Page 14 of The Princesses of Ruin (The Princesses of Ruin #5)

Chapter thirteen

Zane

“ D o not allow the younger Spiders near the palace,” I say as I carefully load a supply of blood potions for Scarlett into my bag.

“You’re repeating yourself,” Gareth says.

“It’s important.”

“I know.”

I grab a container of healing salve and wrap it in clean bandages, then stuff it next to the blood potions.

“The trade agreement with Seter and Wolfsheim is holding, but if they discover we’re gone, that will change. We need to have an appropriate reason to refuse any meetings until we return.”

Gareth follows me to the door. “It’s already worked out. We are on information lockdown for the final push against the queen. No one in or out of the city limits.”

“And food supplies—

“Sir, if I may.”

I stop in the cold stone hall, dim magus lights illuminating Gareth’s stern features.

“What is it?”

“You’re showing too much. ”

Fuck, he’s right. I take a moment to collect myself and realize my idiocy. Gareth is my second for a reason.

“You have this under control,” I say.

“Yes, sir, I do.”

“When are you proposing to Cecillia?”

His face reddens and he tugs at his beard. “I’m not sure where you heard this rumor.”

I grab his shoulder. “Perhaps after the dark goddess’s destruction.”

He grunts and nods. “A fresh start for a fresh start.”

A pregnant pause fills the space between us. Will we succeed in destroying a goddess? Can we even survive the trials to earn us the necessities for the ritual?

“You’ll be fine,” Gareth says, gripping my opposite shoulder. “Go now.”

I turn without another word and climb the stairs to the atrium. Lily comes out of the kitchen with saddlebags full to bursting and grins at me. “I packed only the finest wine and cheese for your excursion.”

I take the bag from her and open the flap. It’s filled with several skeins and cloth-wrapped bundles of food. “Tell me you didn’t pack only wine and cheese.”

She rolls her eyes. “I’m not an idiot. I packed the wine for myself!”

She skips off, leaving me holding the bag of who-knows-what.

I open one of the skeins and take a sniff. Just water. The bundle holds a fresh loaf of bread, still warm. There’s a rune carved in the side, and I pull back more of the cloth to reveal the rest.

“A sustaining enchantment,” Cecillia says from the kitchen doorway.

Her loose bun is spilling half down her shoulders, and dark bags line her eyes.

“It was Lily’s idea. Carved into the dough before baking.

Brilliant. The bread won’t mold for weeks.

If you’re careful with it, should last the whole trip. ”

“Thank you,” I say, sealing the bread once more.

She comes closer, dusting her flour-covered apron. “I don’t need your thanks. I need you to protect my girl.”

I dip my head. “With my life.”

She smooths the collar of my shirt, then weaves her magic to repair a small rip at the neck. “If you die, she’ll die, and this world will die. Don’t. Die.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She smiles and the years of her life reveal themselves in the wrinkles beside her eyes. “Good boy. Now, go get yourself a whatever-it-is-you-need and kill that bitch of a queen.”

I turn away, passing Ada in the filing room. Her desk has accumulated significantly more extravagant trinkets beside her lavish lamp. She salutes me and her cigarette ashes on the desk.

Stepping through the hall to the entrance feels like walking out of my body. The once plain space has livened since I married Scarlett and welcomed her sisters into the Nest. Portraits and paintings, maps and star charts. Life has been breathed into this space.

And I’m leaving it behind with no promise of return.

The Underbelly is gray and cold, a dusting of snow covering the cobblestone street outside the Nest. Scarlett is petting the white mare, Winifred, and the hell-beast Kor’Tar stomps his hooves at me impatiently.

“You’re sure they’ll know the way home?” Scarlett asks as she tugs her fur-lined hood closer to her cheeks.

“If they take a detour, Alastair will know,” I say, flicking the runic crest on Kor’Tar’s harness.

She’s still reluctant to take the beasts with us, and I need to assuage whatever worry lies there with logic.

“Even if we travel by spindle, we can’t keep the pace of a horse or carry the supplies we’ll need to get us to the Hollow Forest.”

“You’re right,” she says. “And it would be dangerous to take them into the thick of it.”

“We’ll need to make camp in the trees at night to protect ourselves from predators, and we can’t bring the horses with us.”

Scarlett laughs as she pats Kor’Tar. “I could only imagine trying to hoist his fat arse off the ground.”

Kor’Tar chomps in her direction and huffs twin curls of steam from his dark nostrils. His feistiness makes me chuckle. Scarlett turns to me, her black eye wide with shock.

“What?”

Her face softens. “It feels like I haven’t heard you laugh in a lifetime.”

I place the saddlebags over Kor’Tar’s hips and move toward my love. She melts into my touch, a rare display of vulnerability for all the world to see—from their windows at least.

She nestles against my throat, her cold nose sending a chill through me. I hold the back of her head, massaging her scalp through the hood of her coat.

“There will be so much laughter for us after this. I promise.”

She looks up at me and for a flash, her blackened gaze feels alien.

Hostile.

Gold shimmers across her pupil and her expression shifts. “I need Alyse’s power.”

I slide the pack off my shoulder and open the travel case of powers. She snags up the vial of her sister’s blood potion and takes a tiny sip .

“Will that be enough?” I ask, cupping her cheek. I don’t know why, but I need to feel her. Feel that she’s real and here.

She closes her eyes and bobs her head. After a moment, yellow light pulses behind her eyes. She whirls on her heel and mounts Winifred. “No more frigging around. Let’s be off.”

