Page 46

As soon as she disappears behind my bedroom door I turn around and drag my hands through my hair.

I’m a total fucking creep.

Here I’d been slapping down hints nice and thick thinking I wasn’t getting the signal through her dense skull. Oh, she got it alright. Has probably been politely sidestepping my attempts.

She was afraid. Visibly afraid at the idea of being vulnerable to me, unclothed in my bed.

I was so convinced the interest was mutual. Of course, she seems interested. She’s locked away in these chambers and I’m the one holding the key. I’m basically like her fucking captor. The power balance is all off and here I am… enjoying it .

Is it the taboo that makes it so damn alluring? How I’d judged my father for taking a low-born wife to keep underfoot in the name of feeling powerful and now I’m here getting high off the same rush he fed from. Drawn like a predator to the smell of an injured, cornered animal.

I realize how ridiculous I was to think it. Not just ridiculous, it’s wrong to think it, and worse, entertain the idea of acting upon it.

But the obsession continues to grow, unwieldy no matter how many times I rip out the weeds. Desire tipping its head like a great, unrelenting beast.

So much so that sometimes I stop and wonder if the Blood of the Gods bound us after all.

I pace back and forth in front of the doorway.

No.

It has nothing to do with the Blood of the Gods. Nothing to do with her . Nothing to do with the stupid firebranded oath. Everything to do with this fucking fucked situation I’ve gotten myself into. Never have I been this desperate, this lonely, starved for the slightest bit of affection from anyone or anything. And Morin drops her in my lap…

Did she really intend the punishment center around the superficiality of this marriage? Or does she know that someday she’ll be able to use her to break me again? Can she even perceive the notion of me or anyone garnering affection for a nought?

I really shouldn’t have kissed her. I’ve at least put the seeds of the idea in her head. Whether she believes I do or could or not…

I don’t know.

Knowing Morin it’s more than what’s on the surface. Everything she does is a plot, carefully orchestrated so that I often can’t at first see her true intentions. Generally, I don’t even try to figure her devious plans out. I don’t really give a shit what it is she wants. She can take over the whole Gods damn Ouroboros for all I care.

But with her…

I knew it was going to be like this. This whole thing is dangerous, corrupt, dripping with poison, and layered with traps from top to bottom. Just one of the many reasons I shouldn’t venture any closer. In the end, her trepidation of me is a good thing—a warning and a reminder to stop my fickle, hair-brained, pining bullshit.

It’s not even about her. It’s just something in my makeup that buckles around the concept of some small pretty, defenseless thing needing me for their survival.

Gross.

I blow out a long breath, firm in my resolve not to fall victim to it. I give the door a couple of sharp raps. I can’t hear anything past the thick pane of wood so I crack it open to inquire if she’s ready.

“Ready.”

Even that one word is full of hoarse apprehension. It isn’t enough to dull the thick spark of satisfaction that drums through me at the sight of her and the white silk waterfall of her hair spilling down across her back.

There’s nothing particularly nerve-wracking about the act of marking someone yet my blood pumps unsettlingly hard as I near. I work a swallow and prop one knee on the bed beside her to lean on. Her weight shifts with mine, hip hidden under the covers settling against my knee.

She doesn’t make to remove it.

Her arms are wrapped tightly around her head, blanket still pulled up past her shoulders. I feel like I should say something, lighten the mood, and displace the growing tension in the air but my mind is full of all the wrong things.

She shifts, loosening her arms to turn her head in my direction. “Have you done this before?

I’m grateful she’s broken the silence instead. “Marked someone?”

“Yeah.”

“I have not.” I reach forward to sweep the hair from her neck. “At least not a person. I’ve marked objects but they’re not so different. It won’t be difficult.”

This jaded anticipation buzzes under my skin. Still most inappropriately thrilled to glimpse portions of her I haven’t yet seen. I slowly pull the blanket down, revealing first the sharp yet feminine carve of her shoulder blades. Keeping my eyes trained on the length of her spine, I drink in her shape, trying not to allow my imagination to wander to other things I could potentially be doing on this side of her, or allow my eyes to stray further down to where her breasts press against the mattress. Tension lines her muscles.

I’ve only just made it past her shoulder blades when she suddenly, almost shouting, calls out, “Wait!”

I snatch my hand back and freeze.

“Wait,” she says quieter this time. She flips her head back like she’s trying to get a look at herself. “Could you just leave it right there?”

“The…blanket?”

“That should be enough room, shouldn’t it?”

It’s not nearly enough room. “I have three marks to put on you…the mark of the goddess is quite large.”

I look down to find her anxiously chewing at her lip, her cheeks flushing a vibrant pink. “Is this--me seeing your back…considered scandalous to you?”

“No!”

“I don’t understand.”

