Page 4 of Gua rdian of Blood and Shadow

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Finally,mylightfaded,and Javier relaxed on top of me, dipping his head until his lips met mine again. He kissed me once, twice more, tenderly, then pulled back, searching my face. “I hurt you.” Not a question.

I winced as the pleasure of release faded, leaving behind a dull pain between my legs. And in my heart. “It’s fine,” I told him.

But it wasn’t just physical discomfort that made me wince. In the quiet aftermath, Gavin’s face materialized in my mind—not as I’d last seen him through the bars of that cell door, but from that night in his bathroom when he’d tended to me. The memory cut like a blade between my ribs, twisting deeper with each breath.

Javier growled, low and controlled, and pulled out of me, pushing back onto his knees. “Fuck,” he hissed.

I pushed up onto my elbows to see what was bothering him. His waning erection was coated in a combination of arousal and blood.

His eyes met mine, heated. He bit his lip, drawing blood, then brought his hand up to his mouth, dragging his lips over his first two fingers to coat them in his blood. His focus dropped to my sex, now throbbing with a much less pleasant ache than before, and he gently grazed his fingers over my swollen lips. I sucked in a sharp breath as he pushed his fingers inside me.

The pain felt almost like penance. Perhaps I deserved this discomfort while Gavin endured far worse. The thought made me hate myself even as I recognized its irrationality. Gavin had made his choice. He would want me to be here, to heal, to grow stronger, to become the High Queen our people needed. Yet the guilt lingered like a shadow I couldn’t outrun.

I closed my eyes, breathing through the ache and the healing tingle, and nodded. “You’re probably wondering what happened to me to make me depraved enough to enjoy the pain.”

“If only my thoughts were so wholesome,” Javier said. A moment later, a sharp jolt of sensation shot through me as he pressed the pad of his thumb against my overstimulated clit.

My eyelids snapped open. I stared down the length of my body, watching his thumb circle that exposed bundle of nerves. The healing tingle inside me mixed with the electric sensation from each stroke of his thumb. He withdrew his fingers and put them in his mouth, and when he pulled them out again, he dragged his razor-sharp teeth along the length of them, cutting into his skin. He pushed those bloody fingers inside me, quadrupling the healing tingle.

Pleasure washed through me again, and with it came grief. Eachcommunionfelt like its own language. With Gavin, it had been fierce yet tender. This with Javier was ancient, primal, built on pain I couldn’t fully comprehend.

I lifted my hips off the bed, the stroke of his thumb transforming from way-too-much to just-enough to I-need-more-right-the-fuck-now. “Don’t stop,” I panted. “Oh gods, Javi. Don’t stop. I’m going to—”

He curled the fingers inside me just so, finding that secret place I hadn’t known existed until my consorts entered my life and showed me what they could do to me. The ache faded until there was only pulsing warmth and delicious promise. My bones turned liquid, and my legs clamped shut, my vision going white as pleasure flooded me.

For one moment, I forgot everything. Who I was. What I’d lost. What I still stood to lose. But reality rushed back in like a slap, bringing with it all I’d momentarily escaped.

Javier palmed my pulsing sex and stretched out alongside me.

Feeling boneless, I flopped back onto the bed and turned my face toward him, studying the brightened crescent sigil curving from his forehead down to his jaw, standing out in stark contrast against his golden-brown skin. I moved on to the smaller sigils on his neck and shoulders, then to those on his chest. One I hadn’t noticed before, larger than the others and burning brighter, covered the skin over his heart under a light dusting of dark hair. It was similar to the bonding sigils I had left on Gavin and the others, but slightly different, with ancient flourishes curling like vines around the central moon phases’ markings.

“This is mine?” I asked, tracing the sigil with the tip of my index finger.

In the loft, after my firstcommunionwith Gavin, I’d watched my sigil manifest around his neck—an intricate design with the phases of the moon forming a collar centered on where I had bitten him. The memory of his fingers brushing over it afterward, that quiet moment of recognition between us, felt both distant and achingly near. Where was he now, in that dark dungeon? Was my mark on him glowing still, a small comfort in endless darkness?

Javier covered my hand with his, pressing my palm against the sigil on his chest. The silver light flared, seeping out beyond the edges of our hands. “It’s the traditional location of a queen’s firstcommunionwith her Prime Consort. I initiated it once it became clear we wouldn’t be able to return to our people—” He searched my eyes. “Do you remember when you took blood from me here?”

My brow furrowed, and I shook my head. “But that doesn’t mean much. Those first few years after are kind of a jumble in my head.”

The confession felt shameful. How could I not remember something so significant? Yet I could recall with perfect clarity the way Gavin’s blood had tasted that first night in that club—like dark chocolate infused with chilis and promise and sin. I remembered the way his lips had curved when he’d first called me “my queen,” the way his eyes had burned silver when he looked at me. Memories I’d known for days held more clarity than those I should have carried for decades.

Javier’s lips twitched. “You were so ferocious,” he recalled. “The moment my blood touched your tongue, you all but attacked me, and I wondered what the hell I had gotten myself into.”

My cheeks flushed, and I hid my face against his shoulder. “Ohgod, that’s embarrassing.”

He gripped my chin and tilted my face up toward his, brushing his lips over mine. “That was when I knew you were different, special, destined to be the next High Queen,” he said. “The light shining from you rivaled your mother’s. Even if Amaya had lived…” Shadows filled his eyes. “You would have been High Queen. I think your mother always knew it, too. It’s why she chose Gavin for your Prime Consort rather than me. Born to a queen, with all that potential. It was his destiny to be the Prime Consort to the next High Queen.”

“Apparently not,” I said, turning my head to stare up at the intricately carved ceiling.

Something twisted inside me. Had I altered some cosmic plan by binding to Javier first? Or had this always been the design, my mother’s intentions overwritten by necessity? And if Gavin had always been meant for me, why had he found me only after Javier was gone?

As my thoughts lingered on Gavin and what he was enduring, tears gathered, hot against my temples as they spilled from the corners of my eyes. “What will they do to him?” I asked, my voice unsteady, knowing Javier would sense the direction of my thoughts and understand my question.

“They won’t kill him,” Javier said. When he didn’t add more, I looked at him to find his focus on the wall behind me, his stare thousands of miles away.

The implication hit like a fist to the gut. He would face everything but death. Javier knew what Gavin would experience in the Sun Keep because he himself had lived through it.

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