Page 93 of Bound to the Shadow Prince

“I understand.” I slide my arms around his waist and smile when he holds me close. I get wanting to be alone with your thoughts. “Can I ask what you were praying about? Feel free to tell me no. You did say it was private, but I am simply curious.” I gaze up at him, his face cloaked in shadows. “I heard the word ‘wife.’”

He pauses. Strokes my cheek again. His reluctance is clear. “You will not get hurt feelings?”

“Well, now you have to tell me,” I say, poking a finger into his stomach. “You can’t just approach it like that and not expect meto worry.” A new thought occurs to me and I hesitate. “Do you have…regrets? Do you feel like you made a mistake?”

“What? Never.” He bends over and cups my face, pressing a kiss on my forehead. There’s something so very empowering about such a large, dangerous-looking male hunching over to shower gentle kisses to my face, and it soothes my worry a bit. “I am concerned that I am selfish, actually. That is why I pray.”

“Selfish?” I’ve had selfish lovers in the past and Nemeth is most definitely not one. “In what way?”

His expression is tormented. “In that I pressured you to mate me. I know you were hesitant. I worry I have been selfish in my need for you, and pushed you more than I should have. I worry that I convinced you with caresses instead of letting you decide for yourself. That I rushed you.”

I make an exasperated face. “You didn’t rush me, Nemeth. It was my decision. It has been all along. I knew what I was getting into when I married you, and I decided I wanted to do so anyhow.”

He caresses my face, his expression sad. “And will you abandon me when the tower doors open, like Ravendor did her mate?”

“Of course not. My love is stronger than that.” I put my hand over his. “I knew what I was doing when I decided to mate you. I knew I was giving up on my people for yours. They won’t accept me now because of what I’ve done. I’ve thrown my lot in with you. I suppose in a way I am Fellian, now.”

Nemeth looks sad. “Not Fellian,” he says softly. “Just mine.”

“That’s all I need.” I smile up at him. “Come to bed now?”

He blows out the candle.

Chapter

Fifty

Being mated to Nemeth makes me happier than I ever thought I could be. If I thought being with him was pleasant before, it is utterly joyous now. We spend several days in bed, doing nothing more than touching and learning one another. I learn that if I scrape my teeth on his knot, he will come instantly. He learns that there is a spot behind my knee that, if touched, will make me go mad with need. We learn how to make each other’s bodies sing, and I never tire of his touch.

That in itself is a marvel—I’ve grown weary of every other lover I’ve had in the past. Either they would grow selfish, or the sex would become routine, and I would find myself losing interest. Sometimes those lovers would seem as if they were interested in nothing more than making themselves come instead of giving pleasure to me. I’d feel like an object instead of a person. Or worse—I’d feel like they were fucking the Vestalin princess and not Candra.

It’s different with Nemeth. I love his touch. More than that, I love that I always feel that he sees me. Not Candromeda Vestalin. Not the princess of Lios. Not Erynne Vestalin’s spoiled, useless sister. It’s always Candra with him, the Candra that loves a shoulder rub when she has her period, hates epic poetry, andsometimes drools on her lover’s chest when she falls asleep atop him. It feels like Nemeth loves me and all my flaws, just like I love him. I love that he insists on putting basil into everything because it’s his favorite, even though too much will make his stomach ache. I love that he adores epic war poetry, the longer and more dull the better. I love that he’s fascinated with his mushroom farm, and that he talks to them as he tends to the rapidly-growing fungi.

I adore him, and every day that passes doesn’t feel like torture now. It feels as if we’re in our own cozy little nest, letting the world pass us by as we snuggle under the blankets and kiss.

The weather grows cooler, and as it does, it seems to be colder than the last winter. This strikes me as particularly odd. After all, we’re in the tower to prevent the Golden Moon Goddess from venting her wrath upon the people of our world, and yet this doesn’t feel normal. We conserve our wood and our peat bricks as best we can, and some days we warm my potion with body heat instead of the warmth of a fire.

This winter, the water in the kitchen pump freezes up for over a week. We are more prepared for such an event and have kept several tubs and buckets full of water for just in case, so it isn’t more than a minor inconvenience, but it worries me. “How is it that we are sacrificing seven years of our lives to make the goddess happy and this is what we get?” I ask Nemeth on one particularly cold morning. I gesture at the walls of the tower. “This doesn’t feel happy to me.”

“Perhaps other things displease her.” Nemeth turns a page in his astronomy book.

“Like what?”

“War.”

I narrow my eyes at him. “You think the war goes badly?”

“I suppose it depends on who you ask.”

“Well, if the goddess is choosing sides, I hope she realizes that everyone is suffering.” I gesture at our frigid room. “Your skin is dry from the cold and my toes feel like they are icicles. Suffering, everywhere.”

Nemeth chuckles at my pouting. He arches a brow at me and puts his book aside. “You are being dramatic,milettahn.”

I am. I don’t even care. “It’s just rotten that we’re devoting ourselves to the cause and some days I can’t even tell what the cause is.”

“Strange things happen with the eye of the goddess on the world,” Nemeth says. He pats the blankets, indicating I should join him instead of pacing near the cold fireplace. “The books say the weathers can be foul and unpredictable.”

“Because of the goddess,” I agree.

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