Page 17 of Kiss the Filthiest King

I'm starting to understand where this is going.

"You asked for their help? They healed me?"

"Nobody ever helps, Darina. Not without a price."

He's evasive, and dread coils inside me. Before I can press him, Ryther says:

"They wished to be freed. You're harboring the All Goddess inside you. I have her opposite, the Undoing."

The…what?

My heart beats faster yet as I struggle to sit up, a sharp pain pulsing through my body.

"Don't move. You've just had…open heart surgery? I gave you a numbing draught, but you need rest."

I look around me, confused. I'm in his arms, and he's walking in the darkening shadows of trees.

"You can go to sleep, or I can make you."

The threat is clear in his voice, and all of a sudden, I want to snap. To wrap my hands around his neck and squeeze at the affront. But I am exhausted. And safe. And by some miracle, alive.

So I give into the void pulling me down with a contented sigh.

9

A PINCH OF CRUELTY

Ryther

The nixie's still here at the gate. As are the crows. I'd even say they're awaiting our return with bated breath. The humongous predator stalks to me and pushes to its hind legs, bringing its large head on top of Darina's.

"Yes, she's breathing," I find myself cooing, eyes on the chest that does rise and fall again, though her heart is now a cold, crystalline stone.

So long as it works, I can't say I much care what it's made of.

I don't doubt the predator was concerned, no matter how it plays it off, retreating to lick its claws clean already. I know the bond formed between a fae and their familiar, even one so recent and fragile as theirs. From the moment I claimed Crow, he was a part of me. The nixie might have died if Darina hadn't made it out.

"Ready for another flight?"

It occurs to me that exhaustion is catching up to me, yet at the same time, I've never felt stronger. More awake.

I take to the sky again, and there's no denying the new consciousness under the surface, the thing that observes the power for the first time.

It likes it. No, it delights in it, and its feeling leeks into mine, rendering me excited, perhaps even giddy. I can't help executing a completely gratuitous flip in the air, which is wholly out of character to me. The thing has an almost childish, gleeful spirit, and I don't understand it. It's much older than me. Shouldn't it be twice as bored, indifferent to all?

But no. It feels. It has managed to retain its hatred for its own mate for millennia; it's nothing like me. I don't hate anything or anyone, because feeling that much sounds like effort.

The Undoing is something else entirely.

And the All wasn't lying when she warned me that their wills would remain inside me.

I didn't even think before circling the air like a buffoon. I just wanted to, so I did it, even though I knew that desire didn't originate from my own mind.

Where's the line between it and me? Is there one?

I've already shared my soul with something for centuries: Crow. I thought it would be similar, that we'd be two separate entities with different opinions. It's nothing like that at all.

There's no denying that my feelings have also changed where the woman cocooned against me is concerned. A mere hour ago, she was a need. I needed her to stay alive because I suspected my continued existence depended on it. That, some physical desire, and begrudging respect for the capacity for love she displayed were the extent of my view of Darina Thorn.

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