lips and fingers. I had a moment to catch my breath before he went above and flipped me onto my stomach, then inserted his fingers again and again, until my desire was dripping down my inner thighs.

“I need more,” I said, feeling empty once his fingers left.

“When was the last time you took mycris?” he asked. “Has it been over three months?”

“An aide at the king’s estate gave me some,” I said. “I’m protected.”

I’d made sure of it. Archer didn’t want children, and I sure as hell wasn’t ready for that.

He moaned. “Good, because I’m going to fill you until I am dripping down your thighs.”

I bit into the ruffled pillow as he entered me, his thrusts slow and deliberate, one hand holding my spine against his chest.

He was careful—his desire poured into every movement, every breath, as his hips ground into mine. I dipped my head back, meeting his silver gaze.

Heat surged through my veins as he spun me to face him, pulling me onto his lap.

“Burn for me,” he whispered as I moved against him. “Ride me. Ride out that moan.”

I gasped as the wave of pleasure claimed me, crashing over us both .

“One last time.”

Ash swirled around us, drifting like smoke through the lantern-lit room, settling on our slick, bare skin. I hadn’t known shadows could burn, but ours did. They flickered with embers, like a cloak of fire had wrapped around us, setting the linens aglow with heat.

I could have spent hours like this—days lost to him, lost to us—as I melted into a different life. One where love wasn’t a betrayal.

“I can’t pretend,” I said finally.

“Then hate me,” he murmured against my neck. “You have many reasons to hate me.”

He thrust hard, binding my arms back with shadows. I dropped my head forward as his rhythm slowed again, deliberate and wrecking.

“I—I can’t hate you.”

He drove deeper into my core, thrusting until stars lined my vision and light fractured across the edges of my sight.

“You’ll find a way,” he growled.

Not now. Not when another climax blurred the world, filling my mind with stars and blackening everything else.

He gave one final thrust, pulling my hips flush to his, like he needed to mark his desire as deep as it would go.

“Fuck,” he groaned.

He pulled out—only to slam back into me again, now wetter, messier, more frantic. Then he picked me up, hoisting my legs around his waist as he carried me to the wall.

“Come for me,” I whispered, lips brushing his neck.

My spine grazed the wall as his mouth crushed into mine, deepening with every thrust. With every pound, he took more. And when he came, his breathing slowed, steadying as he pulled back slightly .

As he lowered me to my feet, he said, “I don’t want you to ever hate me, Severyn. Not in this gods-damned world.”

Exhausted, aching, I collapsed into him, my hands resting on his shoulders. “I don’t have the strength to hate you,” I whispered.

And I didn’t. Not even close.