Page 25 of A Queen Of Broken Realms
“Yeah,” she says, her eyes flicking up to mine as my mark warms beneath her palm. “And today’s not the day to bring it up. As much as I love when you mess with that man, he’s in pretty rough shape.”
I give the witch a skeptical look before glancing down at her hand. “You’re literally spelling my mark as we speak, Ediye. Andnowyou’re telling me today is not the day to fuck with him?”
“Fucking with him to sneak up and surprise him? Sure. Arguing with him about this wife point?Hellno.” Ediye lifts her hand away, and my mark flares with warmth. “There. It will fade as soon as you touch him. Now let’s get the fuck out of dodge.”
Ediye reaches her hand to me, and I place my palm in hers. Together, we step into the darkness, leaving the silent rings behind.
CHAPTER10
Ediye and I arrive in the Kur where the great hall is as quiet as a tomb. Zida lies curled on the dais and raises her head as the black sphere dissolves around us. Her tongue flicks in our direction and her scales shift as her tight coils loosen, but she doesn’t leave her resting spot. She just watches as we head further into the depths of the building.
I’ve never been to this part of the Kur, but Ediye seems to know her way around the dimly lit corridors. She navigates the space with confidence, even when we pass a pair of soldiers who try not to gape at the nearly naked, rather grimy, exceedingly smelly Queen in their midst. They dart their gazes away. I guess they’ve taken Ashen’s warning to heart, judging by the flash of fear I scent on their skin as they pass.
We drift by a few rooms, one a wide throne room with tall windows overlooking the fog-covered Bay of Souls. There are a few smaller rooms that must have been offices for council members, each one emptied of everything but desks and chairs. And finally at the end of the hall, Ediye slows her quiet steps and stops at an open door, a grim look of worry crinkling the space between her brows. She glances at me with a smile that looks equal parts sorrowful and relieved, and nods toward the room.
My heart pounds at my bones as I survey the scene before me. I take a few tentative steps inside, my senses assaulted with the sights and sounds and smells of rage.
Ashen stands with his back to me a short distance away in the tall, wide space where a table rests broken against one wall and chairs are scattered around the perimeter, some shattered and others overturned. His wings cascade to the floor in thick curtains of black smoke, vibrant sparks layered in their depths. But beneath the black clouds and the falling cinders is something akin to snakeskin, the ridges of each black scale lit like orange embers twisting through wood. I’ve never seen his wings like this. I didn’t even know it was possible, and it’s both frightening and magnificent. The light within them shimmers as he moves over whatever has captured his attention, the work of his hands obscured by the thick smoke and black scales and the threads of deep amber light.
I glance at Ediye but her expression is stoic and unreadable. The sound of a tight and anguished cry draws my attention back to Ashen, and beyond him flows the desperate pulse of a heart that’s giving up.
“Bring. Me. My.Wife,” Ashen snarls.
“I don’t know where she is,” the man grits out, his voice thin and garbled as though his mouth is full of stones. A piercing cry flows from the demon in Ashen’s grasp.
“I said tobring her to me. I did not say you could talk.”
Ashen’s growl unleashes with dark and wicked satisfaction. There’s popping. Ripping. A gurgling rush. The sound of blood splattering across the floor. The distressed heart stutters. It stops. Only Ashen’s remains, his breathing quickened with exertion.
“Well,” I say. Ashen’s spine straightens as though he’s been doused with ice water. “Let me guess, Reaper. Did he spit in your butter?”
Ashen’s wings crackle as he slowly turns to face me.
The Reaper’s naked chest is spattered with blood and glistening with a sheen of sweat. His arms bear jagged scratches where enemies have tried to fight back and failed. His face has a haunted beauty, dark circles of sleepless nights framing his cognac eyes. The black flame in his pupils is rimmed with bright crimson rings. He looks every inch the demon until he takes a breath, as though he hasn’t breathed in days. The man beneath the Reaper rises to the surface as his brow furrows and his eyes take on a glassy sheen.
“Lu?..” Ashen grips a mangled body by the bloody neck. The man’s disarticulated jaw is clenched in Ashen’s other fist. It’s been ripped clean off, the tongue lolling out of the demon’s disfigured face like a grotesque purple slug.
“Wow,” I say, gesturing to the corpse he holds. It lands with a wet thud on top of another bloodied body, the teeth of the jaw smashing against the stone floor as he drops that too. There are more bodies scattered around the room, some turning to cinders, others lying in everlasting death. “You’ve been busy.”
In a few quick strides, Ashen is sweeping me up in his arms, crushing me to his burning chest as though trying to absorb me. The magic of Ediye’s spell dissolves when my mated mark touches his. As soon as it’s gone, the wave of his relief floods my chest and climbs my throat and steals my breath, strong enough to choke me. I squeeze my arms around his neck and press my face against Ashen’s skin, breathing in his scent, its usual warmth hidden beneath notes of blood and the salty musk of rage.
Ashen sets me down and grasps my face between his gory palms, kissing every inch of my skin. My eyes, the tip of my nose, my cheeks, my lips, the tears that cling to my lashes. They are all peppered with desperate little kisses until I laugh, and still there are more, and more, and more, until finally he lifts me from the floor again. He nuzzles my neck, whispering his subsiding anguish into my ear.My Lu. My Lu, my Lu. My wife. I couldn’t feel you anywhere. I searched but you were gone. Justgone. I’ve never known such endless panic. Where were you? I lost myself, Lu. It was oblivion. I was consumed by darkness without you, my Lu.
Ashen holds on and he whispers and he kisses and my tears flow in a stream that might never end, dripping down his skin. Ashen turns us around just enough that he faces Ediye over my shoulder, though he still doesn’t let me go. “You brought her back to me,” he says. His voice is barely more than a strained and gritty whisper. “Thank you, Ediye.”
Ediye doesn’t say anything. I just hear the swish of her hair as she nods. But I know her better than anyone. I know she must be trying not to cry. She hates crying in front of anyone but me.
Maybe Ashen senses it too, or maybe it’s his own emotion that he’s trying to hide, but he turns away, and it’s a long moment before he sets me down and lets me stand on my own two feet, though not without keeping his hands wrapped around my upper arms.
I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand and smile at Ashen, his face such a mix of pain and exhaustion and the relief that’s still stuck in my throat. “All right, Reaper?”
Ashen lets out a huff of a laugh and his answer is a sweet, soft kiss. The flame of desire is dim beneath everything else that I feel in him. Other needs are more urgent. The need to protect. The desire to be caring, and so gentle, to use those bloodied hands to nurture after meting out suffering and harm.
I run my fingers across Ashen’s mark as I open my lips and coax his tongue to meet mine. My Master of War. I feel the imbalance in him, the way his desperation must have tipped the scales and plummeted him into destruction. But there is peace and mercy and life in him too. And I know it will come back with every touch.
“You smell like the Bay of Souls,” he whispers when he pulls away.
“I went for an unexpected dip in the sea. It sucked, by way. There was an unfriendly creature that decided to drag me across the seabed for a while. I ended up in a strange underwater cavern.”
