Page 50 of Storm of Blood and Shadow

“What men always want.” I let my head tilt back against his. “My cunt.”

“I don’t understand.”

“My pussy. The hole you enjoyed so often last night.”

He stiffens. “Fourteen is much too young for mating.”

“Yes. It’s too young among humans, too. But I did it, and he got me the audition. I joined the palace troupe, and over time I became one of their best dancers. I was the Queen’s favorite for a while. People admired me, gave me rich gifts, praised me… but almost every one of them did it for the same reason—to fuck me. To possess me for a little while.”

Varex doesn’t speak, but he reaches back, feeling for my hand. I slide my fingers between his, swallowing a lump in my throat as his strong fingers close around mine.

“I had so much wealth, so suddenly,” I continue. “I didn’t know how to manage it. Some of it I wasted on parties and gifts for people who weren’t truly my friends. Some of it I sent back to my sister and my brother, because I felt guilty for abandoning them. But my brother Bryon and my sister’s husband gambled the money away. I didn’t plan to give them more, but my sister wrote to me, saying that Bryon owed a fortune to some terrible men, and that if I didn’t pay his debt, he would be killed.”

“Human culture is pure savagery,” breathes Varex. “How can they be so cruel to each other?”

I twist toward him slightly. “You swallowed up countless people with void orbs and burned many others with void magic. You don’t have any right to judge us.”

“Perhaps not.”

I tilt my head back against his with a long sigh. “I kept sending my family money and spending too much myself. Eventually my brother, my sister, her children, her husband, and his mother fled our hometown and came to live with me in the city. I didn’t have the heart to turn them away. And I thought themen would find work and help me support everyone. But that didn’t happen, and eventually we had to move into the hovel we call home now.”

Tears have begun rolling down my face. I try not to let Varex know, but a sob hitches through my lungs in spite of my best efforts, and he feels the surge of my back against his.

He turns around, lifting me gently with his powerful arms, arranging us both so I’m sitting between his legs, with his knees arched on either side of me. He wraps both arms around me, hugging me against his chest. His lips press against the top of my head.

“You know I want more than your body, don’t you?” he whispers.

“I know.” The words slip from me, a faint confession. “But it’s cruel of you to ask for all of me. It’s unfair.”

“Nothing about any of this is fair,” he replies. “The decimation of our prey by the plague was unfair. We were forced to join the war because of it—that was the only way we could lay claim to the Middenwold Isles as our new hunting grounds. Vohrain would never have yielded those islands to us otherwise. We had a choice—starve and go extinct, or kill humans. And since the people of Elekstan used to hunt dragons a few decades ago, many of my clan had no problem fighting against them.”

“I remember hearing about the dragon hunts. My father boasted about accompanying my grandfather to one of Ouroskelle’s outlying islands and watching him bring down an elder dragon.”

“So your family hunted us, and now I have captured you,” he murmurs into my hair. “Does it not seem like a strange kind of justice?”

“This isn’t about me or you. This is about two children who are doomed to misery unless I save them.”

“But you did not create those children.”

“They are still my responsibility. If your brother had hatchlings and then died, you would gladly take in his offspring and care for them as your own.”

“We’ve discussed this before,” he says patiently. “Your sister and her husband are not dead. Nor is your brother. They simply need to rise up and do what is right for the young ones.”

“They won’t, though!” My voice rises, shrill with frustration. “They never have.”

“Perhaps because you keep trying to save them, instead of letting them falter and rise and grow stronger.”

“You’re blamingme?”

“Not blaming, no. I’m wondering if, given the right set of circumstances, the goodness inside your sister and brother will blossom. Perhaps stepping aside is the healthiest thing you can do. Everything else you have tried has failed, after all.”

I wrench myself away from him and jump down from the rock. “Fuck you, Varex.”

He sighs. “You’re angry because part of you agrees with me.”

“That’s not true. You’re an arrogant bastard, a murderer, and a thief.”

He leaps down from the rock, standing tall and handsome in the moonlit meadow. He’s partly erect from our close contact, but he doesn’t seem to be thinking about that. His eyes are fixed on mine, fierce emotion shining in them.

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