Vow of the Shadow King (Bride of the Shadow King Book 2)

I lie in a golden haze, Vor’s name still hovering on my lips. Even now, long after cresting the last heights, I feel like I’m floating on a cloud far above this world under stone. Never have I felt so alive, so complete. As though some missing part of me has finally been found, reclaimed, and restored.

Vor. Vor is the missing part. My soul knew it from the moment I first heard his voice in my ear. It was as though I recognized him from some existence beyond time and space where we have always been inextricably linked. I am his just as he is mine.

He kisses my stomach, then plants another kiss between my breasts before settling beside me on the narrow bed. We scarcely fit together, but I angle my body to create more room and gaze up into his face. Into that smile of his, which seems as though it could go on forever. He gently smooths hair off my sweat-beaded forehead then cups my cheek. I want to speak, want to say something. But my emotions are all a tangled blur which has nothing to do with my gods-gift.

“I . . . I didn’t know . . .” is all I can manage at last.

Fyndra had explained in detail the pain and degradation awaiting me on my wedding night. She’d spoken of men’s animalistic desires, of instincts and rough satisfaction. She’d spoken as well of the secret power a woman may wield over her oppressor if she learns to lever his desires against him.

Nothing she’d said had any place in this experience. This was no dance of instinct and pain, but one of tenderness. A dance of passion, awakening my body and my soul to possibilities I’d never dreamed. Possibilities that could only be made reality in a space of absolute trust.

I’ve always had to be so guarded. It’s the only way I’ve survived against the storms that assail my senses every hour of every day. I’d never known it was possible to let my defenses down so completely, to give myself over to someone else like this. Who knew surrender could be so exquisite?

“I gathered,” Vor says and smiles. His fingers trail down my neck to my collarbone, finally coming to rest over my heart. “I’m delighted to be the one to introduce you to that particular pleasure.”

I flush and drop my gaze, suddenly shy. “Oh, don’t do that!” he says.

“Don’t do what?”

“Don’t look away. I want to look into those strange, beautiful eyes of yours.”

I raise my gaze to his. There are no barriers between us. His heart is open to me now, and in that openness, his soul shines with such beauty. I could drown in his gaze and die happy.

My hands slip up, wrap around the back of his head. I pull him to me, press his lips to mine. He answers my desire, opens his mouth to receive my eager tongue. His hand slides down to press against my back, then lower still, pulling me against him. I’d thought I was spent a moment before. Now I find I’m hungrier than ever. Absolutely ravenous for him.

I wrap my leg around him, hook him behind the knee, draw him close. His hand grips my thigh, and I feel the swell of him pressed up against me. I know what it means. In this, at least, Fyndra’s instruction doesn’t fail me. Hand trembling, I slip my fingers down to the front of his trousers, fumbling with the laces.

Vor moans and draws back. His long hair falls in his face. “Faraine.” His voice is husky, rough. “We can’t.”

Like the slam of a dropping portcullis, his barriers fall between us. It’s so sudden, I’m left reeling. Sparks explode inside my head. I stare up at him, shocked and uncertain. He’s still here, physically. I feel his warm blood, feel the tight swell of his need. But his soul retreats from me. That bond, that closeness, which mere moments ago I’d thought could never be broken is . . . gone.

I start to shiver. Not with cold, but with a terrible soul-freeze. Maybe I did not hear him correctly. Maybe my gods-gift is overwrought and needs to settle once more. Gritting my teeth, I reach down to touch him again. He gasps, closes his eyes.

Then, grimacing, he shakes his head and slips off the bed. “No!” he growls. He turns away from me, chest heaving, and hastily refastens the front of his trousers.

I sit up in the bed. The shivering is worse now. A dull throb begins to beat in my temples. “Vor,” I breathe, his name no longer the ecstatic song on my lips. “Vor, please. Come back to me.”

He shoots me a look over his shoulder. His expression is alarming. “I told you, Faraine. We cannot do this. Not now. Maybe not ever.”

“But . . . we are married. Truly married.” I blink at him, struggling to comprehend this coldness, this wall of ice. “Are we not?”

“Not by the laws of my people. Not until the marriage is consummated.”

A knot tightens in my gut. With one hand, I grip the tumbled blanket, pull it up and over my bare body. “So that was . . . We are not . . .” I don’t know how to form the words, how to shape the question I’m trying to ask.

His brow is hard and forbidding. “Consummation, according to the law, involves one specific act. An act we have not committed.”

I cannot think straight. I watch him cross the room to pick up his discarded shirt, shake it out. The throb in my temples increases with each breath I drag into my lungs. “Do you trust me?” he’d asked. And I had. In that moment, I’d chosen to trust him. Completely. Through the surging emotions and sensations, all so new and delicious and terrifying. I’d trusted him, cast myself wholly into his hands.

“You won’t give this to me?” I whisper. “You won’t give me this one thing I need?”

His eyes flash to meet mine. I’m struck again by a blast of ice. He yanks his shirt back into place. “I cannot.” His voice is hard, almost angry. He tempers his tone, however, when he adds, “You must understand that.”

