Page 136 of Sanctuary with Kings

"If he doesn't finish soon, I'll have to join him," Conall snarled, bucking his hips into mine, a clear, sticky pool gathering between us.

I wailed at the threat, my body snapping tight as a vise on Asterion's length.

"Bastard," Asterion growled out. He held my hips in place and then snapped his own, rough and uneven, bellowing out his pleasure as he painted his release inside of me until it flooded out in a thick stream.

Conall just laughed, finding my mouth once more to occupy us both until Asterion was ready to ease out and offer him his turn.

When I woke the next morning, sullied and sated and cradled off the hard floor by the bodies of my lovers, I couldn't recall who of our party had surrendered first, but I was fairly certain it hadn't been us.

CHAPTER40

PUCKS AND TRAPS

“You'd really never done any combat before?" Esther asked me, blowing a loose strand of curling dark hair away from her face, her gaze narrowed on the target ahead of her.

"No. It wasn't something expected from women—" I said.

"It still isn't," Hazel murmured, her focus on her own target.

"—and I was content with my role in the world at the time."

Esther hummed and then loosed her arrow, scowling as it landed toward the edge of the target.

"Better," I said, nodding. "And consider, most monsters are much larger than that board."

"But not stationary," Esther noted, although her frown had softened.

Hazel loosed her own arrow, and the shot was far too wide, until at the last second, sudden green roots sprouted from the earth, dragging the target to the left. The arrow hit center.

"Cheater!" Esther cried, laughing.

Hazel shrugged, turning her smug smile away.

"It's not really cheating if it's something she can do when it matters," I reasoned. "We'll follow no rules of chivalrous battle against Birsha's numbers."

Esther huffed and flapped her arms at her side. "True, and he deserves everything we can throw at him and then some. But I'm very jealous."

I nodded and admitted, "So am I."

Hazel flushed and set her bow on the table, where Laszlo had left us a tea tray of refreshments, as if we were only a group of young women taking a turn about the gardens together. Drinking tea and eating scones in our light cotton dresses. Shooting arrows at targets.

"Do you…do you want to be in battle?" Hazel asked carefully, glancing at us.

"I thought after we left Rooksgrave in ashes that I wanted only to be safe and happy with my gentlemen," Esther mused, setting her own weapon aside. She lifted her chin high and continued. "Now, I want to face him again. I want him to know it was a little, insignificant human woman who helped destroy him."

My heart pounded in my chest, and I ached for the certainty, the confidence she felt as she spoke the words.

Hazel nodded. "He hurt my friends. I'd like to grow a tree where his heart should've been, turn him into mulch."

My hands fisted in my skirt as they both glanced at me and then looked away just as quickly, realizing what it was they were asking of me. Could I bear to face Birsha? The man who'd stolen centuries of my life? Broken the woman I'd been to pieces? Did Ineedto look into those cold eyes once more?

"I don't know," I whispered.

There was a pause of silence, and then a slim, warm hand pulled mine from my skirt before I could tear a hole through the fabric.

"You don't have to. I'd put another knife in his bellyforyou," Esther said.

"Gladly," Hazel agreed, nodding and lifting up my other hand, enfolded in both of hers.

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