Page 77 of Realms of Swords and Storms
Another flare of jealousy had me silently pushing open the door and stepping inside her chamber. The room was dark, but moonlight spilled through the window, painting a silver slash across the bed. And across them.
Livia lay on her back, her dark hair spread across the pillows like spilled ink, her skin pale and perfect in the moonlight that streamed through the window. And above her, his powerful body moving with fluid grace, was Tarshi. Her legs were wrapped around his waist, and they fit together perfectly, their bodies finding a rhythm as ancient as time itself. The sight of them—Livia's face transformed with pleasure, Tarshi's strong back flexing with each thrust—was both beautiful and terrible.
For a frozen moment, my mind refused to process what I was seeing. It was a tableau from a nightmare, a twisted fusion of my deepest love and my most profound self-hatred. My world, already fractured, shattered into a million pieces. A white-hot rage, pure and blinding, surged through me, so intense I thought my heart would burst from it. It was a physical thing, a fire in my blood, a pressure behind my eyes. Betrayal. The word was a razor blade in my gut. She had chosen him. After all my warnings, all my efforts to protect her, she had let the monster into her bed.
My fists clenched so hard my knuckles cracked. I wanted to kill him. To drag him from her bed and feel his bones break beneath my hands. To tear him apart for touching her, for defiling her.
I should have turned away, should have fled, but I was rooted to the spot, a spectator at my own execution. And as disgust and fury warred within me, a third, more loathsome feeling rose to join them. A sickening, familiar heat that coiled low in my belly. My cock, the traitorous bastard, began to harden. I was horrified. I was enraged. And I was turned on. The sight of themtogether, the brutal rhythm of their bodies, was a violation. It was the ultimate profanity.
My breath hitched, and the sound of my own blood roaring in my ears was deafening. I could see the muscles in Tarshi’s back bunch and release; a landscape of strength and scars I knew with a shame that burned hotter than my rage. His head was bent, his dark hair falling forward as he whispered something against Livia’s skin, and she arched against him, a breathless cry tearing from her throat.
Every instinct screamed at me to storm forward, to rip the half-breed off her and beat him until his face was an unrecognizable pulp. The hypocrisy of it all was a physical blow. I had touched Tarshi in the same way, had let his hands and mouth explore my body, had lost myself in the same desperate, shameful pleasure. But seeing him with her—with Livia, my Livia—was different. It was a violation. He was taking what was mine, tainting what was pure, and the sight of her surrender to him was a knife twisting in my gut.
The hatred was a clean, familiar fire. But the desire was a filthy flood, drowning everything. The sight of his power, of her surrender, stoked the furnace of my own lust. My cock was a hard, aching weight against my stomach, a testament to my own wretched hypocrisy. I hated him. I wanted her. And gods forgive me, I wanted to be under his hands just as much.
But beneath the jealousy and unwanted desire was something worse—a bone-deep self-loathing. For weeks I'd been telling myself that I was protecting Livia by keeping her away from Tarshi, that I was somehow keeping her pure by bearing the taint of his touch myself. But it had all been a lie. She had chosen him freely, had given herself to him with a joy and openness I'd never seen in her before.
And what did that make me? A hypocrite of the worst kind. A man who fucked the half-breed in darkened rooms whilepretending to despise him in the light. A coward who couldn't face his own desires.
"That's it," Tarshi murmured, his voice a low rumble of encouragement as Livia trembled beneath him. "Let go, Little Dragon. I've got you."
Little Dragon. The intimate nickname struck me like a physical blow. There was history here, layers of connection and understanding that I'd never known about. How long had this been going on? How long had they been lovers while I believed my filthy secret was mine alone?
With a cry as familiar to me as my own voice, Livia arched her back, her nails scoring down Tarshi’s back as she came, and my cock throbbed painfully as Tarshi thrust into her one last time, groaning as he emptied his load into her pussy. I wanted to grab him, pull him away from her and pound his face till it was unrecognisable, and yet I also wanted to push him down over her and slam my cock so hard into his ass that he begged for more.
The rage became a physical force, shoving the air from my lungs. I took a step forward, then another. I was going to kill him. I was going to tear his throat out with my bare hands.
A sound tore from my throat, a strangled, guttural thing that was half-growl, half-sob. It was the sound of a man breaking.
