Page 25

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

UNRAVELING

H e gave me thirty seconds. A heady half minute where I was certain I was the master of Rodrick Myndacious.

No sooner had our mouths collided than a moan, deep and tortured, resonated up Rory’s throat. His fingers were in my shirt, catching in the fabric, pulling it until my front was flush with his. Heat emanated from his body like he was the sun—I wanted to run my mouth up his stomach. See if he’d burn my tongue. But for now, my focus was on his lips. On dragging my own against them. On the taste.

On the dance of tongues.

The sounds coming out of him— gods . Ragged breaths that rasped louder when I pressed my teeth into his bottom lip. I kissed Rory madly, drove my hands through his hair, slammed my body against his until there was nothing but the fabric of our shirts between us.

It wasn’t enough.

I threw my leg over his hip, letting out a surprised noise of pleasure to feel the hardness of him. Rory seemed to remember himself then, his hands—the earthly plane he was tethered to.

And suddenly it became abundantly clear, for all the times I’d thrown him down, just how badly he wanted to return the favor.

He caught me beneath the thighs, fingertips pressing into my bottom like he wanted to brand himself there. He broke our kiss to look me in the eyes—to smirk—and then he was lifting me off my feet like I weighed nothing. Walking us back.

And throwing me down onto his bed.

The momentum sent the weary candle flickering, then snuffed it out altogether, leaving nothing but a trail of smoke. The only light in the room now was the quarter moon, hovering in the window.

My shirt was rucked up around my ribs. I reached under its hem—hooked a finger in my trousers.

Dragged them off my legs until I was bare.

Rory stood at the edge of the bed, waylaid by the sight of me. His eyelids lowered to half mast, and the sight of his unveiled desire made me even bolder. I sat up on my elbows. Held his eyes. Reached for my shirt.

Undid its clasps one by one.

I’d never been entirely naked in front of anyone before. Not the Diviners, not the abbess—not even in my dreams. I’d always worn the shield, the anonymity, of my shroud.

Save once. When I dreamed of the moth.

Rory did what I asked of him. He didn’t say anything at all—the room silent but for our heavy breathing. I felt it in my body when my tunic fell away and he saw me entirely bare. Felt it when his eyes, awestruck and obsidian black, roved the length of me. When the air grew heated, taut.

“Your turn.”

Rory took his lacing in a fist—ripped it free. When he shrugged out of his shirt, muscles bunching, my gaze was an eager traveler. It trailed down his neck, over the lines of his abdomen, down to his navel.

Down the dark trail of hair that disappeared into his pants.

He looked just like he had the night we’d first met. Half-naked. A mess of sweat and ungodly good looks. Only now, derision had been mastered by desire.

I bit my lip. Nodded at his pants. “Those too.”

His thumb dipped into the waist of his pants. Rory held my eyes. Grinned.

Then took his thumb back out.

“You’re teasing me?”

He shrugged.

“Not very knightly of you.”

His eyelids lowered.

“Hmm.” I pressed upright onto my palms. “What if I took them off for you?” I pulled my legs beneath me. Pushed up. Got on my knees.

His entire body flexed. The sound of air, rushing out of his mouth, was profane. I reached for his pants—

It happened fast. One moment I was on my knees, and the next Rory’s hands were under my arms—lifting me. Putting me once more onto my back.

He crawled over me, breaking his promise of silence only once. “First, you unravel,” he rasped against my ear, then pressed me into his pillows with a ferocious kiss. And I thought I must be the stupidest woman alive, that I’d spent so much time fighting with him when I could have been fighting with his lips instead.

Rory liked it. Kissing. I could tell. He cupped my jaw, fingertips pressing into my cheeks, making my lips pucker for him. He kissed me wetly, worshipfully, and I—I was gasping. I tried to put all my eager sounds back behind the wall of my teeth. But Rory seemed to know I was made tense, denying myself, denying him, because his focus drifted from my mouth to my jaw, as if to soften it with kisses.

He kissed the column of my throat, then roved over affected skin—the bite marks the Ardent Oarsman had left. Those he paid particular attention to. Like his wet inner lip, his tongue, could undo the violence the Omen had tended me. Like he wanted more than to merely kill gods—he wanted to cleanse me of them.

