Page 26 of The Surrender

And Merikh and I fall asleep until dawn.

19

“I need you…”

QUINTESSA

Hours upon hours later, ice crystals have grown a labyrinth upon my skin. My eyelids have been soldered open. Frost has made a crystalline bed upon my lashes. Whatever tears have shed from my eyes have solidified into crystal drops upon my cheeks. I haven’t stopped shivering. But Kyan spoke the truth: the angel oil he rubbed on my flesh has kept my body from freezing.

Whatever primal energy or deep emotion exists within these mountains, I can’t feel it.

I ached for it. I begged for it. I screamed for it until the storm lashed claws of wind to paralyze my vocal cords. It was all I could do to hold onto the pain, the heart-breaking chill gripping my spine and spreading to freeze my nerves and lock all my muscles and bones. It was all I could do to keep myself from fading away.

Now that the storm has torn its way across the mountains to clear the expanse, I catch my breath. Deep inhale through my nose. Long exhale through my mouth. The lungs of the mountains push their air into mine.

A warmer breath whispers across my cheek to shiver the crystals, to crack them, to melt them.

I cannot close my eyes. I cannot drop my shoulders. I cannot cast a deep sigh to show my relief as the fallen angel kisses my ice-coated cheeks to thaw the tears.

“Oh, Quinny, Quinny dear...” Kyan’s voice cracks from his disappointment—disappointment laced with grief.

Because I couldn’t surrender as he’d wanted me to.

Shame presses in on my chest. A deeper weight than the mountains around me. How can I possibly understand his world, much less surrender to it? Drago makes sense. I make sense with him when we just become fire and flesh, blood and heat. Even Merikh and I make more sense because any time he gives me more scars, he shows me his demons.

How am I supposed to love Kyan’s demon when I cannot hope to understand him?

The fallen angel breaks the chains. Relief collapses my lungs and melts my whole body as he catches me, lunges from the clifftop, and flies. Utter power pumps through his wings as Kyan bears me in spiraling wind currents toward the lower mountain pinnacles. He doesn’t stop until he’s arrived at the lake, our lake...where Merikh waits.

Together, they wash me. Together, they heal me. The frosted fingerprints of the highest peak of the Court of Storms melt into the magical water until my skin is clean and whole again. I still shiver as they take turns kissing me with too-tender lips.

Silence stitches the air between us.

Staring into their eyes is like gazing into the dark side of the moon. I blink back tears and focus on their touch instead. That timeworn ache proves how I will starve for their touch for eternity.

So, I lean back against Merikh, against the solid frame of his build. Not a fortress of masculine heat like Drago. No, Merikh is built more like a tower, a pinnacle—one abandoned and lost to time. One haunted by demons and covered within the cracks of time. I am careful not to touch those cracks, the scars upon his skin. The level of the lake hides much of them, and it’s clear he’s concealing them beneath the protective veil of dark water.

At first, I tilt my head against his shoulder to gaze up at him, finding no solace within the dangerous and severe beauty of his face. Sharp and chiseled angles. A long-suffering scar invades that beauty, carving a delicate laceration down the side of his face, so close to his hairline. It fades at his jaw. Those full lips bear the sins of a past I do not know.

With tears burning my eyes, I lick my lips and memorize that scar he hides so much. Hides it behind the mass of dark waves like thick lines of ink scrawling down to the center of his neck.

I ache to touch that scar, to trace my yearning fingers across it and know its history, know him. The not knowing is a disease infecting me. His heart, their hearts are the cure, But when Merikh draws his naked arms out of the water and settles them beneath mine, I almost fall into the water.

Tendrils of meaning curl into my chest and bleed into my heart. Kyan remains silent, reverent of the moment. But he’s the one to hold my waist to keep me upright, so his partner and I may share this moment of...of what...?

"Real," Merikh whispers in my ear and the deep weight, the emotional pain is enough to cripple all my organs. “Touch them, Quintessa.”

Oh, gods! He said my name!

I whimper. I fall into him. Through a multitude of tears forming a veil before my vision, I touch my fingertips across the trail of those scars. Bereft of ink to swirl and beautify them. All this time believing Merikh hid his scars. To some degree, he may. But he’s never known what to do. How to reclaim them. How to take them back.

My fingers grow heavy-laden with every moment they cross the tapestry of puckered gashes and lacerations upon his well-muscled arms of pale flesh.

“Give me your strength, little dove,” he purrs in my ears. “Give me your strength to feel every fucking little thing. I need it, Quintessa.”

“I need you,” echoes Kyan—in a deep but ethereal voice that is the unholy union between him and his demon, his Shadow, my...my...my Shadow. A low growl resonates from his throat as if he heard my urgings, my feeble stakes to claim him.

“You are the only one with the power to bring us back to life again,” interjects Merikh in a moment of pure and powerful vulnerability.

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