a prince’s role after the red fever but had to bear so much more. So young you were, Aerax. It is no wonder that second heirs are always of at least a queen’s age. We are both near that age now, and I still do not feel full prepared for what I have learned.”
A new ache opened up in his heart, for what she’d learned was not all he had to tell her. “There is more.”
She gave a short laugh and then drew a shaky breath. “How much more?”
“This, I will never tell anyone else. I hope that you do not either, for just as you were blamed for what you shouldn’t have been, so this might also put blame where it does not belong—and it is regarding what happened on the King’s Walk.”
Her fingers tightened on his, her body growing tense. “Of that night?”
He nodded. “Varrin could not tie and untie a knot made of Nemek’s hair, so he instead used a spell to bind the braids that make the prison. The spell is a lock, and the blood used to cast it is a key that must be turned each day. Only the snow-haired ruler and the heir are ever to know the spell, and I was taught it when my uncle told me the truth about Varrin.”
“So you already know a little magic,” she said softly.
“But it is not magic that I would wish to know.” How to keep all those souls imprisoned. “And although I am not truly in line for the throne, Icaro wished for his daughter to be the heir in all ways. But he taught to her the spell without fully telling her the truth of Varrin. So when she cast it, no strength did the spell have . . . and some of the souls escaped before Icaro cast it again with his own blood.”
She was utterly still behind him. “They were the wraiths?”
“I believe so. I did not know then,” he told her. “I did not learn until after you were exiled, when the princess asked me what she might have done wrong that her father no longer let her cast the spell. The fault is Icaro’s, not hers—but she might blame herself. And certainly Koth would.”
Lizzan’s throat worked as she nodded. “So they would. Now sit up and I will wash your hair.”
So he would. In a moment. Gently he asked, “Are you well?”
Tears gleamed in her eyes but she nodded again. “Though I wish I had a drink. Instead I must think on all of this for a while.”
“Do you wish me to go?”
She shook her head. “But give to me a few moments.”
As she washed him. So she would not be alone. Only alone with her thoughts. Obediently he sat up, with all his being focused behind him as she began to lather his shoulders. Full aware he was of every silent tear that fell, of the shift within her from grief to rage to hurt before turning toward acceptance.
Then turning toward him, as she pressed hot and openmouthed kisses to the side of his neck. “Will you be unrestrained?”
Finally. Need hardened his shaft to steel. “I will,” he said gruffly.
He felt her smile against his skin. “Here in the bath?”
“Not this time.” After years of waiting, Aerax had no patience to deal with interruptions. He slid forward to give her more room to move. “Go to the bed and wait for me in the manner you wish to be fucked. All else will be as I want.”
Her breath shuddered. Water sloshed as she rose behind him, and he turned as she bent for a drying cloth sitting on a nearby bench, offering a teasing glimpse of the lush cleft between her thighs. With a hungry growl, he caught her hips, steadying her when his movement in the bath might have made her slip.
She went utterly still, her muscles quivering beneath his grip in the moment before he licked through the seam of her cunt. Her moan filled the air, and then she gave a cry that was as hot and sweet as the taste of her when he suckled hard upon her clit.
When her thighs began to shake, he drew back. “To the bed.”
No argument did she give. Swiftly she left the bath and wrapped the cloth around her hips, concealing what was truly the finest of all asses, no matter what Lizzan said of his. Slowly Aerax followed the trail of her wet footprints, the sultry