Page 42 of Currency in Flesh

As she withdrew her hand, she added two more fingers,pushing deeper and grinding the heel of her hand against my clit. It was too much, and I came with a ragged cry, shuddering around her hand as she pulled the climax from my helpless body. My stomach muscles flexed and twitched, my soft middle shaking gently with each wave of pleasure that hit me. I let it roll through me, lost in a blissful haze where all I could feel was this and all I could see was her. My eyes fluttered closed as my body began to come down, but shot open in a second as she pulled her hand from my pussy and slid her glistening fingers into my mouth.

I tasted myself on her, and it was like a warm wind drifting over the sea—clean and bright and saline. My lips closed around her knuckles so I could suck the slick evidence of my orgasm from her skin. She pulled them out with apopand my gaze found hers, both of us breathing heavily.

“I’m yours, Cora,” I said in a near-whisper. “Completely.”

Her eyes flared with what almost looked like fear. “Do not make promises you cannot keep.”

My brows furrowed, and I pushed up slightly onto my elbows so my face was close enough to feel her breath. “I’m not,” I asserted. “Do not tell me how I feel.”

Her body shifted, retreating, hands walking down the mattress on either side of my body. She sat on her heels. “I am not being playful,” she said with sudden gravity. “I mean it, Grace. You cannot say things like this without certainty. Not here, not to me.”

Indignation coursed through my veins, and I pushed myself up to face her. “Is it so impossible to trust me?” I snapped. “I’m trying to tell you how I feel, Cora. Just because you have been on your own here for however many years doesn’t mean you have to be. I’m a grown woman, I think I’m capable of knowing how I feel.”

There was a ripple of darkness that seemed to flow beneath her skin, her eyes flaring white-hot before resolving to a shadeof green much brighter than usual. The air around us felt warmer, and every hair on my body stood on end.

Another Cora, theGoddess, now knelt between my awkwardly spread legs, and I felt immediately insignificant and fragile. She was glorious and beautiful and utterly terrifying, the Queen of the Underworld in every sense. Her pupils had stretched to narrow slits, inhuman beneath the shadow of her long, dark lashes, and every feature seemed to have sharpened. I shivered beneath her gaze, body beginning to cower instinctually, like a weakened animal accepting an unavoidable fate.

“Do you know, truly, what you say?” she said in a deep, many-layered voice that hurt my teeth. “Do you understand what I am?” The room around us shimmered, fading with the wavy, radiating heat of asphalt beneath the summer sun, and we were blanketed in darkness—only a faint vermillion smolder lit the planes of her devastating face. Around us flowed a molten river, the sound of thousands of screaming souls echoing from its banks. Blistering wind whipped my hair around my face and my skin felt tight and ready to split. She closed her eyes, and the air went piercingly cold, the river of fire replaced by towering walls of black ice and the whistle of an impending storm.

Though I shook, teeth chattering and muscles cramping, I kept my eyes on hers. “This doesn’t scare me, Cora,” I bit out. My lungs burned with the effort of taking in the freezing air, but her hand darting out to grip my neck stopped the biting cold and replaced it with a bone-deep fear.

“If I do not fill you with fear, you are either stupid or blind.”

Incendiary fury burst from my chest, and without thinking, I flung an arm up to shove her off. I couldn’t stop the words from tearing their way up through my throat and out of my lips with vicious rage. “You can’t force me away!” I screamed. “You might control this realm, you might be able to rip the memoryfrom my mind, hell—you might be able to cast me into the pit and burn me to fucking ash, butyou cannot take it from me!”

I inhaled and tasted smoke and the irrefutable truth. My anger quieted into something that was equal parts strength and tender fragility. “You can’t tell me I don’t belong to you when my soul is yours already.”

I blinked, and the world of ice and darkness was gone. We were surrounded in velvet and silk once again, sitting across from each other on Lady Cora’s bed. Her eyes were limned with silver, filled with unshed tears. They spilled over, tracing lines of light down her cheeks, and she swallowed.