“I have a scar,” she blurts out. “I mean—I have scars.”

“Oh.” A short tense silence ensues. Suddenly her reluctance makes much more sense. “You know I of all people would never judge you for that,” I say, hastily.

She turns her head toward the pillow. “I know—I just—I’ve never—no one’s seen them.”

“No one had seen mine either,” I assure her. It’s not entirely true. Both Imenand and Morin had seen it but that was all. “Are they from your fall?”

“I guess—I just— I feel like you do about yours in that—I really don’t want to talk about it.”

“Of course. We don’t have to talk about it,” I say seriously, respecting that more than anyone.

She puffs out a long breath, turns her head to the pillow in what I take as permission. But then her arms squeeze tighter around her head, muscles tensing as if anticipating…Apprehension coils in me and I quickly smash it down. I would never judge her for it no matter how bad they are. I’ll assure her that they’re nothing to even blink at.

I’m halfway down her back when I spot the first one. One slightly risen, almost like a welt in an even brighter shade of white than the rest of her pale skin. I yank the blanket down to rumple at her waist and stiffen, blinking rapidly. I expected something portraying a past injury—something patchy and inconsistent, maybe even a burn—accidental in nature.

This was no accident.

A series of deep and textured slashes mar her skin, streaking and crisscrossing down her back and lower past where the blankets cover.

They’re all healed well enough I can tell its been a good many years since they occurred.

But there are so fucking many of them.

Like she was beaten—whipped brutally time and time again.

“What the fuck ?” My rage erupts so abruptly I’m forced to close my hand into a fist to quell the surge of magic. Her body tenses and she sucks in a sharp inhale, squeezing her arms even tighter around her head. “Why?” I ask, aghast with shock. “Why did they do this to you?”

The words come out too harsh, too brutal but I can’t help it—I’m fucking pissed. She doesn’t breathe a word. Does she think I mean to judge her for whatever indiscretion she committed?”

“Sorry, I just mean…I don’t understand why they would do this to a princess…” Someone in her status should’ve been protected by such barbaric means of punishment.

I wanted to make sure she didn’t get reprimanded for what I did…

“Was this your father?” I already hated the insufferable nought king. Now my hatred burns with a blazing fury, setting its sights on the possibility of vengeance.

Silence .

I guess that is the one plus side about my being here. There’s no one around for you to question about my reputation.

Suddenly, her skittishness makes so much more sense in the context of this, and now…I feel like a massive asshole for not just being…gentler with her.

“Pandora.” Fury is still boiling in my blood and my voice is too sharp, too severe. She remains stiff as a statue except for the quick rise and fall of her shoulders. I lean down, speaking softer this time as I say, “Pandora.”

She reluctantly turns her head to face me, cheeks burning red and I hate that it’s because she’s ashamed.

“Is this why you have nightmares?” I whisper. She’s angrier than I expect. A cold, hard wall in her eyes. Nothing . “Do they do this…to everyone?”

Her face flames more vigorously. “You said…” she bites out. Her voice is accusing not with this—not with what’s happened to her but accusing of me . It trembles slightly-- not with emotion with anger .

I said…

I said we didn’t have to talk about this .

Shit.

I push a breath out through my teeth as I straighten. I was supposed to assure her it was nothing to blink at and then I just…totally overreacted and confirmed that it was very much something to blink at. Whatever has happened to her she’s guarding it just as viciously as I guard my scar.

And she hadn’t inquired into my scar. Sure, she badgered me about what my glamour was and then asked as to why I kept it hidden but as soon as I said I don’t like discussing it she let it go and out of respect for me—hadn’t brought it up again.

For some reason those two perfectly parallel blazing fires glimmer in my mind, a symbol of our likeness.

No, I keep my scar hidden because of the shame it signifies and I know she can’t have anything to be ashamed of.

Does she think that whatever she did was deserving of this? Something in my gut says it's likely the case. I shake my head in annoyance. It was probably something totally menial. My fists clench and unclench, but I can’t untangle that from her psyche, can’t at all make sure she understands there’s nothing she could’ve done to be worthy of this if I’m not allowed to speak about it.

I can’t even assure her that it makes her no less beautiful. My eyes flit over the full shape of her, down to her waist and back up to the white waves spilling across the pillow. She is still just as lovely.

I can’t speak it. Don’t even know if it would be appropriate to speak at this point.

“Are you going to mark me?” she snaps out.

Now, slicing at her back is literally the last thing I want to do. Not to mention my magic is still surging at my fingertips, bound to come bursting out with too much pressure.

“Can you give me just a moment?” I ask hoarsely. Without waiting for her answer I bound toward the door and slip back out into the living room. The magic surges out, not into anything in particular, just charging the air with the power. It chills the chambers like a sharp wind. I let it empty until my fingers steady, no longer pulsing with magic.

