now. If I would catch him staring at me like I’d sometimes caught my mother staring at me: with wariness. “You said you can only sense and change emotions.”
I lifted the goblet of wine to my lips to ease the dryness of my throat. “I said that I think my gift might be changing.”
He waited. He’d brought a hand up to trace the line of the deep scar on his left cheek, an unconscious habit, perhaps.
“I’ve never had reason to change someone’s emotions more than once,” I said. “And with you, I’ve done it twice now.”
“The first night in Dothik,” he murmured. His brow furrowed. “And with the Killup.”
“Yes,” I whispered. “I think it’s connected. That night when I said your name…I’d been dreaming. And I think—no, I know—I’d been dreaming a memory of yours.”
His spine stiffened. The tension in the voliki grew so thick it was suffocating.
“Which one?” he growled.
Chapter Thirty
Vienne looked at me steadily. For once, she seemed…calm. Unafraid of my temper. Perhaps she knew by now that just because I was quick to anger, that anger did not mean I would hurt her. That anger wasn’t even directed at her. It was directed at me. Myself.
She surprised me—my little leikavi—when she reached across the table and took my hand. Her touch was soothing and I felt my shoulders loosen. I watched as her eyes darted over my features, studying me, before they trailed to my lips.
“I dreamed of you when you were young,” she whispered, as if speaking too loudly would crumble the careful sense of peace she was building within me. She wasn’t using her gift, however. Just her gentle touch, which I was coming to crave. “Here. In the eastlands. Your first ungira kill.”
I knew the memory she spoke of. It rose in my mind. That sun-filled day, Devina’s laughter as we walked further and further away from our encampment, our souls filled with the desire to roam and explore.
“And I knew your name,” Vienne said quietly, “because your sister was screaming it because she was so frightened for you.”
I shut my eyes, pain blooming in my chest. I swore I could still feel the slicing cut of the ungira’s talon across my belly—where there was a small scar to remember that day—but in reality, it was only my loss, my grief.
Some days, losing Devina, losing my family, was still as fresh as the moment after I’d watched her die—the moment after I’d felt her die inside my own soul.
“Davik,” she whispered.
I opened my eyes and found Vienne was next to me, kneeling by my side, her hand on my face. When had she moved?
“I’m sorry,” she said.
But I didn’t think it was for the stolen memory, the inadvertent intrusion.
I think she knew. That Devina, my sister—my twin—was no longer alive.
I’d been wrong that day. Because though we’d shared glory, Devina and I, we hadn’t shared death. She’d gone ahead of me. Left me behind.
I made a sound in the back of my throat as her fingers trailed down the scar on my cheek. Her touch was still gentle but I needed it to be rough. I needed it to hurt.
My jaw tightened.
“I need you, kalles,” I rasped, my brow furrowed, my lips turned down into a scowl. “Right now.”
Her breath hitched at whatever she heard in my words. She knew what I meant.
“Davik,” she whispered, unsure of my mood, hesitant.
With a growl, I pulled her into my naked lap, my cock thickening, readying. She gasped when I suckled her nipples between my lips, through the thin material of the tunic she’d stolen from my chests. Her hands trembled before they rested along my shoulders, before she stroked her fingertips along a slab of muscle there.
Still so fucking gentle.
Frustration and want and need and lust and anger built up in my chest.
Still, I suckled on her nipples, wetting the material until it was transparent, until she was panting from it. After a moment, when I pushed up the hem, when I swiped my finger across her slit and found her wet, I didn’t want to wait anymore.
I froze when she reached between us and took my cock in one of her soft hands. Tingles exploded up my spine as she stroked once, from the root to my very tip, where the beginnings of my seed had begun to pool.
My back arched against the pole I was leaning on, a rough cry tearing from my throat.
She was biting her lip, her eyes half-lidded. She wanted this