Page 34 of Shadows and Flames
“What—for fuck’s sake, El. There was never anything to forgive.Iam to blame. I broke what was starting to grow between us. After everything you did for me,Ifucked it all up. And, and,” her chest began heaving, her words breathy, “I know it’s unfair, but I’d do anything.Anythingyou asked if that meant I’d get to keep you.” And then, in a whispering plea, she added, “Punish me as you see fit,please.”
I balked, flinching as if she’d struck me. She didn’t wait for my words, stammering over my reaction. “You just—you said it once that you would. Whatever you want from me. To do to me. I’ll take it. Whatever it is.”
I ground my teeth, my stomach dropping. Moving to hold her hands, I searched her hopeless stare. The trembling of her bottom lip. “Meline. I do not want to punish. I do not want revenge. I want you as you are.”
She cut off our gazes, shutting her eyes again. “What if I don’t know who I am anymore?”
How could life be so cruel? No matter how many years I lived, no answers to this question ever came. But to see the suffering reflected in what my queen just divulged?
I tugged on her gloves, pulling at the fabric so that I could feel more of her skin against mine.
But her reaction was not one I’d been expecting.
Meline snatched her hand away, ducked out of my embrace, and put space between us. After all she’d just said, the emotions she’d let me see, why did this send her running?
“Fuck!” Meline shouted, and when she tried to grab at her face, her hands were shaking too much to manage even that.
“My queen,” I was so confused, “what is wrong?”
“I—I have to go. I can’t—” And I watched her angle toward the door. Preparing to run away from me, even when she’dpromised.
I’d not been angry at her for a long time, but now, with her impending flight, the emotion roared to the surface. Flames sparked to life on my fingertips, and I pinned my queen to the wall.
But my power did not burn her, did not char her skin. Just as the black smoke rising from her hands did not carry Death. With her holding my throat, panic and challenge churning around us, her darkness circled around me. Cool and curious, I welcomed it. All that she was.
Did she not understand that?
She started to say something, but I cut her off, begging. “Enough. Show me.”
Fear wafted off of her, seeped from her pores as she released her hold on my throat. Her hand hovered between us.
With a pinch of two fingers, while my others were still aflame, I reached and pulled on the glove. For all the resistance she gave before, I felt her tug in the opposite direction to assist me. Saw her swallow while I uncovered what she hid.
Meline watched, then let me uncover the other that matched the first.
In the air, held aloft for me to see, were ten fingers, six as black as Rhaea’s Temple.
My queen’s brown skin, the sharpened nails. Those were the same. But, on the first three digits of each, down almost to where they connected with her palm, was complete darkness.
“I’m sorry.” Her whole body was shaking so badly, now. The apology was thickened with a sob, to the point that it was hard to understand. Even the second and third times she said it.
I didn’t… I didn’t understand. She was no high priestess. How—why had her powers shifted in this way?
I dropped my brow to hers, snuffed the flames of my anger, and steadied her. I touched the backs of her bare hands and rested them on my face. Felt the cool touch of her power.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, clinging to me so tightly, weeping.
What was there to do but hold her? Give her my words of apology until they were a chant between us? Let her see that just as I was demanding she not leave, I would not be leaving either. She was mine, and I was hers.
So, I let my own tears fall. Let her feel the unsteadiness of my own being. Witness how I was broken, too.
Even as I led her to the bed, gently undressed myself while she fumbled with her own clothing, I did not hide. And when she collapsed on the mattress with me, we held each other tightly enough to break bones.
MELINE
Like that morning in Krisla, I awoke alone in a bed that wasn’t mine.
My face was tear-swollen, my throat raw, and my nerves were frayed. The previous evening was a wash of desperate words and frantic touches.