Not wanting to keep her waiting I promptly slip back into the bedroom and shut the door quietly behind me. Her head is now buried in her hands face down in the pillow. She removes them as I near, closing them into fists as she stretches them out above her head.

The sight of the scars makes my stomach turn again and I focus on the unmarred portion of her upper back as I stride forward, fumbling the vial of ink out of my pocket.

“Are you ready?” I ask, sliding a knee back onto the bed to lean over her.

“Is it going to hurt?”

“It might sting a little,” I admit. It’ll be nothing to what she’s been dealt in the past. “I haven’t been marked since I was a baby so I can’t remember—I’ve done plenty of blood magic but none that’s tied me to another person. It could have…side effects. But if it does it’ll pass shortly.”

“What do you mean ‘tied’?”

“I mean…that there will be a transfer of blood.”

“You’re giving me your blood?” she asks, sounding genuinely curious now instead of perturbed.

“A drop of yours in mine and a drop of mine in yours. Or three drops for all three marks.”

“For good luck, protection and…”

“The triskelion for good luck. The triquetra so that I can detect when you’re in danger and the Mark of the Goddess.”

“What does the Mark of the Goddess do exactly?”

“It offers the protection of the Goddess among other things. No one really knows exactly what it does. There are a lot of rumors.”

She turns her head to peer up at me. “Rumors?”

“Just like that you could receive a visit from the Goddess when you most need her or that she might send another tribute of the Goddess to your aid.”

“If she was real she wouldn’t come for a nought,” she snorts.

“She is real,” I say sharply. “And she would. I’m giving you the Mark of the Goddess that makes you the same as any other—a tribute to the Goddess.” Her cheeks are staining pink again. This time for a reason I find more pleasing.

“It also offers you an alternative method of travel.”

Her eyes are wide and round as she peers up at me. “What does that mean?”

“Maybe I’ll show you someday?” I say, offering a small smile.

She quickly looks back down but I can see the faintest trace of her lip quirking. Relief floods through me. It doesn’t feel right to bestow her with these marks with bad blood boiling between us.

Her shoulders are strung tight and I place a tentative hand between them. “Try to relax, pet.”

She blows out a long breath, muscles loosening slightly.

I etch the first symbol there as quickly as I can muster. She flinches slightly. “That should be the worst part.”

Her shoulders slowly loosen, likely realizing it wasn’t as bad as what she was anticipating. Slashing a line across my own wrist, I gather her blood and mine into a floating accumulation of droplets and let them fall, hers across my wrist and mine across the mark.

I feel it the moment her blood hits my stream. It’s potent and warm , blooming rapidly like an expanding fire as it traces up my arm and envelopes my chest. My breath hitches, and my eyelids flutter. My mind suddenly hazes.

I come to maybe a minute later, blinking rapidly. I’ve slumped forward, one hand splayed across the middle of her back. I’m using it to hold my weight up, pushing her further down into the mattress and smearing our blood across her back. I quickly shift my weight off of her as something shifts inside of me. The faint sheen of whatever it took from me—my luck, levitates between us and dispenses itself across her mark.

Blood beads across the pattern on her back. I clear it away, fumbling with the vial of ink before dribbling it across her skin. Incanting the ink with my magic, it slowly begins to shift. Like the ichor, it finds the slashes in her skin and embeds itself there, painting the cuts with deep black lines in the shape of the triskelion--the protection mark that's taken my luck and gifted it to her. The very same my parents placed upon me after I was born and here I stand alive, both of them dead.

“Pandora?”

“Hm?” Her voice is pitched high.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” she whispers. She doesn’t elaborate. I study her back, her breathing has turned a little ragged but the tension has fled. She’s shifted too, one thigh carving up under the blankets to press against the one knee I have propped against the bed.

She probably just re-situated into a more comfortable position in her nervousness yet she doesn’t make to remove it.

“I think I should maybe sit down.” I don’t want to sever the contact between us but it's not practical for me to remain standing when the force of the magic very nearly took me down. I carefully climb over her to position myself on the other side of the bed.

Next, the triquetra that will attach to her fear and signal to me when she’s in any danger. This is the only one that requires a corroborating mark on my skin. Thankfully since the shape is a triquetra it makes it easy to disguise it along the one on my hand I already have.

Generally, for the ones that mark our magic the corroborating mark is placed inside the Book of Records and held by the heads of each kingdom. The one in Samore currently being held by Morin. I often suspected that Morin used it to keep an eye on me, and ensure I’m doing as she’s ordered me to do. Those suspicions were confirmed when Valik admitted he knew me to be in Cerna.

Thankfully blood magic like I’m performing now to imbue her with these marks cannot be tracked and there will be no record of it anywhere.

