Page 46 of Midnight Kingdom

The heat of her hand penetrates me, banishing the chill from my bones. I lean into her, pressing her against my chest as I lick a stripe along her neck. She trembles. It’s sweet, but not as sweet as the taste on my tongue. Eilish laughs breathlessly, gripping my shoulders and biting her lip. They aremineto bite. My tongue swipes along the seam of her mouth and she opens for me. Why do I fight this? Why do I struggle against the current when it feels so right to ride the waves?

Her hands are moving, snaking their way between our bodies. Her fingers curl around the bulge of my erection, stroking and groping me through the fabric. My hips buck and I force her against the tree. It’s just like my vision. Only seconds before I heard her footsteps, I was buried deep inside the spasming channel of her glory. But only in a dream... this... this is real. Eilish is real.

She’s never been more beautiful. That unearthly passion fills me. I know it’s her power, her hunger that drives my hips into her, but I’m helpless to resist it. For a second, I can allow myself to forget who she is and what she is. She’s mine, if only in this moment. I tilt my head and deepen the kiss, allowing her flavor to replace the kiss of every other woman I’ve known before her.

They are all gone. Even Aima is no more. They can’t shake me to the center of my being with just one kiss. Only Eilish can do this to me. Only she can make me hate myself and give me the strength that a throne never could all at once. Nothing can compare to her... and yet I pull away with a pitiful groan. She slides down the tree, peering at me beneath her long lashes.

“Wait for Dragan to slake your lusts, demon.” I wince at the sound of my own cruelty and not able to handle the pain and rejection in her eyes, I storm off toward the cottage.

With any luck, she will take a minute to recover from our kiss and give me enough time to return to Pyre’s home without her. I need to speak to the necromancer, anyway. I must see Theren, and I can’t do that without his help.

But Eilish stops me from walking with a biting grip on my arm. I turn around and stare in shock as I notice one of her eyes is completely black while the other is vibrant blue. I’ve never seen this happen to her before and my concern quickly outweighs my anger. “Eilish...” I start.

“No.”

“No?”

“No, you aren’t doing this to me again,” she says.

“One of your eyes has gone black,” I say.

“What?” she responds and her eyes go wide as fear sets in.

I summon a reflection on my palm and allow her to see herself. She gasps and gently touches beneath her eye. My first instinct is to berate her for being so ignorant of her kind, but then I remember she has no memories. “Nothing like this has ever happened to you before? Not even when you fed from Baron?”

“No. Never. Wait... at Variant’s palace, Flumph said my eyes went black when I had to seduce the guards.” She tugs her hair from the disheveled braid down her back and it cascades around her shoulders, strands of black hair framing her face. “My hair changes when I feed,” she says and points out the strands in question. Then she looks up at me. “Morrigan said I need both light and dark or else I disrupt the balance inside me.”

“Thus you need to take me as a lover? Or Variant?” I add with a chuckle. “We’re the only beings of light strong enough to feed you without dying, ourselves.” I turn back around, but Eilish stops me again. She looks up at me with a clear blue gaze and I see sadness there.

“You only ever see one side of me, Cambion. But you always fail to see therealme. Maybe… maybe this will help.” Eilish places her hand directly over my wound. Her brow pinches in concentration and a white light glows from beneath her fingers. I feel the muscle and flesh pulling itself back together and closing. Her magic doesn’t feel tainted or evil in any way. Shefeelslike an angel.

“Thank you,” I mutter begrudgingly.

She follows me back to the cottage and I make a pot of tea while she tells me what happened on her journey. Harpies and restless spirits sound about right. When I’m not losing myself to my thoughts in the forest, I’ve been spending my time reading the books on Pyre’s shelves.

“Cambion?”

“What?”

“I need to ask you something… strange.”

“What?”

She takes a deep breath. “I need to know… were we lovers before?”

My stomach drops as my heart speeds up. It feels like an eternity that I battle with myself over whether or not I should admit it to her. Part of me wants to drop this charade and tell her the truth but the other part of me… is afraid.

I realize then that I’m not ready. I don’t have the heart to tell her.

We weren’t lovers. Not even close. While I hate her and the others for keeping her nature from me, I hate myself even more for keeping the truth hidden for so long.

Iwas the one who took Eilish’s memories. I never wanted it to last this long or to lock everything away. My only intention was to make her forget that she’d come to me in a time of need, asking that I save her mother and sister from someone.

She paid with her body, and I was just twisted enough to let her. Though I’m a being of light, that doesn’t mean I’m in any way… good. Variant is proof enough of that. But the fact is... I failed. Her mother and sister died, and I wanted her to forget it was me who killed them. I wasn’t the one who wielded the blade, true, but I failed to protect them, all the same. I failed in my promise to keep them safe. And for that, I can never forgive myself—and she can never know the truth.

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BARON

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