Page 122 of Malicent
I have a dozen ideas of what else my mouth could do right now, but she’s too volatile. Push too far and she’ll turn the dagger inward. I lean back, forcing her to lean into me so she can keep the dagger pressed.
“Stop moving.” Her voice is sharp, and her weight is solid. She’s trying to control the chaos in her own skin.
My hands leave the desk behind me and glide over her hips and down to her ass. Grabbing her roughly, I lift her onto my lap.
She gasps just once and braces herself with one hand on the table. The other keeps the dagger pressed to my throat.
“There,” I say. “Now we’re settled.” I keep my hands where they are, enjoying how she fills them.
“You just make excuses to touch me. Pathetic.”
“I wonder what excuses you tell yourself when my touch doesn’t disgust you.”
She’s quiet.
Smart girl.We both know the truth.
Her voice shifts. “The memories you claim to have…”
I nod. My hands move slow and measured, over her ribs and across her spine. My finger grazes the curves of her figure. I don’t let myself think about why I’m touching her. I could share memories without it, but I don’t.
My hands cup her face and I lean in. “Close your eyes.”
She hesitates. Her instinct is to fight and defy every request I make. Her curiosity wins. Her eyes flutter shut, giving me a reprieve from her gaze.
I watch her, just for a few seconds. I find myself doing that more often now, just watching her. The initial reaction I used to have of her—that volatile, knee-jerking rage—is fading. The truth is settling in.
She’s not Nora. Not even close. That fact settles in me with each passing day. Nora was calculated emptiness, a hunger wrapped in skin.
Unlike her, Millicent is a beautiful, chaotic creature sitting on my lap, driven by so much emotion. By need. There’s something in her that Nora never possessed.
She bites her bottom lip, a nervous tic since she was young.She’s nervous. I reach up, brushing my thumb along her cheek, and I gently tug her lip free.
I close my eyes, inhaling deeply as I reach out for her. Her defenses are finally down. It’s the first time I’ve ever been invited in, truly invited. I don’t push; I don’t dig. I stay just on the outskirts, not wishing to cross the threshold.
This isn’t about power. Not now. It’s about her trust and safety, as well as for everyone else’s well-being.
I extend a silver-threaded string between us, and then I descend deeper into the cold, heavy stillness of my subconscious.
Tingles spread through my fingers, toes, and skin. There is a strange buzzing sensation of slipping between consciousness and memory.
The outside world fades, and we fall.
Chapter 32
Cage
FULL MOON TONIGHT.
I stare at the globe beyond my bedroom window, its light slicing through the dark like judgement. Dread anchors my limbs, and exhaustion gnaws at my bones. I’m not sure I’ll make it through the night, even after sleeping away most of the day.
Something’s wrong or getting worse.
Since Nora’s latest lesson, I’ve started to feel hollow. There’s a squirming sensation just beneath my skin, slithering inside me like a snake. It drove me so mad last week that I took a dagger to my own arm trying to dig the worms out.
Then came the voice. It speaks like me, but it isn’t. It whispers hunger, and it craves power, especially the kind that hums in others. It resembles those with magical blood or artifacts containing magic. No matter how much I eat, I can’t satisfy the bottomless ache clawing at my insides.
I sleep through the daylight most days. I’m awake only at night, pacing or enduring whatever punishment Nora has waiting.