I secure the bags to Kor’Tar’s saddle, then step up into the stirrups.

With a jolt, Scarlett takes off. Kor’Tar takes off a second later, catching his mare quickly.

The horses’ shoe-clops are muted through the snow, but they draw the eyes of citizens nonetheless.

Many of the folk look on with confusion, and some of them with scorn.

The champions of the revolution running away?

If only we could tell them we weren’t abandoning them, but saving them.

They’ll know when we return and end the dark goddess for good.

The ride south through the Black Forest is cold and uneventful. We allow the horses rest twice. Before sundown, we’re camping in a colder, but thankfully dry, valley between the sea and the mountainside.

We use our spindles to sever great branches covered in fragrant, needle-like leaves, then lasso them together at the base to create a hut large enough for us and the horses.

It’s a quiet, dark night, the faint teal glow of my magic the only illumination.

Wind howls outside our shelter, but the warmth of our bodies and breath fills the space.

Scarlett unfurls the bedrolls of cotton-stuffed cloth, and the comfortable mattresses begin to suck in air, fluffing themselves. I pull a pair of candles from the satchel and dig quick holders in the earth before lighting them.

Runes zip along the sides as the heat of fire fills the wick, and protection spells radiate out in a thirty-foot square. Each rune is awash with red and green, Alastair and Liliana’s magic scripting itself into the fabric of the world .

“Cozy,” Scarlett says as she saunters toward me. “I could almost pretend we’re on holiday.”

I grin, opening my arms for her. She slips her hands through the gaps between the buttons of my coat. Her fingernails drag across my ribs over the thick cotton shirt. A groan rumbles in my throat and my hands slid down to her backside. I squeeze her thick muscles through several layers of pants.

“You know the world is ending, right,” Scarlett says, her tone playful though her words carry the undertone of her fears.

I press my lips to the shell of her ear. “Then fuck me like the world is ending…”

I pull off her hood and grip her hair, planting rough kisses down her neck with teeth and tongue. She tears open my coat, popping the button, and claws it off my arms. I throw my hands back to shed the clothing, coming back harder each time.

I tug on her pants with one hand, my thumb and forefinger failing to untie the knot holding the first pair up. I growl and my spindles rip free as I claim her lips. I sever the leather string barring my path to her pleasure and push the first layer down.

She shreds my shirt from the holes in the back and rips it off. “I’m going to have to sew that tomorrow,” she says in a reprimanding tone between violent kisses.

I hum in mock sympathy, and she bites my lip. I taste iron and break away from her. The black of her eye fills with my glowing teal and she finally looks like my Scarlett again.

The air is punched from my lungs as the weight of my love for her slams down on me.

I stare at her, breathless and awestruck.

I never put much stock in the gods after what happened to my parents, but looking on her gives me faith.

Not a hope that the immortal origins care enough to see us through to success, but that I have found the most ruthless, powerful, dedicated woman, whom I would fight the gods for.

I am fighting one for her. With her.

Her expression shifts from heady lust to something gentler, deeper. “I feel the same.”

“I know,” I say, smearing my blood across her lips with my thumb.

When we kiss again, it’s slower, more deliberate. I push her layers away until she’s bared to me. I crouch and pull her into my arms, cradling the curve of her ass. She wraps her legs around my hips as I drop her to the mattress.

My cock flexes behind the restraint of my trousers as I rock into her center. She moans, her hands deftly working the loops of my pants. I use my spindles to shuck them off, then fall against her. The warmth of her center makes me shiver. My hips roll forward and I slide through her slick folds.

Scarlett mewls. “Inside, please.”

I love when she begs. This strong, brutal queen brought to the edge of desperation at my touch. I want to taste her and revel in the serenade of her pleasure, but she said please.

I push away and look down the length of our bodies. It’s a glorious sight as I align myself with her opening. In her eyes is a tumultuous storm of pleading and pleasure. She turns her hips and presses her heels into my ass, taking the first inch of me.

I breathe what feels like the first breath in months. Connecting with her is peace, the greatest bliss. My vision narrows as my hips hit hers, and then I press a little more. She rotates her pelvis into me, shifting the angle to consume me deeper.

I sigh and the world disappears.

“I will love you forever. From the stars winking out to the death of the gods, you are my soul, my reason, my redemption. ”

Her warm palm smooths over the stubble on my cheek. “I will always choose you. And if this life is not the last, I will choose you again.”

She pulls me down and our lips connect. I move against her with patient devotion. Grinding into her center with every movement. Her moans echo into my mouth.

I lose myself in her, following the river of our passion until her ecstasy overflows.

The walls of her sex grip me in waves and I succumb to her divinity.

I snap my hips against hers harder, driving into her and forcing a second orgasm through her.

She breaks from my lips to cry out. I kiss her neck as she howls even louder than the wind.

I know the gods can hear the power of our love.

When she’s satisfied, she lavishes my throat with lazy kisses, and I slow my rocking. I finally still, and the thunder of my heart comes back into focus, then the wind and the flicker of candlelight. I breathe in the scent of her hair and sink down until she bears more of my weight.

The steady rise and fall of her chest below me is a comfort that I never thought I could know—that I never thought I deserved.

“Can we live in this moment forever?” she whispers.

I pull back enough to see her face. She’s content and exhausted.

“Live in it with me right now. We’ll see how long we can make it last.”