CHAPTER 144: ONE HUNDRED & FORTY FOUR

Valka

It only gets progressively worse when he begins to experience aches in his back. He swears his age is finally catching up to him, groaning dramatically every time he bends. He grumbles about my cravings, only to eat all my food. He sleeps way more than I do and wakes up grumpy. His moods are fragile at best with everyone else.

But whenever he’s around me, he’s a bubbly ray of sunshine--an insane one that won’t stop talking.

The questions start first.

"Is it safe for you to walk on that floorboard? It creaked. I don’t trust it."

"Do you think they prefer the left side of your womb or the right?" He began pulling off his robe. "Should I rearrange your organs for comfort?"

One time we were walking back from a council meeting and he lifted me up so suddenly, I shrieked. Violet eyes searched mine with such intensity, I wondered if there was something wrong. Then he asked, "Should we ban the stairs from use?"

Another time, he came out of the shower and went straight to my feet and began massaging them. He’s been doing that a lot. Then his voice trembled, worrying me. "I feel... odd. And violently emotional." His eyes flicked to mine, genuinely troubled. "Do you still think I’m pretty or have you grown weary of me?" A pause. "I looked in the mirror and I do think you were right. My ass looks fatter."

Then come the suggestions. Gods, the suggestions.

"No more clothes with waistbands. They’re restrictive. Offensive. I’m burning them. Actually, no more clothes at all."

"You think if we fucked, we could add a fourth? I don’t think that’d be very healthy. The fourth, I mean. Not the fucking. Definitely not the fucking. Do you want to--"

"Get out, Lucien."

He had scurried out of our bedroom like I’d flogged him with a cane. Every single thing he does is deranged and so damned hilarious, my cheeks hurt from laughing.

And then, there were days when it felt like I was being haunted.

Days when my muscles seized up and I woke choking on my own breath, fingers already clawing at my neck. My nails caught the raised flesh of the brand, scraping as if I could dig hard enough, deep enough, to peel the memory off my skin.

Some mornings, the scent of burnt iron lived behind my teeth. Some nights, I still felt the heat, the pressure, the hands that held me down.

And that’s always the moment, right there, when my breath seizes and I cannot tell nightmare from reality that Lucien stops being ridiculous. When he cradles me to his chest and reminds me that we are safe. He becomes the one who found me.

The one who swore he would never let me hurt again.

"Valka," he murmurs now, brows pulled tight in concentration. "Stop scratching."

My fingers curl and I set them back down beside me. I’m laying half-bare on the edge of our bed, a sheet half-draped around my hips, my hair pushed to the side.

Lucien’s straddling me, the silver needle in his hand glowing faintly with heat. Ink pools in the little bowl beside him, dark, red-tinted, steeped in crushed roses, glistening water and some other weird mixtures.

His hands, so steady when they’re wielding a weapon, shake only once. Only when his thumb brushes the edge of the brand and he feels the flinch I try to hide.

When I’d asked him to help me get rid of the brand, I’d known it would hurt. And I had wanted to feel every bit of the pain.

But Lucien wouldn’t have that.

My vision’s currently swimming, my thoughts floating on the clouds. He didn’t feed me anything, but my body feels light, my vision hazed like I’d ingested opium. It took me a long time to realize it was the incense burning in the room as he carved out the first layer of flesh from the marking.

It still hurt, causing my eyes to water, but it wasn’t as bad as it should’ve been.

"I think," I exhale, words a little slurred. "It would do us a great deal of good if we considered Cyrus’s offer. The siege took a lot from the grainery and I hear from the staffs that the villages are running low on spices. Cyrus is offering all of that without seeking anything in return. It’s an obvious apology. Why won’t you give him that benefit of the doubt? You know he’s not a terrible man."

Lucien’s lips purse but he doesn’t stop drawing onto my neck. "Because it was giving the enemy the ’benefit of the doubt’ that got us here in the first place. Had you not sown discord between them, he would’ve been fine with having our people slaughtered over something he knew you were incapable of doing."

"He couldn’t have known," I argue. "All evidence pointed to me. Even I thought I did it."

His eyes are dark when they flick to mine. "He made a terrible choice when he demanded for your head. I will never forgive it. There will be no truce. Your life is worth more to me than spice. He can choke on it. And if he sets foot here, I will kill him."

I make a face. "I think you’re just don’t like Cyrus because I kissed him. I think you’ve wanted to kill since that night at the pool."

His hand stalls over my skin. "You are not wrong."

I start laughing. "You would leave our people in perpetual war because of your jealousy?"

He snorts. "I’ve seen wars begin over less." He licks his perfectly kissable lips. "And I told you. I don’t do jealousy. Having an aversion to the way a man looks at my woman can’t be called jealousy. It’s like saying I’m jealous of the gnats that have been eradicated from my home."

My lips part and the laughter that slips out of me is uncontrollable. I wonder if he knows he sounds like a high and mighty jerk right now. But knowing Lucien, that’s how he actually feels. Like he’s a god and we’re all gnats beneath his feet.

"Not you," he murmurs, lips twitching. "Not you. The rest are."

He finally draws back the needle, his silver hair clinging to his forehead in a light sheen of sweat. "It is finished."

He helps me rise to my feet, the silky sheets falling away from my naked skin as he tugs me forward, towards the mirror.

Air leaves my lungs in a rush when I see it. The skin is red but the brand is gone. Where it used to be, a large black rose stretches from the curve of my neck, it’s beautiful petals unfurling like it is in perpetual bloom. Thorned vines curl over the skin that has been scarred as if protecting the slowly healing wound, and if you looked even closer, there are tinier roses blooming on those thorns.

"Do you like it?" He sounds nervous.

I whirl and throw my arms around his neck, legs dangling as his arm wraps around my centre. "I love it. It’s beautiful. Thank you."

By way of thanks, I kiss his dangerously chiseled jaw. His cheeks. The spots behind his ear. His pretty nose. And then, his mouth. But at the first stroke of his tongue against mine, I know it is nothing chaste anymore.

His hand grips the back of my thigh, wrapping it around his waist, and my back slams against the smooth pane of the mirror, my throat closes around a moan as his hips rock against mine perversely.

"Your grandmother said--"

He growls against my lips. "Shit. She’s always talking shit." His cock strains against his pants, pushing against my folds. His mouth scatters hot, feverish kisses along the other side of my neck, his fangs nicking my vein playfully. "It’s been weeks, Val. I’m losing my mind. I’ll be good, I promise. Just... let me taste you." My head drops back against the mirror as his mouth finds my collarbone. "Please?"

Even I didn’t understand why his grandmother said to wait a couple of weeks before intercourse. If you asked me, I’d say she just wanted to punish Lucien. She had explained something that made little sense, something about my body still being in ovulation, unnaturally, but it’s hard to remember the words when his hands are kneading my ass.

My mouth dries at the obscene movement of his tongue against my pulse, mimicking the stroke of him in more intimate places. "Okay," I rasp.

He cups my ass and sets me against the dressing table, throwing everything that had been against it to the ground. My hands brace on the edge of the table as he kneels between my legs and groans against me, sniffing deeply.

I’ll never get used to that. It is both disturbing and erotic. His eyes flash. Black. Violet. Black. His lips press soft kisses to the inside of my thighs, making my body jerk with anticipation every time his breath comes close to where I need him at my centre.