Page 21 of Shadows and Flames (Twin Blades #2)

Chapter Fourteen

ELIáN

I closed the door, flipping the multiple locks and latches. I leaned my back into the wood and took her in.

The deep green dress with embroidered bodice hugged her frame, the skirt hiding what I knew so intimately. The full hips where my hands belonged. The dip of her lower back, where I wanted to dot kisses and soft caresses.

It also didn’t escape my notice that she was dressed in Versillian colors.

My queen stood just beyond the threshold, an inch out of my arm’s reach. I looked at the apartment with new eyes, and it was simple. There were no personal effects. A front room with a small kitchen, table, two chairs. A bedroom and en suite bathing room to the left.

Still, she stood, the calm expanding of her chest not quite belying the rapid beat of her heart.

“Meline,” I said, and she startled. How long had it been since I’d said her name aloud? Now, I couldn’t stop myself. I had her. She was here .

My queen glanced my way, but it was a fleeting sweep of her gaze. I almost smiled, recalling her denial that she was afraid. By the cross of her arms and tilt of her chin, she was still going with that lie.

As long as she didn’t lie to me about us .

She remained still, and I waited. Wondered why she wasn’t crossing into the room, demanding I get on with it, berating me for doling out commands.

And then it dawned on me.

Could she be waiting for me to check for danger? As I’d done when I was her Shadow?

Meline was not facing me, so she couldn’t see the smirk shift my lips now, but she shuddered as I bent to whisper, “Sit down, my queen. Be comfortable here.”

Her gloved fingers twisted, clenched, but she didn’t remove the leather coverings. Instead, she kicked off her heeled boots, showing her true height which fit perfectly against mine, and crossed the main space.

She did not sit at the table but on it, leaning against the scuffed but sturdy thing.

Deep brown and twinkles of gold watched me warily. How was it she could have changed and been so much the same? The female that haunted and blessed my dreams. The menace that I’d fallen in love with.

Her long, springing curls were all but gone. There was a deeper sadness clinging to her.

But the way she pushed against me earlier. The way she held onto me. It was her .

I eliminated the distance between us in an instant. If she did not want to sit, then I wouldn’t either.

Her exhale was shaky. “You’ve got me here, El. So, talk.”

Pink peppercorn. The wind over the ocean. I filled myself with her scent and shuddered at the trails of mine still on her. “I…have missed you.” Tears immediately started brimming, making the gold flecks brighter. The brown deeper. “Have you missed me?” I dared.

My queen laughed a high-pitched noise. She stared above, not looking at me and forcing the tears back. “ Fuck , El.” I waited, holding my breath as she swiped at her eyes. “You have n-no idea.”

“I think I do.”

Meline’s expression crumpled, her body shook, but before I could bring her into my chest, she held out a hand to stop me.

Though I’d taken her in that back room, claimed her so that there was no space to question the connection between us, now that she’d agreed to stay with me, I knew I had to be patient.

My queen gasped, shoulders hitching. “Elián, I’m so—there will never be enough words for me to convey how sorry I am. For everything.”

My skin warmed, and my Fire stirred at the sight of her breaking. It’d almost ruined me, turning away from her that day. With her howls of despair as I rode from the witch house. “Na. I—it was unfair of me. To expect you to not be wary of The Shadows. After all you’d been through.”

She shook her head again, trying to fight off my words, but she stayed here. She did not flee. “It would be okay if you hated me, you know. I deserve it.”

That, I could not stand for. As Tomás had told me long ago, my queen had been hurting.

Recovered from the brink of death and contending with the murder of her uncle and her brother’s betrayal.

She could have responded differently, but I understood her reaction.

Not wanting to be connected to a Shadow. Did she still feel that way?

I rested my palm on the nape of her neck, needing some connection with her. And she leaned into my touch, ever so slightly. “I do not hate you. I have loved you for a while, now.” If we were going to rebuild, I would not hold back from her.

Her eyes widened, mouth dropping open. She gaped, starting and stopping multiple times before she could gather her words. I caressed my thumb against the strands curling behind her ear and marveled at the veins blackening beside my touch. Her power reaching out to me.

“You can’t say shit like that to me, El,” she whispered.

I hummed, bringing myself even closer to her. “It is a good thing that I am no longer working for you, then. I am no longer compelled to follow your orders.”

