Page 109 of A Legacy of Wrath and Reckoning

He moved slowly at first, his hands like a brand at her hip and throat, and she tilted her head up to kiss him, gasping into his mouth at the way it changed the angle of their hips. It snapped the last of his control, his hips moving faster, his thrusts harder until she couldn’t take not touching him for another second.

He pulled out only to spin her around and lift her into his arms, driving into her and pinning her against the wall, his mouth just as hungry and needy as hers. Zylah moaned as he moved, hands fisting into his shirt, his hair, her thumb brushing over the scar at his neck. But all she wanted him to feel was the depth of her love, the intense, unfiltered desire she felt for him; how she was his, his, his. All of it she sent down the bond, as bright and visceral and instinctual as the way he moved inside her.

She cried out when he dipped his hand between them, another orgasm creeping up on her quickly and leaving her limp and shaking in his arms, sparks coursing through every inch of her body. He swallowed every one of her moans, Zylah’s threads spiralling around them, his magic meeting every tentative press of hers, their bond bright and gleaming.

“All of you,” she murmured against his mouth and Holt groaned at her words, his thrusts raw and brutal and punishing as he finished inside her, both of them gasping and panting for breath.

He rested his head against hers, her palms flat against his chest to feel his heart, his arms banded tight around her until their breaths subsided. “I have loved every version of you,” he said against her lips, the exact words she’d said to him when she thought she’d lost him. She leaned back in his arms to look at his face. “And I will love every version of you to come. No matter what tomorrow brings.”

Zylah’s eyes burned, a tear escaping despite her best effort to prevent it, but Holt was quick to swipe it away.I love you, she told him.

Tell me what the perfect day looks like for you. After all of this is over,Holt asked her a little while later, his arms wrapped tightly around her waist. It was too cold to remove all their clothes, so they sat together against the parapet, Zylah straddling Holt’s lap, as they huddled in half a dozen blankets he’d summoned for them, neither of them in a hurry to return to the tunnels.

From this angle, a little of the blue light leaked through gaps in the wall, illuminating him in a soft halo of light. Zylah ran a hand through his hair, fingers curling in the ends as she studied his face. A kernel of apprehension surfaced, but she wouldn’t let it ruin this moment with him, the bliss she felt just sitting in his arms.

“I need to hear it,” he admitted, his thumb stroking her lower back. “It’s what I’ll be thinking about tomorrow.”

“The perfect day.”

He nodded, so much hope in his eyes it made her chest ache.

For the first time, she let herself think about what it might look like. Of how it would be to sit with their friends, with her brother, all of them together. Free. Nothing looming over them. No Ranon. No Aurelia. No vampires and monsters. Humans and Fae working to coexist peacefully, no deceits hiding Fae features, no living hidden and cut off from the world within their courts. And though she knew he’d seen the thoughts, she told him anyway, every last detail down to precisely how she wanted to end the day with him back in the bathtub at the Aquaris Court.

Something settled in him at her words, the last part of his resolve wrapping around them both like arrenium armour. His gratitude warmed her skin, his hands curling into her hair, thumbs caressing her face.

The moon hung bright and full above them, the sight of it bringing them back to everything that waited with the dawn. “It’s time to go, isn’t it?” Zylah whispered into the dark.

Holt pushed to his feet with her still in his arms, pressing a kiss into her hair when she steadied herself. He returned the blankets to wherever he’d summoned them from, no evidence remaining that they’d ever been there at all.

Zylah took one last look at the belltower, at the palace lights in the distance, and took Holt’s outstretched hand. But the moment they returned to the tunnels, her threads reaching out, testing, feeling, she froze.

Zylah?Holt asked, his hand tightening over hers.

She turned to her mate, bliss giving way to rage.Raif is here.

Chapter Fifty-Four

Holtfollowedherthroughthe tunnels, beyond the wards protecting the soldiers, beyond the last of the cots and the chatter of voices to find Rose shouting at Kej in his wildcat form, Daizin at his side, Saphi between them all. And behind Rose, Raif stood and watched.

Scars marred one side of his face, slashing directly through his left eye, the inky black tarnished by a silvery hue, even more unsettling than the one that remained solid black. Zylah suspected he could no longer see through it if Rhaznia had anything to do with the injury. At their arrival, Kej backed up a step, folding back onto his hindlegs and growling, quiet, but unmistakable.

Rose began to speak but a crack of Holt’s power silenced her. Zylah stayed close to him, his anger just as palpable, just as tangible as hers, though she tried not to let her memories rise to the surface. Not to let every awful thing Raif had done result in a fight her friends could too easily get caught up in. And there was the question of his magic, whether he could still turn someone to ash at his touch, or whether it had been changed just as irrevocably as he had.

“You told me the dead should stay dead. But you…” Zylah forced herself to meet his soulless eye. “You’re…” There weren’t enough foul words for what he was.

Raif cocked his head to one side, his mouth tipping up at the corner and the tip of a fang pushing past his lips. “Like a parasite?”

There was a hint of self-loathing to the question, but Zylah had lost the last shred of her sympathy for Raif when she’d watched him shove a vanquicite sword through Holt’s chest. “You let me believe he was dead,” she spat, stepping past Saphi, Holt moving with her. “You kept me from him.” Rose stepped aside, too, but Zylah ignored her pleas. “Kept me in the dark for months whilst they tortured him.” Her threads were already on the move, waiting for her command. Waiting to attack, to hurt, to maim.

Something like regret flickered across Raif’s face, an apology half out of his mouth that she had no interest in hearing. But it was the sound of her name coming from his mouth that shattered the last of her restraint, and as Raif reached out a hand towards her, Holt’s magic shoved him back, smashing the vampire into the wall, chunks of stone crumbling and falling around him.

“Raif!” Rose screamed. But Zylah knew it hadn’t been a fatal hit. Not in such close proximity to their friends. And even though Holt’s wrath matched her own, they both understood Raif wouldn’t have risked his life to seek them all out without reason.

The vampire coughed and spluttered, pushing himself up from the debris with a groan before dusting off his shoulders.

“There’s no one here to protect you this time,” Holt told him, another pulse of his magic filling the space. “Touch her again and I will tear every limb from your body.”

“Holt, please,” Rose begged behind him.

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