“I used to live in the meadows,” she began. “I thought that even if I was fated to rule this realm for all of eternity, my life could still have beauty. But so much time passed by—hundreds and thousands and millions of souls came here to find repose, and then evanesced without leaving any trace behind. What once seemed like an honor turned into a curse.” She wiped her cheek with the back of one hand and took a deep breath.

“It was the great injustice of my existence—doomed to guide the dead to peace without ever finding it myself. I created the brothers in a moment of weakness and desperation, hoping that if I could tear myself into pieces, maybe I would feel the darkness less.” She let out a rueful chuckle. “But if anything, it made everything worse. Do you know why the days are shorter in winter? Because the world tilts further away from the light. It has been winter in the Underworld for a long, long time.”

I reached across the space between us, taking her hand in mine. “Have you ever wondered why I called you daffodil?” She didn’t wait for my answer before continuing. “Because you felt like spring. I have spent so many winters alone, bargaining with mortals just to steal a sliver of light. That is what I receive in return. When I collect a soul before its time, I get to spend a fraction of a second in the sun. So again, and again, I grantfortune to wicked mortals just to feel the spring—if only for a moment.”

Sadness floods me. The tender, naked truth of her life lies exposed in her emerald gaze. “I told you, Cora,” I said gently, “my soul is yours.”

She laughed, and it came out as a sob. “Then you grant me everything I could ever wish for. The thing Christos has been looking for all this time.” My forehead creased in confusion. “Someone whose peace could be me.”

Tears streamed down her face, moving far too quickly to blink away, and I leaned into her, pressing my lips to them even as they fell. My arms moved around her, pulling her to me in a wordless embrace. In that brief moment, the Goddess of the Underworld was soft, unshielded by her power or ferocity, and in that same moment I knew my soul understood.

We existed in the space between morality and vengeance, the hair-thin line separating purity and darkness. We were together in the eternal hour of dusk.

“Come,” she said as she turned her face to mine, “let me see you on your throne.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

She pulled aside the curtain of reality and we stepped into the throne room. I glanced down, expecting to see myself still nude, but instead, I was clothed in a floor-length crimson gown. The hemline grazed the marble, trailing behind me like a river of blood.

Beside me, Lady Cora was dressed in a similar fashion, her gown such a deep black that it seemed to absorb the light. Atop her head, a delicate silver tiara was nestled between intertwining strands of her intricately styled hair. It sparkled with brilliant red garnets and rubies, and I noticed with a pang of emotion that they were arranged to resemble a pomegranate with seeds spilling forth. Her platinum tresses were pinned up to show the long line of her neck, and her eyes glowed brightly from beneath dark kohl and shadow. Her lips were the exact shade of my dress, and I wondered if I wore makeup as well.

The room was silent save for the sound of our steps, echoing from the cathedral ceiling—Lady Cora’s fingers in mine guiding me toward twin, blooming thrones. The two chairs were interwoven, flowers connecting them with splashesof color and dew-sprinkled leaves. I giggled awkwardly as we stopped before them, suddenly very nervous even though it was only us. Cora gestured toward the seat on the right and bowed her head slightly.

“Uh—” I stammered. “Do I just sit?”

Cora smiled. “That is typically how seats are used.”

Rolling my eyes, I reached back to adjust the fabric of my gown and slowly sat. The flowers smelled like springtime—fragrant roses, sweet lilacs, the perfume of lilies and a fresh, green scent that made me think oflife,so at odds with the Underworld. Lady Cora lifted her hands and with my next breath, a different tiara materialized upon her upraised palms. It was also silver, but instead of the bejeweled fruit on hers, it featured a trio of gemstone flowers. A glittering daffodil inlaid with citrine and diamond sat in the center, flanked by two marigolds made up of carnelian and topaz. They were impossibly detailed, and the stones caught the light to glow like ember and flame.

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