I don’t understand. I don’t understand at all. Is he still intending to send me home? After this? After what we had together? Did I mistake his intentions so completely? I thought we were choosing together to risk it all, to be with each other. I thought . . . I thought . . .

“What is your plan then, Vor?” The words slip bitterly from my tongue before I realize I intend to speak them. “Will you use me like some harlot? Take your pleasure from my body then send me on my way?”

That breaks through the ice. A hot flare bursts from his soul. It’s painful, but in that pain, I feel again some of the true emotion seething behind his restraint. The passion, the pain. “How can you say that?” he grits through his teeth. “I took nothing from you! I gave and would give again and would go on giving. I would never use you, Faraine! I am not that man.”

I shake my head, reeling as each word strikes my senses like a blow. “But you won’t give me yourself.”

“No. And you know perfectly well why not.” I cannot see him anymore. The dark sparks have closed in on my vision. But I feel his footsteps pace across the room as he retreats still more from me. “You know exactly how I am bound if I . . . if we . . . if the agreement I made with your father is fulfilled.”

So. This is it. He won’t share his body with me. Which means he won’t share his crown. I will never be his queen, never bear his children. The pleasure I just experienced with him was intense, but it wasn’t whole.

Gods, what a fool I’ve been! Just a moment ago, I gloried in the freedom of lying beside him, so exposed and yet so safe. Now all those feelings of safety have fled. I am truly naked. Possibly for the first time in my life.

“I do know.” I pull the blanket closer to my body. “I know very well all the lives at stake. Not just your people. Mine as well. The man who murdered my sisters still ravages my land. Even now, he’s killing, looting, burning, destroying. My father hasn’t the means to stop him. He’s thrown everything he has at Ruvaen for the last five years. It’s not enough.” I swallow, lift my chin. “Gavaria needs this alliance.”

I cannot see him through the pain. I cannot feel him through the wall. But finally, his voice reaches me: “I should have known.”

“What?”

“For all your sweetness, for all your delicate modesty, you are your father’s daughter after all.”

A blast of anger—my own this time—shoots straight from my heart, driving back the fog, the dark. I see him standing there, his shirt still disheveled, his lips still swollen with my kisses. I see the pain in his face, but also the coldness. Like he’s wrapped his own heart in stone.

Rising from the bed, I drag the blankets with me, let them pool around my feet like royal robes. “Speak plainly, Vor,” I demand. “Say what you mean or say nothing at all.”

He turns away, puts his shoulder to me.

“My father is a two-faced viper,” I persist, hurling the words at him. “Is this your opinion of me as well? I suppose I shouldn’t blame you. But since that night—since our wedding night—I have spoken nothing but truth to you. My people need this alliance. I do as well. I do not wish to remain a shadow princess, either in your court or my father’s. I do not wish to beg for kisses or favors, to never be truly free, truly safe.”

“So, you would seduce me to ensure your own safety.”

“Seduce you? Is that what you call what has happened between us?”

“What would you call it?”

He can’t look at me. Won’t look at me. I stand there, staring at those impervious shoulders, too dumbstruck, too horrified to speak. The truth is, I did lure him into bed. I did push for consummation and not purely from desire. The desire was there, of course. But more as well. I need him, need his body, need the consummation of our marriage. It’s the only way I can secure my place in this world.

When I don’t speak, Vor growls softly, “I thought as much,” and turns for the balcony.

“Do you blame me?” I lunge a step after him, trying to get between him and his exit. “Would you do less in my position?”

His head turns sharply, his eyes like two knives cutting straight into me. “I would never stand in your position. I would never do what you have done.”

“No.” I meet his gaze, refusing to be cowed. “Because you had the good fortune to be born a man. I did not. I am forced to make the best of a situation over which I have no control, and to try to manage it with my honor still intact.”

“Honor?” His lips draw back in a snarl. “Would you call this little game you’ve played honorable?”

“I have confessed my sin. Of the rest? I am not ashamed. I want this alliance, and I want . . . I want . . .”

He tips his head, stares at me from beneath the harsh ledge of his brow. “Go on, Faraine. Speak the truth.”

But I cannot say it. Not now. Not with his angry accusations still ringing in my ears. I can only shake my head. Though a moment before I’d impeded his escape, my only wish now is for him to go, to give me some relief from the pain of his presence. I back away, folding my arms and the soft blanket tight around me. And I hold my tongue.

Vor draws a ragged breath. “Today was a mistake. But it will soon be rectified. I will have Hael make ready for your return journey. We won’t wait for the message to arrive. You will leave Mythanar before dimness.” With those words, he turns, strides for the window.

Wait. The word is there, on my lips. I try to speak it, try to give it strength and sound. But I cannot. It is no more than an agonized breath which Vor cannot hear.

He pushes through the wafting curtains, mounts his morleth, and urges it into flight. I cannot watch him go. I can only stand there, my gaze fixed on the floor as his soul withdraws from me. The pain of his tumultuous emotions fades the greater distance he puts between us.

But when the pain is gone, there is only emptiness. And that is worse by far.