Yes. Rory liked kissing.

Or maybe he just liked kissing me.

Pressing his forehead over my sternum, he laid his mouth over my breasts. Kissed and sighed over them.

I rolled my hips. Ran my pelvis over his. Heard the rush of his breath. I did that again, then once more, imagining us as knights, sparring in a yard. Sweaty and fighting, pressing and grunting in the dirt. “Myndacious.”

I felt his lips curl into a smile over my left breast. He kissed it. Nipped it.

My voice was strangled. “If you don’t bed me now, I’m going to scream.”

He raised himself. Looked me over. Hair fell in errant waves over his brow. And his mouth—his mouth was swollen. Even in the dim light, I could see his pulse racing in his neck. Hear the ragged intake of his breaths.

He looked halfway to satisfaction, prolonging mine.

And that realization—

“In the Seacht.” My hand found his shoulders, drawing him up closer. “Just before you measured me for armor. When you sparred in the yard, dirty and unbridled.” I wrapped my legs around his waist. Put my mouth over that thrumming pulse in his neck. “You looked so ignoble.” I sucked his skin. Pressed my teeth into it. Said, almost frantic—“I thought I’d die if I couldn’t have you.”

Rory made a tormented sound. Took me by the nape of the neck and hauled me onto his lap.

I straddled him, legs swung around his hips. We sat eye to eye, and for frayed moment did nothing but breathe. I was unguarded without my shroud, split wide open beneath his gaze, like a limestone beneath a hammer. Rory held me tightly, grasping the nape of my neck with one hand while the other drifted down my spine in a long, devoted caress.

All the while, he kept his eyes on mine. Held them with the same care he tended my body.

And that… obliterated a keystone in my wall.

“I take it back.” I raked my fingers through his hair. “Say something. Say anything.”

There was only one fitting thing.

Rory kissed me in a way no story can properly express. “Sybil.”

He pressed me with both hands—fingers weaving into my hair and also low, over my bottom. “Whatever it was that made you sigh in your room that night after the hot spring… I’ve thought about it, too. I’ve thought about it a thousand times.” He squeezed the flesh of my backside. “I’ve thought about your thighs. How they felt when I measured them for armor. What it would be like, putting my mouth between them.” His hand withdrew, then snapped back—a quick smack across my bottom that made us both moan. “I’ve thought about your voice. I’ve stayed up, thinking about it. Wondering if it would be sharp or soft when I made you come.” His throat worked. “I’ve thought such unknightly things.”

I was panting, and so was he.

“You could walk over me, Sybil Delling. Throw me down until I am dust. I don’t know what to call it, but I want it. I want you .”

I ran my bareness over him. Watched him lose his sight for desire. “So have me.”

He did not prolong my pleasure a second longer. Rory let go of my bottom. Reached between our trembling bodies. Pressed his middle finger against my sex.

I gasped, and he swallowed the sound like it fed him.

I looked down at his glistening hand between my legs. Watched, felt , as he slid one, two fingers into me. He let out a base noise when he saw just how eager I was and looked up to my eyes, waiting as he always did. I nodded, and he trailed his fingers up over sensitive skin. Circled it. Gave me a sharp jolt, then dragged an arduously slow path back to their home within me.

I was a chime, and he was sounding me. Again, again, again.

There were no more gods to call out to. But. Oh. My. Gods. The room was fracturing. The bed, the window—the moon through it. All of them, fracturing.

I cried out. Grasped Rory’s face. “Come with me.”

He shifted his hips from beneath me. And suddenly, after spinning me like a slow-burning wax, he was in a hurry. He shoved his pants down and I clawed them off his thighs, pleased beyond measure to run my fingers through his leg hair, over his hips, his length.

Rory hissed out a breath. Lifted me over his lap. Nudged my entrance.

His pupils were blown wide. “Tell me yes. Right now.”

No litany, no profanity, was better than hearing him this desperate. “Yes.”

He drew me down, down—down. I let out a reckless sound, and his grip at the nape of my neck tightened. We collided. Flesh to flesh. Pulse against pulse. Eye to eye.

And I forgot everything.

