Page 48 of The Shadow of Polaris

“I thought she was dead.” Letting down those fortress walls I’d built up, I clung to him, safe in the warmth of his broad frame. He wiped the tears from my cheek and clasped my jaw between his hands. Our eyes met as he tipped my chin up.

The electricity between us hummed from somewhere deep within our souls.

“You- you saved us. We were dead, had you not followed,” I sobbed.

“No,” he whispered, brushing his thumb against my lips. “It was I who was saved.”

His damp cotton tunic sculpted the deadly curves of his chest. Droplets dripped from his soaked head, creating streamlines across the black tattoos.

I didn’t want to be strong anymore, to be silent and cavalier. The dams holding back all the fear and sadness and pain I’d built cracked and crumbled. His eyes were somber as he watched me fall apart.

Those weren’t the eyes of the god who betrayed me, the cruel prince who I despised.

They were the eyes of a man who feared. A man who loved with every piece of himself. The man who accepted every shadow, every broken part of me.

Those were Rune’s eyes.

All traces of my resentment faded away in this moment. The candid, glorious man standing before me only brought peace to my warring head. My lips found his in a fever of need.

I craved the feel of his skin against mine, the burning pulse between us. We tangled ourselves in one another. His fingers laced themselves into my hair. My hands trembled as I unbuttoned his tunic. He pulled the cotton over his head and threw it to the ground beside us. Amber moonlight washed against the tattoos that traced his collarbone down across the center of his chest.

I ran my fingers down each ink line. What stories did they hold? What pieces of Aryx’s past did they represent? I wanted everything, all of it. The gruesome details of his battles, the darkness that lurked behind those light eyes, the pain he inflicted and the pain he tried to heal.

Lost in the feel of my skin, Aryx pulled the corner of my tunic down across my shoulder, gentle kisses trailing behind the scrape of the fabric as it fell to my elbow.

“What you do to me…” Aryx whispered, through ragged breaths, “you strange, perfect creature.”

He watched, eyes glazed with lust, as I shrugged out of my tunic,exposing pale skin to the chill autumn air. Standing before him, fully bare, fully vulnerable, I didn’t hesitate this time.

We wrapped ourselves together, his hands cold against the perk of my breast as he led us to the earthen floor. As he pressed into me, I ignited and the flame of pleasure intensified until I felt as if I’d explode right there beneath him.

“Aryx,” I whispered, feeling my body stretch around him, “promise me that this is real.”

Through a breathy groan, he lowered his lips to my ear, my muscles contracting as he drove himself further into me.

“It always was,” he growled, shattering me into waves of bliss. The cries of my spiral sent him, too, over that edge, our bodies and minds connecting in the deepest, most fundamental way.

Chapter 26

There was nothing but water. Air bubbled from my lungs as I swam for the surface, stretching my neck as far as it’d reach. I closed in on the ripples of light reflecting the waves above. My lungs burned, begging for relief I couldn’t give them.

Just as my cheeks hit the bright, cool air, weeds slithered around my ankles, pulling me back down through the depths. I clawed at my feet, trying to break free. The slimy green binds only tightened. A rush of bubbles escaped with the screams pouring from me. The surface grew fainter and fainter as I plunged into the deep green darkness.

A behemoth creature prowled toward me at the rocky bottom. Its large fins curled as it glided with predatory stealth across the sand. Shimmering fins of velvet purple and black glinted as its long eel-like body curled around me. I needed to act fast before my bones were crushed and the soul inside me was squeezed out.

I kicked at the monster’s tightening grip. The scales across its long, winding body pierced my skin. The murky water around me became clouded with brown tendrils of blood.

I needed to fight, to slip out of its hold. My lungs now blazed for air, but the only way out was down. I pushed my arms up above me and sank beneath its coiled body. A fog of disturbed sediment skewed my vision as I struggled to swim across the bottom, tendrils of my hair skimming its pale underbelly.

Something glinted beneath the sand. As I reached for it, the creature jerked its head in my direction. Horns of armor-like skin rushed toward me in a blur. Just as I pulled the rusted halberd from its murky grave, the gargantuan eel struck its fangs into my side.

Agony seared up my abdomen as the eel ripped through flesh, cracking open my rib cage and piercing my organs. Desperately, I swung the spike into its fleshy temple. The creature shrieked and shriveled. Its writhing and wriggling sent shockwaves across my face.

I propelled myself upward, vision tunneling with every stroke. The trail of blood behind me dispersed into the oily blackness beneath. The eel, with ragged strokes of its fins, nipped at my feet as I rose higher and higher.

Finally, gasping for frantic breaths, I breached the surface. The waves stretched across the horizon, no land in sight. Struggling to see the creature I’d left below, I took a deep breath and plunged back under. Suspended in the water column, its soft underbelly rose toward me. As it grew closer, its fins and scales faded away, leaving the form of a man behind. I noticed his golden flowing locks. His bright amber eyes were now a pale yellow. Long, powerful limbs hung spinelessly below him.

I shrieked. Through the clouded, brown water, I saw Aryx, the rusted halberd embedded into the flesh of his lifeless, mutilated face.

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