Page 105 of Vilest Things
“Calla—”
“I chose anger,” she hisses. “And you chose Otta. There is no balance here.”
“Is that all?” Anton demands. Now his hands come down and make contact. Though her stomach drops, she doesn’t let it show on her face. “Needs change. I chose wrong. I am choosing again.”
The words don’t convince her. Calla grits her teeth and pushes a hand into his hair, grabbing the tufts roughly enough to pull his head back. A surge of satisfaction thrums down her spine. She likes seeing him wince. She likes that flash of pain darkening his eyes. She’s seen Anton in so many different bodies, yet never has she seen his expressions reflecting exactly what he is thinking, as they do now.
“How do I know you’re not lying?” she asks. “At this point, you would say anything if it meant avoiding the punishment that August has in store for us.”
Anton Makusa knows who he is. Calla can’t remember the first thing about herself.
“I wouldn’t lie.” He lets her pull his hair. He bares his throat for her, the surface smooth and unmarred in the lamplight. “I will swear myself to you here, if that’s what it takes. From this moment onward, I am your follower. Your acolyte. Whatever it is you need, as my ruler or my deity.”
The utterance sinks heavily into the room, like ingots in water. What a terrible promise. What a beautiful promise.
“You shouldn’t offer that,” Calla replies mildly. “I’ll never be able to grant all your prayers.”
“It doesn’t need to be all of them. One is enough.”
Anton moves to stand. As soon as he is shifting his balance, she pushes him hard, sending him back down. Either Anton is caught by surprise, or he lets her take her suppressed rage out on him. Either he freezes because he is ill-prepared when she crawls to the floor alongside him, or he wittingly stays put.
Calla can’t decide what response she’s trying to invoke from him. Her hands reach for his face, gentle despite herself. On each movement, her hair swings as curtains on either side of them. Anton gazes up at her. Hunger stirs plainly in his stare, but she cannot say whether it is for her or for power.
Maybe those are one and the same.
“Calla,” he whispers. Slowly, ever slowly, his mouth presses to her neck. She sighs. “I know you can do it.” The hollow of her collar. “Challenge August.” Lower, into her neckline.
“Do you know what you call for?” she asks. His hands have found their way to the buttons of her shirt. One after the other, he commences her undoing. “It will be war.”
“Maybe it’s high time someone waged a war against the Shenzhis.”
He tugs the zip at the front of her trousers. The leather fabric doesn’t budge much, and Calla pulls back, drawing onto her knees. Anton tries to follow, but she keeps him down. Holds his gaze.
“The last civil war,” she says, nudging the zips down the sides instead, nudging until the fabric dissolves into two pieces that she throws aside, “devastated this kingdom. Sinoa Tuoleimi ended up erased from history.”
“And yet”—Anton catches her hands before she can press down on his torso—“she survived into a new time. You look identical. She was reborn.”
Calla laughs once. “She was reborn, only to be replaced by a child in the provinces. Some great queen she was.”
“Then don’t you want to be better?” When Anton sits up, he has her arms trapped between them. He says her name again, again. “Don’t you want to break every piece of the kingdom until it is nothing of the one that made you?”
Calla breathes out, and Anton finally kisses her. His skin is hot upon contact, near-feverish in temperature. His arms tighten to bring her closer, slot her exactly right, and their lips collide with a barely restrained frenzy. Her hands curl to grip his rumpled shirt, and Anton draws away for an exhale to pull it off, before he’s right back where he was.
Every push and pull between them exists as a promise of mutual destruction. They’re in no rush—not as they have been every previous time they’ve found themselves like this—yet there’s always something thrumming under Calla’s skin, something that tells her to grasp him with the panic of committing theft. Her nerves scream with sensation. Her entire counterfeit body, calling for some release.
“Please,” Anton gasps, breathes into her mouth, her neck, her skin. It could be for the kingdom. It could be her. “Please, Calla.”
She pulls at his waistband. Rather than breaking their proximity, she merely pushes everything in the way aside until she’s sinking onto him, gasping into the crook of his shoulder.
“Promise me,” she says. She moves, slowly. “Promise me you’ll fight on my side. Don’t give me a repeat of the arena.”
“I promise,” Anton says. He’s barely holding himself back. The cords of muscle in his arms are strained, keeping himself still for her. “I will be your first soldier.”
“My general.”
His eyes look wholly black in the light. Anton can’t keep still anymore. His hands lock on her hips.
“Your general,” he confirms. “Rise for me, Princess.”
