Page 105 of A Kingdom of Destruction

Aven tilted her head toward her elbow, lips pursed. “What do you mean?”

He answered her with another kiss. This time there was no hiding the raging need and all-consuming hunger inside of him. Cillian kissed her the way a condemned man ate his last meal, and Aven opened for him.

He slid his tongue across hers in a raw glide and stole her breath with the same move.

It felt so good.

Her mind was suddenly distant from the whims of her body. She loved how absolutely freeing it felt to have him this way. For her alone.

They were doing this together, and although both of them had found their pleasures with other people before, this was new, and good, and real.

What a relief to know it was real.

Cillian drew his hands through her hair and tugged every curl free in a wild halo before he steadied her. Keeping her head in place between his palms while he tasted her. His teeth nippedat her bottom lip, and he sucked it into his mouth to soothe the slight sting of pain.

Was he sorry for not being the type of partner she envisioned for herself? Or for the vague sense they’d both been maneuvered and trapped in this situation?

There was no need to apologize.

Aven wanted more of him. She wanted everything from him, without thought to tomorrow. Tonight, there would be pleasure only. Only Cillian. She’d forget about seeing her father and the things they never got to say to each other. Or how Roran looked ready to stop the entire wedding for her. For them.

Cillian drove her back against the sheets, pinning her wrists above her head. The weight of him, the heat of his body against hers, made her arch up, seeking more contact.

“To our future, my King,” she murmured.

He kissed his way down the side of her neck, his hands bringing her wrists over her head and pinning her there while he took his time on her. Dominating her with his body. He settled nicely between her legs, and Aven arched against him and the hardness there.

“To our future,” he repeated.

His next kiss had her heart stumbling over its beat when he drew his tongue across hers. He drove it deep into her mouth. She wanted more, more than the light touch of his fingers on her wrist and palm, more than his chest to hers with layers of clothing separating them.

His fingers traveled down her forearms and idly stroked a path down her neck where he’d kissed before.

Cillian scraped his teeth against her chin. “You have no idea how sorry I am for this.”

Aven tensed, and then chuckled out, “For what?” She expected the pain that pleasure brought after so much time spent alone, but by the gods, stop apologizing.

She flashed him a wicked grin as Cillian stood abruptly. He walked over to the bedside table, the piece carved from a single living branch of a tree like the one in her room. He opened the drawer.

What—

The world slowed, reality warping around the edges. Cillian turned to face her, and the candlelight gilded the sharp wicked curve of the dagger, its handle made of gemstones. The tip of the blade caught the light and absorbed it even as the shaft reflected it back to her.

“What are you doing?”

His first step forward surprised her. The mattress turned to stone beneath her, and her legs with it. “What I have to do to ensure my people survive,” he said miserably. “This is the only real way to end the war. I wish it weren’t.”

This couldn’t be real. It had to be a nightmare.

The cold pit in her stomach, what she’d thought was just nerves about tonight, grew with every passing second. Cillian’s body blocked the only real exit. Unless she threw herself off the balcony. Fight-or-flight instincts screamed at her.

She forced a grin, praying this was some sick joke. “Stop joking. This isn’t funny.”

His eyes were solemn, humorless. Dead.

A boundary dropped down between him and her, and something real had been cut off. “It’s not meant to be funny. If there was another way around this, I would have found it by now. I’ve tried my hardest. Don’t you understand? Yet here we are. The sacrifice begins.”

Thewhat?

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