Page 18 of Queen of the Wicked
She ends her final turn with one knee grazing the floor, her chest heaving. A thin sheen of sweat traces the curve of her neck, glistening as it slips between the valley of her breasts. I swallow hard, too aware of what she smells like.
Blood. Kaius’ blood.
It sings in her veins now. I can feel it. Taste it. It’s not just on her skin, it’s inside her too, soaking her bones.
She doesn’t look at me, but she knows I’m there. Her magic coils in response to mine, invisible threads of temptation weaving between us. I’m not trying to seduce her, at least not actively—but I can feel my powers leaking from my skin, wrapping around her. Teasing. Enticing.
It’s instinctual. In some ways, it’s dangerous.
And she doesn’t pull away.
Her chin lifts slightly, still refusing to meet my eyes, but I see the rise in her pulse. The small twitch of her fingers. She feels it. The warmth. The pressure. The invisible touch of me inside her magic.
It should be enough to satisfy me. A quick, delicious snack of temptation.
But all I feel is the cavernous ache of something I don’t want to name.
Jealousy.
For the ways she’s made him soft where I couldn’t. For the ways he’s allowed her in his heart that he never gave to me.
The Kaius I knew centuries ago didn’t share. He barely allowed himself to be touched in all those sensual ways after Yekaterina. But this version of him…this man who lets Adelasia drink from him, who lets her dance and fracture his palace with her sorrow just to rebuild it and let her break it again—he’s something else entirely. And she is the reason.
I wonder, as I watch her straighten and brush the hair from her damp brow, if she knows what she’s done to us. To me. To him.
I loved him once. Still do, in that buried way old gods love ruined temples. I watched him rise, fall, rise again. I watched him turn from me. Choose rage over love. Choose hope over fate. And now she stands where I once did, only stronger.
I wonder if the gods have truly mated her to us both—not by mistake, but by design.
I wonder if she can feel that she belongs to both of us, in such subtle ways she doesn’t even realize what they mean.
If she is truly ours, trulymine, then perhaps, just perhaps…I do not have to be alone again.
Fifteen
Adelasia
The moon should light our room, but the night is unusually dark. Shadows press against the walls like untended vines in a forgotten garden, thick and unrelenting. I toss and turn as I try to force my mind to rest, the silk sheets twisting around my legs.
Sleep rarely finds me now, but rest? I long for it. For true, uninterrupted quiet and peace. But something crawls beneath my skin, itching and burning like claws in my muscles. I sit up in bed and rub my sore throat, breathing in the stale air that suddenly tastes sharp and bitter.
The rot inside me is slithering along my spine, creeping along my limbs and down my throat. It purrs with every inch of me it touches. A shiver so intense I feel I may shake my bones out of my skin as it creeps its way through my body.
I stand from my empty bed and slip on a robe to cover my nightgown, walking barefoot through the cold palace halls. Each step on the marble sends a cold ache through the soles of my feet.
Something inside of me, the part that remembers my humanity, begs me to turn back. It warns me of danger ahead, reverberates like a struck bell in my mind, but I can’t find it in me to listen.The wind dies, the trees hold their breath, the stars above seen to burn out.
From the balcony overlooking the valley, the Blackwood looms just beyond the jagged cliffs. The unwelcoming canopy of trees scrapes against the sky as if trying to swallow the stars themselves. Something deep in that forest calls to me, and I take a step forward to listen.
From the darkness behind me, a growl splits through the air. I freeze before turning in defense, a knife at the ready conjured in my hand. Standing in the open doorway, a Griefclaw stands tall. Sickly gray. Hollow-eyed.
Silently as to not disturb the beast, I step around its unnaturally proportioned body. When I cross the threshold, it turns to my direction as if it felt the shift in the air. When it does, a small metallic clang bounces off the marble.
A ring has fallen from the finger of the Priestesses’ perfect monster. I recognize that ring, for it cut my skin just a few short weeks ago.
Dravon.
Even in this ghastly, beastly form, his hate for Kaius and I lingers, bringing him before me.
