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“Is this really necessary?”
“Fuck. You.” She spits, and it lands on the side of his face with a wet splatter, saliva slipping down his cheek in a slow steady drip. He collects it on two leather clad fingers, pausing a moment to see it glint pink in the crystal light, before swiping it across his bottom lip. Cherry blooms on his tongue, the remnants of a dessert left to stale and rot. In the banquet hall above, dark wine spills freely on cracked marble, thick with red. The stains will last a lifetime.
She struggles against his control and it would take less than a heartbeat to snap her neck, but the challenge calls to him like a moth to a flame, flies to a corpse. Poor Gwyneth Berdara has never known pleasure like that which he can offer, this he knows without even slipping through the curtains of her mind. Though he could just as easily break her there.
There’s some enjoyment to be had in that — to peel the desires from her mind. Petals from a rose, each a little richer, a little darker than the last. Oh, how we would take great time in making them so much worse. Above all else, this he also knows.
She’s trembling. It’s delicious.
“I can’t fault my brother for trying,” The words come soft, honey dipped and charged with compulsions so well worn they barely feel like magic. So often used, he can’t remember the last time he didn’t have to. When fear hasn't been the first spear tipped beast to cower at his feet. His finger presses to the soft flesh beneath her chin, only the barest pressure, to guide her face to meet him. There’s evidence of Azriel’s proclivities written in her sharp eyes, the distrust there, the malice. Blue as clear as summer springs, and twice as deadly. “But this was stupid, even for him.”
A snarl curls across her blood pinked mouth at the pinch of his nail. A scalding hot path even through the gloves—and partially beneath them, as it seeps through the puncture left in its wake. Another perfectly decent pair ruined. “Everything he owns will be mine in the end.”
Their cursed blood will make sure of that.
Four seconds between each of her breaths—inhale, hold, exhale, hold. It’s quaint to see her try and quell the anger caught behind her teeth. The things she can’t quite say. Lost training methods resurrected by misfits and acolytes near laughable, now. With each moment that passes, she breathes and she strains, holding no further commentary on his assessments nor his words. Though, he dare say she has a few choice things to say regarding those. He’d not missed the uptick in her pulse at the mere mention of Azriel.
“Did he tell you why?” Rash decisions, in this situation, could be the last ones he ever makes. Her prowess with deception so clearly defined by the bodies growing colder in his banquet hall. The wine? Really? It stinks of desperation, the ravenous snaps of a cornered animal. So when he leans into her space, it’s all for him. Risk be damned.
His nose catches the side of her cheek, drawing a line up to her hairline. Sea salt and citrus sweet warmth of her flush so freely given at his touch. “Did you even ask? Or are you just following orders?”
She stiffens as his lips brush her ear. If she had the teeth his brother was rumoured to have, this would be her time. To break his hold, tear out his throat, claim his banner for her own. Hells below, it'd be worth the fall out even if she tried. It’s been such an awful long time since anyone got close enough to even attempt at usurping him.
He'd always thought it would be Cassian first— fifty thousand men strong with a list of impossible demands—but it makes sense that it's Azriel. The border between them has been shrouded in darkness and shadow for over three centuries. Impenetrable for those that cannot wield the night.
And yet.
He pulls away and feels ephemeral wisps of relief soak the edges of his restraints. The very same ones he has holding her a foot off the ground, incapacitated. It’s temporary, less than a heartbeat before she’s back to seething, but it’s very much there. There’s something in the set of her jaw, a defiance that almost holds a smirk in the way her pretty lips don’t.
“Are you afraid, Gwyneth Berdara?”
She spits again, to the floor this time, barely missing the toe of his boot as it lands on the stone floor. The memory of it glazes her bottom lip as she opens her mouth. Morning’s first dew.
“There is no sleep in endless dark and—”
“and the path I take freely.” Rhys finishes for her. There’s no direct translation to the common tongue for the prayer, as blasphemous as all hell from his own mouth. An ocean’s plea for heaven. It’s incredibly boring, as final words go. “It was over a girl, of course.”
It’s a shame that he’s forced to keep such a tight hold of the bindings keeping her compliant, because she likely would have swung for him otherwise. And what a chase that would be. It had been enough that she’d infiltrated his court, weaved her way among his staff, flirted past the guards, laced their wine—
Of all the attempts on his life Rhysand had ever had to endure, Gwyneth Berdara might be the only one who could have succeeded.
Just, not like this.
“She tasted of wildflowers and sunlight,” It’s a purposeful choice of words, wrapped up in half a memory, half a dream. “Only Azriel would never know that specific detail. He trailed her around for half a century before even making an advance. From a distance, at first, but then closer. She refuted his piss poor attempts but, by that point, no simply wasn’t enough. No army, nor ward, nor prayer. No distance could quell his desire.”
Even the cursing wind darent interrupt him, cutting through the slit thin windows in near silent whispers. It sang of future frost, or winters long passed. But either way, it sang.
“There is no limit to the things people will do to escape his particular breed of obsession.”
“Strike your forked tongue somewhere else, high lord.”
As much as he thought he’d like to hear her use that particular moniker, it lands a little south of home. Too caught in the dimming of that light she holds and the brutality caught in its place. She’ll give up eventually.
It will be a long eventually.
“So when we found her with rocks lashed to her ankles at the depths of her favourite lake, he begged me to save her. Knelt in the silt and demanded I cross that threshold and drag her back.” Softly, quietly. Gently. “So I did.”
And then “Do you remember?”
“There is no sleep in the endless dark, and the path I take freely.” She says, in lieu of an answer.
“Of course you wouldn’t.” Rhysand cups her face in his palm, marvelling at just how right it feels to touch her again. Body built to fit his contours. And she lets it happen. Without even so much as a flinch, she lets it happen.
After so long.
“Those were my conditions.”