Page 55 of The Surrender

“A mask like the one you wear?”

My question prompts him to stop. I collide with his strong frame. And stare into that demonic bone mask with its bird-like features. In the middle of the Great Hall, with the host of seeing and unseeing eyes upon us, Shadow stops. His eyes lower to the swirls of ink at my neckline, prowling to study me. I flinch when he traces a finger across the skin there, and I can’t help the shiver slicing through my nerve endings.

“More like the mask you wear, pretty Quinny, our little spirit moth,” Shadow defines before swooping his hand up to cup my chin. “What a lovely disguise she wore. A lovely guise of deception...and obsession.”

My ears nearly bleed but not from the words—from the raw emotion shadowing his features. The hurt washes over him. Tension, born of trauma, has coiled all the muscles of his body and darkened the serene blue of his eyes. He lowers his wings, revealing Kyan again.

“She entered my territory through the Veil,” the King reveals while carrying me into a dance again. “Because I was the easiest target.”

“Because you are a fool,” argues Shadow, with a gnashing of his teeth.

Pressing my lips into a tight seam, I rake my nails into the demon’s hand and demand, “Let him speak.”

Those blade-like eyes are sharp enough to strip me apart. At first, fear punches my stomach when he thrusts his pelvis toward mine while wrenching me closer with an insidious growl. But I tilt my head to the side, offer him a soft smile, and touch my lips to his in a tender gesture of a plea.

“She came to my court just after Hollow Night,” continues Kyan, embarking into a slow and sensual dance that should kindle warmth in my veins. But the thought of Hollow Night triggers so many memories of Qora, of the trauma that followed from my father whenever she tried to kill me. It forces a thousand aches closer to the surface. Old wounds reopening. But ones I’ve no skill to heal.

I’d rather distract myself. So, I force myself to focus on his story, his history, not mine.

Swallowing a hard knot, Kyan strokes the bare skin of my waist and reveals, “She blazed into my Court of Storms like an unstoppable tempest during our Solstice celebration. And I do not exaggerate when I say she blazed. Because everything about her, from head to toe, gleamed with the light of the angels. The light of a halo in her chest. And the promise of freedom within her wings. Yes, wings, Quinny. The first of my own kind from beyond the Veil. A glorious, ethereal angel, a high-angel seraph bearing the gloriole of the heavens in her celestial chest.”

I purse my lips and lower my chin, swallowing a lump myself as I imagine how beautiful she must have been. How irresistible to Kyan.

“She came at the “perfect” time as the aftermath of the Hunger upon Hollow Night still heated our blood. The torture wailing in my heart. The fire smoldering through me. And my aged and timeworn longing for connection to my people, to my true home swept into my Court of Storms like an echo of the stars, a breathtaking vision, and the stuff that dreams are made of. It was the only time I have fucked a woman on my throne, Quintessa.”

I tremble from the gravity of his confession. And wince from the imagery in my head, considering how well aware I am of his need to maintain some sense of hallowedness in a land where he is cursed.

“So sweet, so sweet as she recognizes our hunger and need,” Shadow chimes in while folding the majesty of Kyan’s wings around me, forbidding all from view and locking me in the darkness. He rubs my lower lip with his thumb. My pulse misfires, and I freeze as he lowers his head to open my mouth beneath his. “We did not care for things like desecration and degradation. Not when we are damned for eternity. Not when it was the first time we’d felt a blessing.

“And it was a nightmare wrapped in a blessing. Because Kyan grew wings. Yes, little spirit moth. Great, glorious wings. A fanciful trick of magic and manipulation.”

Nausea churns in my stomach as he traces my lips with his index finger. Those wings at my back forbid me to escape - from doing anything but listening as Shadow rumbles a low chuckle. “How Kyan grieved after the Hunger was gone. How he mourned because he’d stripped her and fucked her on his throne before all. Oh, how Erya twisted his grief and mourning into penance and desire to please her. It was she who exiled the people to a village within the trees.” Remorse stings my throat. Choked by that remorse, any meaningless words die.

“Then came the Kings.” Shadow grips my chin, yanking my eyes higher, wrenching my body closer. “Whenever they approached her—Drago, Mayce, Merikh—she broke down into panicked fits until Kyan came to her aid and took her away from them. Eventually, she claimed they attacked her, so Kyan banished them from the Court of Storms. In the time she spent with him, they never went to the other realms of the Waste. Retreated so deep in the Court of Storms, Kyan’s obsession with her had no choice but to grow.”

“H-how long were th-they—?” I trip over my words, but my breath stalls in my lungs as I blink, studying his features, the subtle growl in his throat.

“The most miserable year of his life in the Waste. Until I fucking ended it. I saved him on their wedding night when she tried to slash his throat and proved she was nothing but a pawn of Kronos. I, alone, was there when he held her corpse as the magic died with her and left him flightless.”

A bitter violence rips through the ache inside me. I’ve never hated a ghost so much.

Shadow chuckles darkly, noting something about my expression that has hardened. “Do you understand now, pretty Quinny? Time doesn’t heal old wounds. They simply scab, then open at the most inconvenient time to fester and cause pain. Merikh and I are the only ones who divert him from those scars. You cannot save him when I already did. As I will do again.”

Somehow, I strengthen my voice beyond the tremors in my body, “I don’t want to hurt him. Or you," I finish in a whisper so quiet, I almost worry he doesn’t hear it.

“But you will.”

His statement splinters all the resistance in my body. The emotions surging through me are more powerful. The shock of horror howls inside my chest, demanding for me to defend myself. Fear ices my blood from the way he looks at me—with cruelty, predatory hunger—but there’s something beneath its surface. A longing to rip open all my scars so we can bleed together. My knees almost buckle until the hysteria overpowers everything, and my heart becomes a panicked beast ramming at its cage, desperate for escape.

But other than my shivering knees longing to buckle but forbidden, thanks to Shadow locking me in his grip, I’m frozen. I’ve always known something is broken within me when I run to danger and not from it.

"Let it hurt. Let it bleed. Let it stay. She will see, yes, she will. And the mad, little dear will run far, far away!"

All I can muster is a weak shake of my head. He’s sucking me into a spinning vortex. I’m dizzy and want nothing more than to claw my way into the eye. Could this be what love is? This irresistible urge to hold onto something I can’t see but only feel?

With a crazed cackle, Shadow turns me and unfurls his wings, so the first thing I see is that throne. Like a scar. And as he pushes me up the dais, the pain thunders through me, striking my nerve endings like lightning. I can’t even focus on the other Kings or their responses.

“You will ruin him,” he whispers in my ear while dragging my body toward the throne. “You will run. And he will fall. Falling for you since the day he raised you in the Court of Ash. Now, I’ll bring you low in the Court of Storms. I’ll give you a new scar. I will ruin you first.”

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