CHAPTER 121: ONE HUNDRED & TWENTY ONE

"Val."

There is only black.

Not the kind that comes with night, but the kind that eats light alive. It stretches in every direction, vast and endless, and it breathes like a living thing. The air is thick with it. My feet find no ground, yet I stand.

"Val."

It is a summon, slamming into the edge of my mind, over and over, so that it is all I hear from within the belly of that darkness.

"Val."

Lucien.

I turn in a circle, breathing hard, searching, but I cannot find him, cannot follow it, when it has no direction. It is everywhere. Beneath. Above. Around. Inside. I call for him, but the darkness swallows the sound, and the sound of his voice ceases altogether.

I pant. I feel like I have been running for a while. My lips are parched with a thirst, my heart in a constant, painful race. How did I get here? What was I running from? What is this place?

Something wraps around my ankle. And yanks me down.

I fall into another hell of black, vertigo taking me as I scream. But when I blink, I am surrounded by soft light and familiar walls draped in finery. I am on my knees, my fingers curled into ice-cold marble, a few feet away from a pair of bare feet.

My gaze lifts from where I kneel, rising higher along the naked, pale skin, and my breath halts completely when violet eyes meet mine. Instantly, I am suffocating, choking on hard sobs, unable to draw in a single breath as every cell in my body shakes.

"You’ve been particularly hard to reach," the apparition of Lucien says.

"Is this real?" I sob. "Are you real?"

A hand reaches for me, waiting, and Lucien cocks his head to the side. "Does it matter?"

I feel an overwhelming compulsion to take his hand and I do. Very slowly. Our fingers touch, calloused against soft, strong against delicate. Our fingers entwine and hushed gasping breaths tear out of me. "Please tell me you’re alive. Tell me this isn’t another dream. Tell me you’re okay."

Couldn’t tell if I was hallucinating. I’ve dreamed so much of him, missed him so terribly, I have begun to see him, even when he isn’t there. And now, he seats on a throne, his chest and feet bare, wearing the leather pants I’d last seen him in. I knew it wasn’t real because his silver tresses run down his chest, long as they were before the incident and his face is unscarred.

His fingers tighten on mine, pulling me off the ground and the very scent of him is so real it makes me hurt inside. His hand curls on my waist as he pulls me onto his lap. My forehead falls against his chest, strands of his hair tickling my cheek as the tears won’t stop falling, wetting his torso.

He tucks my head under his chin, his thumb circling the spot behind my ear. "They may wrap you in chains and bind you, but do not let them remake you into something you are not. You are not, have never been a helpless woman."

"I can’t think past this pain," I whisper. "I’m... drowning in it."

His fingers drift to the curve of my ears, still raw, unhealing. "Do you know why I made you Queen?"

"I won the Selection," I say after a moment.

"No." His hand falls to my hip, digging in tightly. "Lilith did. But you, Valka, clutched the crown in your hands, even when your fingers were broken. And when it became inevitable that you would lose it, you refused to part with it, taking a piece of it with you, if for nothing more than to shove it up my ass."

The startled laugh that bubbles in my chest comes out as another sob. It seems like such a lifetime away, when my largest problem was a showcase and being ignored by him. And I’d give anything to go back there. If only to touch him again. Like this.

"You didn’t have to, but you fought. You’ve been fighting since you were born." He pulls back, cradling my head softly so I can meet his stare.

"Fight," he says, and the word shivers through me. "Hold on a little longer..." The world around us flickers, his outline rippling like what holds the fabric of our universe is breaking. "...until I can come back for you."

Come... back?

I cling to his arms, painfully, unwilling to let go as panic swells in my chest. I recognize the flickering world, the way his eyes seem to flick about him, like he isn’t quite here. "Where are you?"

Long lashes dust against high cheekbones. Silver brows furrow. A blink of... confusion. "Lost... in between." His frown smoothens into something soft, almost serene. "It is beautiful. Peaceful--"

And I know what it feels like, what it smells like--pollen and roses. The After.

A sound tears from me, part sob, part snarl, as I clutch his chin, forcing his gaze to mine. "Don’t go." My voice cracks on the words. "Don’t you dare."

"Valka..." he murmurs tiredly, and the world about us flickers again.

My fingers tremble on his jaw. "No. *You promised.* You become a fucking con man if you break your promises. And I will hunt you, Lucien. I’ll drag you out of whatever golden afterlife you crawl into and take what you owe me. Then I’ll murder you myself."

