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This was a drawn blade, a battle, a fire. This was deadly. I loved it.
Yes, it was a danger. But how did I not realize then that was the appeal? I wanted to hurl myself off this cliff. I was ravenous.
Privacy. Because we were just out here, on the beach. And I didn’t even care.
Woof
the first time I touched him, something had changed forever—a door cracked open in forbidden parts of myself. I could ignore it. For a time. But never forget it.
And then he dropped to his knees. “Open your thighs for me,”
Holy fucking gods— He wasn’t patient. Neither of us had that in us tonight.
“Wider,” he growled, urging my thighs apart. There was no playfulness in this, no flirtation. Only command.
His mouth moved to my inner thigh. His teeth bit quick, a strike that made me gasp—more pleasure than pain, and whatever little pain there was disappeared when he drank.
Ooo
But he broke away, breath heaving. “You’ve never done this before.” Always a statement, never a question. He knew. How did he know?
“I don’t need you to be gentle with me,” I whispered.
Wait arent you injured?! :"O
Even our threads had been tied, intertwined, like strands in a braid.
But I had already told him I didn’t want gentle.
I yanked him closer, a rough movement with my legs, harsh and demanding. A challenge. The bars of the cage snapped.
“I dreamed about this,” he murmured. “What you might look like, unraveled and desperate, in the seconds before I let you go. I want to savor it.”
“Ravenous,” I ground out. “That’s what you said. Ravenous people don’t savor. We take.” I jerked my hips against him, and his entire body went taut in response. “So take me, Atrius. Take me.”
“Now you come for me, Vivi.” A commander’s order.
leaving my nightgown crumpled in the water, discarded there with my broken vows.
I had given the Weaver my body, and my voice, and now I had nothing left.
Not rational guilt, not logical guilt—this was the delirious guilt of a child, terrified of a parent’s wrath.
Atrius carried mine himself, just as he had carried me, even when his people were dying.
I could not do it. I would not do it. I sheathed the dagger.
“This place doesn’t deserve their bones. This place doesn’t deserve the bones of their children.” “It doesn’t deserve our bones, either. And gods, how many we’ve given it.” My lip curled into a sneer, my fingers trembling around Atrius’s hand.
He said it so simply. Like it was just a given that such a thing existed. Like it was a given that I had the answer. And his threads were steady—no doubt, no question.
“Are you asking me—” “I’m not asking anything. I’m telling you that I would like that person to be you, Sylina. And you can do with that information what you will.”
“This arrangement isn’t about me. It’s not about us. It’s a title that you deserve because you are a good leader.
But I had decided. In this moment, I decided all of it. Atrius was our answer.
And if that failed... Well. Atrius had been prepared to sacrifice his life to his goddess to save his people. I would be willing to make the same sacrifice.
“Death is what happens when you stand still,” I said. “Don’t stand still. Not for anything.”
“A tonic,” he said. “It’s better for you.” He’d prepared for me. Gotten human-specific tonics to help me make the journey.
my hand curling around his—a mindless impulse, like a compass drifting north.
Territorial men—human or vampire or slyvik. The one thing you could always count on.
We were in between two deadly forces of nature about to destroy each other. It was, in a strange way, beautiful.
He was a breathing corpse, and we weren’t even the first people to kill him.
“The Pythora King has not been a man,” the Sightmother said, “for a very long time.”
“You were never supposed to know,” the Sightmother said. “If you had obeyed, you still wouldn’t.”
Why would an acolyte of the unknown feel any uncertainty? Doubt any decision?
Mine was red as blood. The bodice was made of beaded lace, and the skirt of flowing silk chiffon.
How long has the Pythora King been dead? How long have you been ruling over a never-ending war? How many deaths are on your hands?
“Do you know what your name means, Sylina? It means bringer of rebirth, in the tongue of the gods.
Because you are the future of the Arachessen. The flame in which we forge the next version of ourselves. I saw that fifteen years ago, and I see it even more clearly today.”
It would have been a nice final thing to see.
Of course calling upon a god wasn’t a pretty, ceremonial act. It was a sledgehammer against a door.
“There is no greater offering to a god than the acolyte of another,” I said.
He choked out, “My pact to you has been fulfilled.” Yes, it was difficult to get the attention of a god. But this? This was enough. In fact, it was enough to get the attention of two.
But this... Nyaxia seemed to love the spite of it more than the gift of the kingdom she had sent Atrius on an impossible mission for.
“A shame for us to meet with my acolyte’s head in your hands.” Nyaxia’s smile withered. “I seem to recall once we met with my husband’s head in yours.”
I had been so ashamed of my inability to shed my grief from fifteen years ago. And yet here was a goddess, one of the most powerful beings ever to exist, and her grief was still just as raw, two-thousand years later.
“I am responsible.” The words flew from my lips before I gave myself time to reconsider them. A bolt of raw fear speared Atrius’s presence—even though he hadn’t so much as flinched when it was himself under Acaeja’s scrutiny.
“Because I did betray my Sightmother.” Despite my best efforts, my voice wavered. “And because I have offered you my entire life, and it would be a greater honor than I deserve to offer you my death, too.”
“Your offering is very noble,” she said, “But I do not want it. Your death is of no value to me. But your life... I see that something of great usefulness may come of that.”