I forgot looming tors and scholarly cities. Jagged mountains, outlandish woods, and everyone within them. All I really knew was fullness, painful pleasure—the look in Rory’s eyes as he moved in me. The tender insistence of his fingers between us, circling, stroking—

Something was building. Taking wing. Every time Rory pressed into me, I felt it stir. We were going slow. So lavishly slow.

But I was losing my breath.

And suddenly I was unsure. “If I can’t—if I don’t finish—”

“You don’t have to do anything.” Rory’s eyes were hazy. He pulled his hand out from between us. Put his thumb over my bottom lip, over the edges of my teeth—over my tongue, like he had once at Aisling. Like I had to him in the Wood. There was no blood this time. Just sweat, and the faint hint of our desires.

“This isn’t a spectacle or a ceremony,” he said. “It’s just you and me, Sybil.” He didn’t like being away from my mouth. Every word was punctuated with a kiss. “I just want you to feel good.”

I bloomed, light and heavy at once. Lips parting, breasts heaving, heart swelling, body clenching, my blood twisted, then became mightily scattered. It was like a dream. I was falling. Falling. “Rory.” Whatever flesh was there—his shoulder, his mouth—I bit into it. Anchored myself to it. “ Rory. ”

I unraveled. I unraveled until I was the barest spool of thread, spinning in the wake of the little death.

“Fuck.” Rory thrust harder. Faster. He moaned, stealing the air from the room, from me.

He was undone. Holding even harder to my backside. Saying my name, moving in and out of me, unbridled.

He pulled out of me just in time. Pressed me down over his mattress. Spilled himself over my stomach. My breasts.

Rory panted, and I, like a cathedral, echoed him. Our eyes caught, and he smiled, then fell to my side. He cleaned me off with his fallen shirt and pulled me against him. Put one hand in my hair and lazed the other over my backside.

And I thought, blood slowing, eyelids growing heavy, breath idling…

Maybe contentedness isn’t just a story.

When I woke, heavy as lead, the moon was still a lanky presence in the sky. I hadn’t remembering drifting off—only the heat of Rory’s body, pressed against mine. The feel of his chest, rising, falling. The smell of his skin.

I sat up.

The bed, the mattress, just like when One had vanished, was bereft of warmth. Rory was gone. The only heartbeat in the room was mine.

“Rory?”

No answer.

I suddenly felt cold. I reached for the edge of the bed. Found my shroud. It felt rougher than I remembered. I held it out and examined it.

Strange that something so light, so thin, might hold dominion over me.

I hadn’t yet taken in the breadth of Rory’s room; my eyes hadn’t strayed once from him. But now that he was gone, I cast my eyes over the space. It was little wonder he’d lost his mind when I’d told him back at Aisling that I didn’t have any possessions to bring along—the room was brimming with effects.

Were Rory’s bedroom a ship, it would sink for the weight of its cargo. The shelves were laden. I could smell leather and idleweed. Wool. Parchment. There were books—clay vases full of rolled leaflets and quills with broken nibs. Clothes that looked to be from each of the five hamlets. Crates of yarn, then smaller ones filled with gold and brass trinkets.

I couldn’t discern rhyme or reason, only abundance.

Something on a corner table caught my eye. A looking glass—a fine one, set in silver. I went to it, fingers tightening over the cold handle.

I lifted it slowly, the journey to my own reflection arduous. I saw my face bereft of gossamer. Pale skin and a flushed, swollen mouth. Silver eyebrows and hair—unkempt. A slightly crooked nose.

Eyes.

My breath went out. Because of all the lies the abbess had told me at Aisling, all her falsehoods regarding signs and gods, there was one truth hidden among them. I had been forever changed by drowning in the spring upon the chancel. The eyes I looked upon were not the eyes of a young woman. They were not the eyes of a human at all.

They were pallid. White. Completely bereft of iris or pupil, like those of an unpainted statue. Hewn entirely of stone.

Just like an Omen.

I dropped the looking glass onto the table and fumbled for my shroud.

The chamber door opened.

Rory was there in poorly fastened pants, holding a tray. There was a pitcher, bread, and berries upon it.

I froze, and so did he.

