Page 54 of Fate & Monsters
“I am yours, but you are also mine. In an equal sense, Mavros.” Her gaze softened, and her palm landed over my heart. “And I’m staying.”
“Then I’ll kill him, so you don’t have to be in the line of fire,” I promised.
The corner of her lips curved up. “If you get to be a fool and fight him again, then I get to be a fool and stay.”
I almost laughed.
“Then we will be fools together.”
Golden light bled through the castle windows, heralding the passage of time. Each second slipped through my fingers and anxiety ratcheted higher up my spine, sparking along my nerves. There wasn’t enough time. We might die within hours at the hand of a psychopath from Earth wielding magic.
My demonic impulses got the better of me.
We didn’t make it to my room before I caught her and slammed her into the wall.
Astoria’s head thumped into the wall, and my mouth attacked her neck. She instantly melted, matching my frantic need like the same spark ignited us. And she was so much smaller than me, easy to manipulate. I lifted her and her arms wrapped around my neck. Her fingers tangled inmy hair as I grabbed handfuls of her round ass to maneuver her.
She was already wet and ready for me when my cock nudged her pussy. A groan breached me, matching her drawn-out whimper when I sheathed myself into her perfect cunt in one thrust. So hot and wet and tight. The perfect glove for my cock. Like she was made to take it, made for me to fuck her—to love her.
When she cried my name, I almost said it.
I captured her lips instead.
Not a kiss, but a claiming taste of her. Each breath, each sigh was a morsel, a scrap, another piece of her filling me, and I swallowed. Her affection warmed me, fed me. In turn, I poured my unspoken love into her. Not as a gentle offering, but a thing of claws and teeth and biting starvation. More than loving her, I wanted to feast on her. To unhinge my jaw and pull her heart into my aching maw. To feel her pulse in my bones until we met in the grave to rot together.
After today, maybe we would.
He arrived in the gloaming hour.
The castle bells rung for the first time in hundreds of years. Three long tolls lamenting war, and heavier than the groans of death.
I prowled the top of the staircase of the castle'sfront entrance. The courtyard appeared barren and lifeless. I watched the shadows stretch like skeletal fingers reaching for me—or for the light standing behind me.
With my fighting leathers still in tatters, I’d donned my father’s ink-black armor. It fit strangely on my form, like wearing the bones of a long-dead goliath still haunting the realm from beyond the grave. Thayer had polished it to perfection, and there was no denying my reflection in the metal. I wore the armor now despite the lack of my father’s crown. These were still my people. This was still my home and my world.
And Astoria was mine.
The torches along the front path flared impossibly high and violent. A thick, slick air fell on the front lawn. He appeared at first like a drop of blood in the distance, growing into a gleaming ruby, radiating malice in place of beauty.
Astoria stood beside me. She hadn’t spoken since our exchange in the library that morning. Since then, she’d stood beside me as still and determined as a sentinel. A light, a beacon, grounding me in the severity of this moment.
The wizard led his procession with ceremonial grandeur. Slow, confident, and bolstered by his arrogance. He took his time because he believed he could. He spilled onto my land like a crimson plague spreading disease. Even his magic, festering in the surrounding air, was virulent andacrid.
His soldiers marched behind him, wearing strange red camouflage uniforms and adorned in bulky black vests from Earth. They carried long, metal weapons. Modern and foreign to my world in a way that made me wary.
The Crimson Mage looked every bit the maddened, enraged fiend from his horn-head helm to the snarl etched onto his face. Palpable power rolled off him in cold, sickening waves. Even his cloak spilled behind him like a trail of blood. He walked without hurry, every step measured and calculated. His gaze swept the lawn, the castle, grazing over me like his eyes were a blade intent on cutting me down. A flicker of something crossed his expression, and his eyes narrowed.
“You survived,” he said. The mage stopped halfway across the courtyard; head titled as he studied me like I was a freshly risen corpse. “I thought I left you as a smear in the dirt.”
Deliberate, undeterred, I descended the stairs, letting the tension stretch. Only a distant howling wind or the soft shuffling of feet broke it up.
His smile was sharp and mocking.
My glare was potent. “You seem impressed.”
His laugh was a grotesque, strangled sort of sound.
“Impressed?” The front line of his army chuckled with him. “No, not at all. Disappointed? Certainly. I much preferredyou when you were bleeding out.”
