Page 30 of A Kingdom of Death & Darkness
“I thought about you every day, Crymson,” he murmurs with a gravelly growl coating his words.
Another flash of his hips slamming into mine thrusts through my thoughts, and I moan against his lips. I can feel every single move he isn’t making.
That deep pulsing I felt from him before explodes out of him now as his hands wrap around me and hold on tight. His palm settles low on my back, and I feel his hardness as he rocks his hips ever so slightly. Power like I’ve never felt before slams into me and superheats my skin, my body responding by growing increasingly more sexually frustrated. I don’t stop the kiss as we fight to consume each other in the field of wildflowers, but Seven does pull away with a blink and looks around us. Only then do I follow his gaze.
In a perfect ring around us, brilliant pink-and-blue flames dance, burning the grass but not anything else. It doesn’t feel hot to me. No heat licks at my legs.
With wide eyes, I look up at Seven. “Was that me?”
I think about the reckless magic I couldn’t control in the Blood Kingdom, but this feels different. Stronger.
He slowly shakes his head. “I think... it was me.”
New power. Thorn had warned he’d be different and that there was no choice. What does it mean now? He was a half fae, half vampire before. He was bitten by the Dead that abide in the Dark Lands. What will he become?
“We should go inside,” I finally say as the flames slowly die out and leave a perfect burnt circle in the grass. “Before it starts to rain.”
In answer, lightning streaks across the sky, followed by a deep rumbling thunder that I can feel through the ground. Seven nods and grabs my hand, no longer shying away from touching me, and drags me back into the castle of his enemy.
Thorn doesn’t come find me, but Aerin lets me know that the doors are going to be locked, and we can’t go outside at dark until after the visit from the Blood Prince.
I try not to let it feel like a prison once they do.
I fail.
NINETEEN
Seven
The storm ragingoutside feels less threatening than the storm beneath my skin, my veins pulsating with new power that I don’t understand. I’m no child. It’s been a long time since I didn’t have a handle on the power inside me, and now I feel like a child yet again. I don’t understand what’s there, can’t even begin to fathom what this new magic may be, but... I look over at Crymson where she sits at the window, watching the rain beat against the windowpane. My power didn’t seem to hurt her. If anything, it seems she stoked it to life with her kiss. What sort of catalyst will I have to watch for if she evokes such things in me? And how do I begin to gain control of something I don’t understand?
Crymson hasn’t moved from the window since the Thorn King locked the doors to the castle. She said she was fine, but she hasn’t looked away from outside. Her tension is heavy in the air. At first, I thought it was anticipation for Christian’s arrival,and perhaps some of it is actually that, but now, I’m starting to realize it’s something else. Something more.
If only I trusted my own skin to be able to comfort her appropriately. Unfortunately, I don’t think the Thorn King will take kindly to me accidentally setting his castle on fire. And while normally, I wouldn’t care, Crymson seems to care about the King and the other one.
I wonder how Christian will take it when he realizes...
“I’m okay,” Crymson says without looking at me.
I blink, not having realized she knew I was watching. As I stare at her, movement on the windowpane catches my eyes. I watch as the raindrops hit the glass and then trail away in chaotic little lines in every direction but down. I wonder if she realizes. I wonder if she understands it’s her power that’s causing the rain to fall sporadically like tears she refuses to release.
I wonder what chaos will reign when she finally falls deeply into who she’s meant to be.
“Are you certain?” I ask, watching her carefully. “You’re as still as a statue.”
Her pretty eyes flicker, but still, she doesn’t look at me. “I don’t like locks.”
And she’s been locked away for the majority of her life here in our realm. While I understand some of what she’d been through in the human realm, we’ve never really discussed it all. I haven’t asked anything about her past, not fully, and I regret that now. I’d like to know everything about her so that I know how to comfort her the way she’s been a comfort to me. Should I tell her I knew she sat by my bedside while I was out? I smelled her in my dreams.
I yearned for her in my dreams.
I slip off the bed and move over to the window seat where she sits. “Can I sit?”
She smiles, her eyes still on the rain. “Of course.”
She scoots over to give me room, but it’s a small seat. Our legs automatically intertwine while I settle in, and it pleases me that she gets more comfortable and seems at ease around me. Even if I don’t feel at ease with myself.
“The locks are only temporary,” I remind her. “And they’re not to keep you in.”