The one I’m attaching to her will work differently than mine though. A minor tweak in the spell—so that it connects not to her magic but her fear or more specifically her heart . So, that I can both track its beat and be alerted when her heart rate rises above one hundred beats per minute. I hadn’t necessarily confided her in all of these minor details—but I told her it would attach to her fear so she understands the gist of it, at least.

I hear her suck in a sharp breath as I slash the triquetra on her first and then over the triquetra on my own hand. I exchange the blood and that same process repeats itself. My heart pumps, skin tightening. My mind glazes over, drifting somewhere else for a moment as the potency of her blood drums through my veins.

I’m still slightly out of it as I clumsily dispense the ink across her mark and then my own, spilling splotches of ink against the sheets. I hadn’t reached for her or pressed my weight against her this time, had merely slunk back to my knees. Her arms are squeezed tightly around her head again but just like last time her leg carved up to press against mine like she just couldn’t help but make some kind of contact with me.

Several seconds pass with neither one of us speaking or moving as I regain my groundings. “The last one,” I say finally. “To invoke the protection of the Goddess.”

I never intended to get married, never intended to place this mark on anyone at all. As my wife it’s rightfully hers. The magic required of this one is much higher and I have a feeling the effects of this one will be most potent of all.

The symbol will be the largest of them and I’d saved room for it. I slash the large circle and the two crescent moons similar to the mark across my own back. The bottom of the circle slices across her scars and I wince as I etch into her skin. She doesn’t even flinch this time. Gathering our blood, I allocate one drop of mine to her and one drop of hers to mine.

The sensation takes a moment to reach its full potency. At first it's just a slight humming and then it overtakes me, pleasure searing through me like a frothy, scorching wave. Her blood unleashes a fire in mine. I bite back a groan as my skin tightens. And then, I’m already feeling the frantic beat of her heart along the new triquetra disguised on my hand.

Thump. Thump. Thump .

Her skin glows like silk-powdered snow, wrapped around warm flesh and hard bone. Suddenly the urge to reach out and touch her is maddening. Her leg shifts, sliding along mine. It’s still hidden under the blankets but somewhere underneath them her thigh is stretching wider.

I jolt as she lets out the softest moan muffled into the pillowcase.

That fucking sound.

The things I would do—the dangers I would be willing to face just to hear it again. She turns her head, peering up at me with dazed, half-hooded eyes.

Her hands come down by her shoulders and then she starts to push herself up like she intends to turn around and face me.

Woah--wait--don’t do that.

I clamp one hand across her back in warning.

There’s no telling what I’ll do if you do that, Pandora.

I’d be there in no time, placing my body on top of hers and smashing my lips to her lips. Sliding one leg between her legs and running my hands over the soft velvet of her waist and up to knead the pliant flesh of her breasts, driving all of my solidity into her supple soft.

Stay .

Just…stay.

She blinks at me like she’s not quite sure what it was she was going to do. But now I’m touching her just below the un-inked mark of the goddess shining with her blood. The heat of her back positively radiates into my hand as the triquetra there thump-thump-thump-thumps with the beat of her heart. And then it ceases, her heart-rate falling back into a normal pace.

She doesn’t look the least bit afraid of me. Maybe she isn’t afraid. She’d made contact with me three times now. The awareness of her leg still pressing against mine washes through me in a relieved, heady thrill.

Dangerous, risky relief.

She’s not afraid of me.

She hadn’t been afraid of me at all, I realize. She was only afraid of revealing her scars to me. Scars that I’m now touching—their texture grazing my hand.

It’s not an entirely conscious choice. Maybe it’s simply a test—to see how she’ll react. And maybe it’s because she wouldn’t let me speak what I wanted to speak. I graze my thumb over the largest one, gently tracing it down to the blanket and back up just as she had traced my scar. Her eyes squeeze shut, brow pinching with…a look that I can’t tell if relieved or pained.

One erratic thump .

I do it again, making sure my intent is overt, communicating all the things she wouldn’t allow me to say.

These do not change how I see you, Pandora. They make you no less beautiful. You didn’t deserve for this to happen to you.

Her leg shifts again, the slightest nudge, drawing herself closer to my hand and me . I dribble the ink across the mark, working several swallows as the black lines of the Mark of the Goddess deepen. I feel oddly prideful of the three marks now decorating her back.

Her hand stretches across the bed, almost as if reaching for me.

She’s not afraid. My mind flits, recalculating everything, lingering on possibilities.

It might just be the effects of the blood magic—not to mention all the wine she’d drank. It takes all my will to force my limbs into action. With one last ghost of a touch, I rise from the bed. She doesn’t stir.

It’s all still wrong. Still dangerous.

But if she came to me …I know I couldn’t deny her.