She wasn’t just my love. She was my queen, too.
Beside me, Faun gripped my hand. “Veyr’sol,” she said.
“Veyr’sol,” came the voices of the court. And mine.
We would never forget. Never.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
Eurydice
Three days after the funerals,birdcall woke me to a gray dawn. I woke hungry. Before me, the double doors of Dorian’s balcony sat open and a small yellow bird eyed me from the railing. In the Dip, we’d considered yellow birds a sign of vitality. Good luck. Better luck when they studied you with those small black orbs.
Behind me, Dorian’s slow sleep-breathing. I braced for pain when I turned my head, as I had every morning since the Killing Fields. None came. I touched my shoulder, my sternum, my ribs, probing for the sharp, breath-stealing pain. None at all, and for once since that day, I didn’t feel like a wounded animal curling up to protect its soft parts.
The noise of my body had finally quieted, though the scar on my chest was still tender under my fingers. I’d always been quick to heal, but never this quick.
I turned fully toward Dorian. He lay on his back; his breathing had changed, but his eyes hadn’t opened. He wore darkness under them, twin depressions of fatigue and caretaking. He’d been relentless since that day on the Killing Fields, caring for me, bringing me what I needed before I’d thought to need it.
This morning, I needed something else. Something more.
I leaned toward his heat, rested my chin on his bare chest. I stroked the stubble on his jawline.
His arms came around me before his eyes opened. He rumbled, pulled me closer until my head was nestled under his. “I’d not expect such gentleness from the queen who broke the courts.”
“No? How about the maiden who shivered in the Eldermaze?”
“Not her, either.” His fingers slid over my scalp. “She would have slept the whole night that way without a word.”
I kissed the spot where his pulse beat in his neck, lingering until he groaned. “I suppose you’re right,” I whispered. “I’m rarely gentle.”
This time I kissed lower, right where his neck met his shoulder, and ended it with a bite. The groan that came was sharper, deeper. I felt him buck in the bed.
Yes, he’d been ready for me before this morning—long before. He’d just been waiting until I felt well enough.
I slid my leg over him and sat up, straddling his chest. His eyes had opened, darker than usual as they stared up at me. Studying my face, my chest, the silk slip I wore, my face again. Here, I felt like a queen—the man below me three times as strong, twice as fast, his gaze reverent.
That familiar reach toward power flowed through me. But also a warmth I’d never felt until I’d known Dorian. Love, real and tangible under my fingers.
Heat slid through me, an ache so sudden I felt hollowed out.
I reached behind me without looking away, laid my fingers gently over his cock and brushed it from base to tip. Already so hard and pulsing. He pulled in a breath when I touched him.
No offers to stop. No worries about hurting me. Not a word except his pupils blowing wide.
“Eury—”
Vaelen’s bleeding sky, the sound of my name on his lips. I ran my hand over his length, squeezing, watching him. He exhaled, his eyes closing—and jerking open again as my hand came up, my thumb swirling over his wet, silken tip.
I needed him. Needed him now.
I raised myself up onto my knees, didn’t even bother shedding my slip. I brought myself down on his cock until the fat head parted my lips, pressed deep into me. Pain and pleasure tangled, and I dropped my head back, mouth opening, eyes shutting as he stretched me. I felt like I would shatter just from his entrance.
His hands went to my hips, gripping tight, and neither of us moved as I adjusted to him. He pulsed inside me to the beat of his heart, and eventually I felt him move under me, shifting us across the sheets until his chest touched mine.
When I lifted my head, opened my eyes, he’d sat up against the head of the bed, his face close to mine. “Don’t be gentle,” I whispered. “I need?—”
His lips curled just before he crushed them against mine. I gasped, then again as he thrust once. One hand wrapped around my body, holding me to him. The other came up to my slip, yanked the chest of it down until the silk ripped. He cupped my breast as his tongue swept into my mouth, pressed against my own.