“You look like you’ve just robbed me.” His eyes fell over my naked body, and I heard his breath leave him. But then his gaze snagged on the shroud in my hand, then the looking glass, still wobbling on the table. His foot swung back, and the chamber door slammed shut. “What’s wrong?”

I look like a monster.

My fingers twisted in my shroud. I turned to his shelves, my voice shaking. “Your room is an impressive collection of… everything.”

Rory said nothing, the line of his shoulders drawing tight.

“Where did you get it all?”

It took him a moment to speak. “I never had anything,” he said. “Not at Pupil House II, and not in Coulson Faire. The Artful Brigand… He thought it funny, denying me basic necessities in a place as opulent as Castle Luricht.” He touched the three gold rings in his ear. “Benji’s grandfather gave me these. They were the first things I ever truly owned. But even when I was out from the Brigand’s yoke and Maude’s squire, my hands felt empty, so I tried to fill them. A bad habit, I know.”

I realized with a sinking stomach that his pause was for shame. He thought that I was looking down at him.

“I assumed Maude would beat me or at the very least dismiss me when she found out I was a thief. She fit me with armor instead. Said fingers were not so light when clasped by gauntlets.” Rory’s voice quieted. “She looked out for me. Even pulled the weight of her family name that I might be knighted.”

He nodded at his shelves. “I’ve paid for these. Or replaced them with something of value. It took time, and the habit’s hard to kick, but I went back and paid—”

“I don’t care that you steal things, Rory.”

His shoulders eased a whit, but his gaze remained strained. “Then why are you looking at me differently?”

“How could you say I was beautiful?” My whisper was a horrible rasp. “My eyes. I’m like them .”

It took him a moment to catch up. When he did, his face was a charming conflict of relief and concern. “It’s Aisling’s spring water,” he said. “You’ve been swallowing it for ages.”

I didn’t want to look at him. “I guessed they’d be horrible. That they might be stone. That dreaming and drowning had altered me in some vital way. When the Ardent Oarsman knocked off my helmet and glimpsed them, he dropped his guard, like he couldn’t fathom what he was seeing.” My chest was heavy. “Maybe he couldn’t believe, beneath gossamer, that a Diviner and an Omen were not so different.”

Rory’s throat hitched and his voice hardened, like he was trying to steel me with his assuredness. “You’re nothing like them, Sybil.”

“I needed to know. I’ll never be able to see myself clearly if it is ever through Aisling’s shroud. But knowing you’d seen my eyes and had left the room… I thought maybe you’d changed your mind about me. That you were repulsed or regretful—”

Rory was across the room in a moment. His tray hit the table with a raucous clatter and he ripped the shroud from my hands, tossing it onto the floor. He kissed me. Hard. “You don’t like me when I’m a good knight,” he said over my lips. “And you don’t like me when I’m bad.”

I let out a startled laugh, nodding at the mess of blankets upon his bed. “Evidence to the contrary.”

He grinned against my skin, then withdrew to look into my eyes. “You are beautiful, Sybil Delling. So fucking beautiful. You’re strong and smart and noble.” He grasped the nape of my neck, and I wondered if he liked to touch me there because he could aim my gaze. “But I think I like it best when you’re wrong .”

I shook my head. But I was a poor player at derision—I smiled.

“I left to get us food.” Another kiss, this time on my cheek. “I haven’t changed my mind about anything.” Another, on my neck. “I’m so far the opposite of repulsed or regretful about you that I’m lost.”

Rory took my hand. Put my fingers to his lips. “Don’t go.” The moon shone over us, just a young man and a young woman standing together, a strange sacrality between us that had nothing to do with portents or Aisling Cathedral or Omens. “I want to keep looking at you,” he murmured into my knuckles, “all night.”

“And the rules?” My pulse was a torrid rush. “The knighthood bans bed relations. You said so yourself.”

“I never said anything like that.”

I pulled his hair.

Rory slouched forward, smiling. “It’s not a vow. Just an arbitrary rule. Fuck the rules, Sybil.” His eyelids grew heavy. “Fuck me, and fuck the rules.”

We unraveled all night long.

We lost our gods, our armor, our own names. We spent ourselves on each another, completely and utterly vanishing into the craft of desire. Completely, utterly—

Gone.