She chuckled darkly, but still, she was here . “I don’t think you had that issue before, either.”

The struggle between myself and her had been so infuriating back then. Now, I looked upon it fondly. “Maybe not.”

“I don’t…I missed you so much,” she confessed, and another coil of tension relaxed within me. Heat flooded my fingertips as I continued to hold her. Meline whimpered, lashes fluttering unsteadily. “What—how do we rebuild? How can we, after everything?”

I frowned. “As far as I am concerned, we discuss our past as we see fit. We spend time together. That is…if you’ve forgiven me? For being inconsiderate, for not being supportive, for?—”

“What—for fuck’s sake, El. There was never anything to forgive.

I am to blame. I broke what was starting to grow between us.

After everything you did for me, I fucked it all up.

And, and,” her chest began heaving, her words breathy, “I know it’s unfair, but I’d do anything.

Anything you asked if that meant I’d get to keep you.

” And then, in a whispering plea, she added, “Punish me as you see fit, please. ”

I balked, flinching as if she’d struck me. She didn’t wait for my words, stammering over my reaction. “You just—you said it once that you would. Whatever you want from me. To do to me. I’ll take it. Whatever it is.”

I ground my teeth, my stomach dropping. Moving to hold her hands, I searched her hopeless stare. The trembling of her bottom lip. “Meline. I do not want to punish. I do not want revenge. I want you as you are.”

She cut off our gazes, shutting her eyes again. “What if I don’t know who I am anymore?”

How could life be so cruel? No matter how many years I lived, no answers to this question ever came. But to see the suffering reflected in what my queen just divulged?

I tugged on her gloves, pulling at the fabric so that I could feel more of her skin against mine.

But her reaction was not one I’d been expecting.

Meline snatched her hand away, ducked out of my embrace, and put space between us. After all she’d just said, the emotions she’d let me see, why did this send her running?

“ Fuck !” Meline shouted, and when she tried to grab at her face, her hands were shaking too much to manage even that.

“My queen,” I was so confused, “what is wrong?”

“I—I have to go. I can’t—” And I watched her angle toward the door. Preparing to run away from me, even when she’d promised.

I’d not been angry at her for a long time, but now, with her impending flight, the emotion roared to the surface. Flames sparked to life on my fingertips, and I pinned my queen to the wall.

But my power did not burn her, did not char her skin. Just as the black smoke rising from her hands did not carry Death. With her holding my throat, panic and challenge churning around us, her darkness circled around me. Cool and curious, I welcomed it. All that she was.

Did she not understand that?

She started to say something, but I cut her off, begging. “ Enough . Show me.”

Fear wafted off of her, seeped from her pores as she released her hold on my throat. Her hand hovered between us.

With a pinch of two fingers, while my others were still aflame, I reached and pulled on the glove. For all the resistance she gave before, I felt her tug in the opposite direction to assist me. Saw her swallow while I uncovered what she hid.

Meline watched, then let me uncover the other that matched the first.

In the air, held aloft for me to see, were ten fingers, six as black as Rhaea’s Temple.

My queen’s brown skin, the sharpened nails. Those were the same. But, on the first three digits of each, down almost to where they connected with her palm, was complete darkness.

“I’m sorry.” Her whole body was shaking so badly, now. The apology was thickened with a sob, to the point that it was hard to understand. Even the second and third times she said it.

I didn’t… I didn’t understand. She was no high priestess. How—why had her powers shifted in this way?

I dropped my brow to hers, snuffed the flames of my anger, and steadied her. I touched the backs of her bare hands and rested them on my face. Felt the cool touch of her power.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, clinging to me so tightly, weeping.

What was there to do but hold her? Give her my words of apology until they were a chant between us? Let her see that just as I was demanding she not leave, I would not be leaving either. She was mine, and I was hers.

So, I let my own tears fall. Let her feel the unsteadiness of my own being. Witness how I was broken, too.

Even as I led her to the bed, gently undressed myself while she fumbled with her own clothing, I did not hide. And when she collapsed on the mattress with me, we held each other tightly enough to break bones.

MELINE

Like that morning in Krisla, I awoke alone in a bed that wasn’t mine.

My face was tear-swollen, my throat raw, and my nerves were frayed. The previous evening was a wash of desperate words and frantic touches.