A sound escapes him, not quite a laugh, not quite a breath. It shudders through him. Then his hand lifts, ghostlike, tracing the corner of my mouth. His eyes, dim but still silver, focus on me. "Still feral. Even when you’re begging."

He presses his mouth to mine. Salt and heat and desperation, the taste of tears and blood and everything we’ve ever been gnashes together. His hands wander slowly, reverently, finding the back of my neck, my waist, gripping hard. Mine finds his hair, his face, his chest, his shoulders. My nails rake along his back, embedding them with marks as if I could trace him a map on his skin back to me.

The world begins crumbling around his and something in the back of my awareness--an unfamiliar touch--tries to shake me, wake me. But I want to stay. I never want to leave.

But the darkness wins, stealing him away from me again.

****

I wake up to the taste of salty tears on my lips and the touch of fingers on my clavicle. The light in the room is the dim, but those grey eyes glow eerily, snapping me out of the dreamy haze.

I scream, jerking back, but after my earlier assault on Rafael, the chains on my wrist remained, holding me in place. His weight presses me into the mattress, touching in all the places I have no wish to be touched by him.

I whack my chains around, stomp my feet, twist and writhe and scream until my lungs physically ache.

A chilled spreads in my blood as Rafael snarls, "Stay!"

The Alpha tone slaps into my skull, ricocheting off the walls of my mind. It shouldn’t have been that strong, shouldn’t have been so destructive, so much that my body bucks beneath his and excruciating pain explodes in my head as I rebuff the command.

He forces his lips to mine, shoving his tongue into my mouth. I slam my knee up, hitting his groin and he roars in outrage.

I expect the blow, but it doesn’t make it hurt any less when his fist hits my cheek.

I don’t cry. Or make a sound. But the body acts as it should. You find that when you are hit or slapped or hurt, your eyes automatically water, like it knows you are being wronged.

At the sight of the tears, he hardens against me, rocking his hips against mine.

"Don’t touch me--"

He groans and leans down, burying his face in my hair, scattering revolting kisses along my forehead, my cheeks, my jaw, even as I squirm back and forth in a war I cannot win or run from. "You call for him, even in your sleep," he growls, hands gripping my thighs and forcing them apart. "You don’t acknowledge me. I am your king, but you look at me like I am dirt. You think yourself better than me, but you are only useful as far as I say you are."

I kick at him, but he catches my foot and I cry out at the angle, hearing my ankle snap.

"You have no idea how mad you drive me." He successfully forces himself between my legs and begins hiking my nightdress up my thighs. "This is your fault. I’d fucking love to see whose name you call when I’m inside you."

"Stop it! Please stop!"

But he grows impatient, grabbing the hem of the gown and he rips the fabric, baring my naked body to him. His grey eyes darken with lust, running from my heaving chest to my centre. He runs his fingers up my stomach and I inch out of the way before he can fondle my breasts.

I beg. I beg him not to. But my instincts tell me he is too far gone. He has no conscience, no soul. No trace of sympathy I can try to manipulate.

He catches my hair and yanks me up as far as the chains will go. And he kisses me again, forcefully, silencing my screams. I feel dirty. Disgusted in my own skin as his hands smear against the lines of my waist, reaching down to touch my hip and curve of my ass in the same exact moment that he releases my mouth and sinks his teeth into the exact same spot Lucien’s mark resides.

Only, in the same breath, he recoils from me like I am on fire. Gagging. I hit the bed as he wheezes, spitting out a mouthful of my blood like it is poison.

His eyes are wide with surprise, but it is soon replaced with something hateful, something that makes my body lock in on itself as those eyes drop to my mid-riff.

Then, he begins thrashing the room. The vases hit the ground. The furniture cracks. Things break and shatter. A rampage. And when he is done, the room is in complete shambles, his hands bleeding, his body sweaty and the depth of his rage unfading.

He suddenly laughs, running his bloodied fingers down his face. "Such ill-timing." He turns his back to me. "Reiss."

A guard enters almost immediately. I am cold and exposed to the entire world outside, and the guards eyes roam my body hungrily before lowering to the ground sharply.

"Get the physician," he says.

I clutch the sheets, sitting upright. "Why?"

I don’t expect him to respond. But he looks over his shoulder. "Why else? To get rid of the abomination growing in your belly."