Page 46 of Jailer to the Death God
I brush a bit of dust from the lamp and flick it off my fingers. “What about you? Do you have half-divine children?”
“Have you heard of any humans with shadow magic?”
“Well… no.”
He sighs, still facing the stone figure of Aine. His broad back is toward me, those powerful shoulder muscles draped in the folds of the cowl he wears.
“I have never fucked anyone, divine or human,” he says, low. “I never had the inclination, until recently.”
I gasp softly. “So you’re… you’re a virgin god.”
He growls, and I smile at his back. I’m not sure why the idea of him being a virgin delights me so much.
“You said ‘until recently.’ So you do have the inclination now?” I try to keep my voice steady, casual.
“This time is different, as I’ve told you. I’m more susceptible to sensation. To desire.”
“How interesting,” I breathe. I don’t want to explain or explore the ticklish delight racing between my legs, or the tightening heat all over my skin, or the quickened pounding of my heart. I simply want tobe. I want to feel something other than emptiness, or anger, or pain. I want that tiny glow in my heart to expand and fill my whole body.
Arawn’s shoulders seem tighter now, rigid with an unspoken tension. Inky strands of his dark hair straggle down his back, and I want to gather them all and bury my face in the waves. I want to clutch those broad shoulders and feel the rolling power of them as he pushes inside me—
Oh gods, that would be a bad idea—a terrible, foolish, incomprehensibly stupid idea.
He’s turning around. Oh shit—he’s looking at me with those intense green eyes, with that same magnetic, ravenous, haunted craving I saw on his face last night, when he quelled the riot.
“We should go back,” I whisper.
“And we will,” he breathes. “In a moment.”
20
My sister couldn’t have sent the hounds after the little Queen, not expressly. By law she’s forbidden to attack me like that, even through the human to whom my life is linked. But she spoke in front of my hounds and explained how I could be killed. These devilish souls have been bound to me since the early days of humankind. Of course they would leap at the chance to kill me, even if it only meant a change of masters. They crave revenge for their enslavement.
They almost killed the Queen, and by extension, me.
Non-existence isn’t something I’ve had to face. The end of myself, the cessation of being—it awakens the same raw panic I felt when the Queen bound me for a year—only this panic is worse, stirred by the impending loss of control, the dissolution of the mental faculties I prize. I feel as if I’m being stolen away, carved apart little by little, crushed down into this mortal prison until I am small, I am nothing.
The sensation makes me want to scream, like the Queen did beneath the bathwater.
I catch my lip between my teeth and gnaw it, trying to hold myself still, striving for a measure of control, while my body vibrates with a need I don’t understand. It’s beyond sexual, though there’s an element of that, too. Blood pumps into my dick, and a restless urgency crawls over my skin.
The Queen is watching me with a wretched, reckless yearning in her eyes. Her gaze summons me; I’m moving toward her without meaning to. I’m reaching out—stars, I don’t know what I’m doing.
I catch her by the shoulders again, just to have somewhere to put my hands, just to feel her.
“I have to keep you safe,” I say hoarsely.
Her eyes widen, helplessly delighted—and then they narrow again. “Why do you suddenly care so much about my safety?”
For a moment I war with myself. And then I spill the truth. “One of my sisters added something to the ritual. Certain conditions were fulfilled during the summoning, and I was partially incarnated. Not mortal, exactly, but susceptible to destruction by specific means. My life, it turns out, is connected to yours. By protecting you, I protect myself.”
“So when you were upset at me, last night, about getting between you and that chunk of ice—it wasn’t about concern for me at all. It was about you. Ofcourseit was.” She smiles, hard and bright. Then she knocks my hand off her shoulder and walks out of the temple, through the garden, back toward the ballroom entrance.
She’s moving fast, for a human. I have to lengthen my stride to keep up.
“That’s why I need to stay close to you over the next year,” I say.
“So we both stay alive.”