They froze. Tarshi’s head whipped around, his body still buried deep inside her. In the dim light, his eyes seemed to glow with a faint amber fire I had never seen before, and they locked onto mine in the darkness. Livia’s gasp was sharp as she saw me over his shoulder, her pleasure-dazed expression shattering into one of pure horror. She gasped my name, a broken whisper of sound, and tried to push him away, to cover herself, but it was too late. The image was seared into my brain: her body, open and vulnerable beneath his, her face flushed with a climax he had given her.
Slowly, deliberately, Tarshi pulled out of her. The slick sound of their parting was an obscenity that made the bile rise in my throat. He didn't rush. He didn't scramble to cover himself. He simply stood, turning to face me fully, his body magnificent and unashamed in the moonlight. He was a predator caught in the act, and I was the rival male who had stumbled into his territory.
The silence that fell was more violent than any scream. It was the deafening roar of betrayal, the crushing weight of my own hypocrisy made manifest. Tarshi didn’t move, just stared at me, his expression unreadable. He was daring me. Challenging me. And in that frozen, terrible moment, my hatred, my desire, and my shame fused into a single, unbearable agony.
My body moved before my mind could catch up. I launched myself across the room, a roar of pure, animalistic fury ripping from my chest. All the confusion, all the self-hatred, all the agonizing doubt coalesced into one singular, violent purpose: to destroy him.
Tarshi met my charge with a warrior's readiness, but he didn’t strike back. He took my first punch, a wild, grief-fuelled blow, square on the jaw. The crack of bone and cartilage was a deeply satisfying sound, a brief moment of clarity in the red storm of my rage. We crashed against the far wall, the impact rattling my teeth. I was all instinct, all fury, my hands becoming fists, my arms pistons of destruction. I wanted to break him, to erase the image of him buried inside her.
"Septimus, stop!" Livia's voice was a sharp command, but it was just noise against the roaring in my ears. She scrambled from the bed, grabbing at my arm, her nakedness a secondary, agonizing detail in the chaos.
I shook her off, my focus solely on the man before me. "You fucking monster," I snarled, landing another blow to his ribs. "I'll kill you."
He grunted, absorbing the hit, but his hands were open, blocking, parrying, not striking. His eyes, those damnable black eyes, held not hatred, but a kind of pained understanding that fuelled my fury even more. He wasn't fighting me; he was just enduring me, and I wasn’t just hitting him; I was hitting the part of myself I despised, the part that wanted him.
My hands went for his throat, thumbs digging into the pulse that beat strong and steady, a rhythm I knew with a shaming intimacy. I wanted to crush it, to silence the life that had so thoroughly ruined my own.
"Get off him!" Livia screamed, throwing herself at my back, her arm wrapping around my throat. I didn’t care. I didn’t need oxygen, I just needed to kill him. Then everything would be fine. It suddenly became crystal clear in my head. If Tarshi was dead, it would fix everything. This dark twisted desire I felt, that he had infected Livia with, would be gone, and everything would be better. Tarshi had to die.
My world narrowed to the pulse beating against my thumbs. It was the source of the poison, the rhythm of my own damnation. If I could just stop it, the world would right itself. Livia’s arm tightened, her forearm digging into my windpipe, but I barely registered the choking sensation. The air in my own lungs was irrelevant. Only the air in his mattered.
"Septimus, let him go!" Livia’s voice was strained, desperate, right beside my ear. “Please. I love him.”
Tarshi’s hands came up, not to strike, but to grip my wrists. His strength was immense, a current of power that should have been terrifying but only fuelled my frantic need to overcome it. His fingers pried at mine, but I held on, my muscles screaming with the effort. His lips parting as he fought for breath. But his eyes… his eyes weren't fighting. They were fixed on mine, and in their depths, I saw not fear, but a profound, shattering sorrow. He was looking at me as if I were the one who was dying.
The look broke through the red haze. That, and Livia’s sob. A single, ragged sound of anguish that wasn't for the man I was killing, but for me. My fingers spasmed, the strength draining from them as if a cord had been cut. I stumbled back, releasing him, sucking in a ragged, burning breath as Livia’s hold on my neck loosened. Tarshi slumped against the wall, one hand at his throat, gasping. I stood between them, trembling, my rage collapsing into a hollow, echoing ruin. I had become the monster.
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