Chapter 86: Eighty Six
Valka
There is a considerable amount of anger shimmering down from Lucien’s side of the bond. You wouldn’t have known, not when he was laughing himself hoarse, drinking and entertaining the humans who couldn’t stop staring at him like he was some god.
I guess, in some way, he is.
But that’s not really the point.
It’s that he’s had years to master his emotions that it doesn’t show, but now, his feelings are bleeding into mine and I want to kill something.
I am not okay.
My fingers are jittery around the glass of wine. I wanted to kill Cecilia. For every touching him without his consent and having the nerve to throw it back in his face. I wanted to squeeze her flesh and bones to mash and pulp.
But I can’t. Not when the first day of the Summit begins tomorrow, after the King of Voss joins us and I need all of my wits about me, if I’m somehow supposed to infiltrate the minds of that particular company without losing my shit.
So, I lift the train of my dress and walk outside to get some of this hot air out. The crowd parts, heads bowing as a path is made for me.
"You shouldn’t be walking alone, Your Majesty," Leander says, following like a bee to honey. "We aren’t in Ebonheart. You could be attacked--"
"Remember how I knocked you out thrice in the training camp?" I ask, casting a look at him from over my shoulder. "I’m pretty sure I can handle myself."
He frowns. "But the King said--"
"Go catch some fun, Leander. Do not attach yourself to me at the hip like I am an invalid," I say dryly and take a turn through the high arched hallways, like I know where I’m going.
At some point, he retreats. I don’t stop walking until I’ve put enough distance between Lucien and I that the anger no longer suffocates me. My breaths are even out when I finally make my way through the labyrinth of unrecognisable hallways filled with obnoxious humans and wolves with less proclivity for nudity and fuckery.
It is almost jarring to find that there’s no one hidden in the corner, getting some. Or kissing. Court traditions must differ severely here.
I stop before the water fountain flanked by the statues of gods unnamed, and I toss my head back to stare at the skies, feeling lost, confused, hurt, troubled and exhausted.
This morning, I’d woken up in the clearing Lucien and I had passed the night, I had sought out the pond to wash my face. Only to yelp when I saw that my hair was blonde. And not red.
I’d woken up as Ilya, curled up on Lucien’s side like a cat seeking warmth. And it hadn’t been until I looked at my reflection that I remembered I wasn’t her.
And my nose had begun bleeding.
I didn’t need Lucien’s strange grandmother, who wouldn’t stop staring at me, even long after we set out of her little cavern home, to tell me that I wasn’t long for... dead.
What do people do when they knew they only had a few months left to live? Do they fight harder? Do they give up? Do they check off the things they never got to do off their lists? If I am being devoured bit by bit, chips of my personality leaving little left behind, what do I want to do with the time I had left?
I... I don’t know.
I want to see what’s beyond the ocean. I want another moment with Thane playing the monstrous thing he’d said he stole for Aurelia. I want to beat the living shit out of Lucien and fuck him in the same breath.
I blink at the thought and shake my head, mortified by the thought. My cheeks flush. Gods, what has gotten into me? That most definitely didn’t come from me.
Lost in my thoughts, I don’t notice the sudden movement beside me until fingers press against my lips, hushing me. My body jerks on instinct, elbow slamming back, but it meets air as a hand encircles my waist hard enough to hurt, pulling me away from the fountain and into a blind spot between two tall walls.
My teeth sinks into those fingers and an irritated hiss snaps against my ear. My nails rake across the arm of my assailant but he twists, hurling me with surprising strength into the wall and my breath is temporarily knocked from me.
I falter when a pair of piercing grey eyes jerk to mine. "Rafael?"
His hands grip my face roughly, running down my neck and he snarls, like he is in pain as he seems to search for something. "You are supposed to be dead. Why didn’t you stay dead? I could’ve lived with that."
"Get off me!" I yell, voice echoing in the night, but his eyes are frenzied, his touch more manic. And he touches the mark on my neck--Lucien’s mark--and hisses, as if burned.
"You let him touch you. You bear his mark."
I place my hands against his chest to rebuff him, but he is practically unmovable. "Of course, I do. He is my mate."
"I am your mate!" he yells at me, breath hot with the stench liquor. "Me!"
The thing no one tells you about a broken bond or a rejected one is that there’ll always be a part of you that feels that lost connection. In truth, when he had kissed my knuckles earlier, I had felt the spark of something.
It was minute, compared to all the dozen chaotic and vile things Lucien makes me feel, but it had been there. A touch enough to remember what it had felt like. How stupid I had been. How eager I was. How much I wanted to trust. Two centuries old or not, I had been naïve with him. And I could never quite forget what it had felt like when my body broke the surface of the water and broke.
"Let me go, Rafael. I am not yours to maul," I say coldly.
It is as though the words fuck with his self control and he lurches forward and crushes his mouth against mine.
I push at him, slap at his chest as anger punches through me, but he grabs my fists and pushes it hard against my torso, refusing to let go. He shouldn’t have been strong enough to cage me, but he does, his chest pushing against mine so I have no space--none at all--to fight back.
I slam my teeth down against his bottom lip hard enough to tear the skin and his blood fills my mouth. I gag at the taste of wrongness of it, the poisonous taste of it, but he only groans, driving his tongue between my teeth, kissing me harder, deeper, the disgusting, self-serving bastard filling my mouth with his blood like he wishes to smear away every taste of Lucien from my mouth.