Page 83 of Autumn Queens & Shadows

His hand dropped from my face and down my neck. He continued trailing a finger lower and lower, almost too low, leaving chills and shivers behind. “Fifth rib,” he said. “You were wrong. Time to dish out a punishment.”

“P-punishment? Punishment for what?”

“For getting me hard as fuck.”

Instead of reeling in shock like every other scandalised fair maiden would probably have, I remained frozen at his words. He was drunk, I tried to tell myself, but my stubborn heart was screaming and shaking at the fact that he was attracted to my body. A fact that somehow didn’t bother me like I thought it would. Ever since I was little, I’d been told by men I’d grow up to be beautiful and that I’d have men drooling and lusting after me, something that had made me wary and cautious of all my life, something I’d slowly grown repulsed to. Male attention didn’t do anything for me. But not his. All I wanted was his attention.

His head fell back on the backrest. “Close your mouth or you’re going to give me ideas.”

“Malik—”

“Don’t say my name like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like that’s exactly what you want me to do.”

“What if it is?”

He sat me on the sofa and got up, towering over me. My mouth went dry when I saw the bulge in his trousers.

“Where are you doing?” I asked.

“To solve the problem you created.”

I chased after him. “Please don’t go to them.” The desperation in my voice made me draw my eyes shut and bury my face in my hands from embarrassment. Sucking in a breath, I straightened. “Or do. Why would it matter, right?”

“Right,” he said after a torturous while. And then he left.

Had this been my punishment?

It was the cruellest one I’d ever received. I’d never felt my heart rip the way it had that sleepless night, imagining another woman touch him. Imagining him touching her.

I’d gone so far down that helpless drain that my body had not been able to bear anymore, and I’d gotten up to retch my stomach raw on the toilet until the sun had risen.

I’d promised to never do it again—to never get close to him as I had again.

Chapter twenty-one

Emerald Dahlias

Thora

There were a couple days of just…silence since after that day at the Modr academy. He’d not said much, neither had I. Then, this morning after we returned to Tenebrose last night, I couldn’t find him at all.

Not one word that was said to me the whole trip to Grasmere to check on the fleet for the start of winter had gotten past my ear drum. My attention was somewhere else entirely. Not imagining away as it usually did. Well, yes, but not like that. It was doing something worse. It was becoming…paranoid.

It started with this single thought: If he wasn’t anywhere he should have been, it meant he was somewhere he shouldn’t be. Then it progressed to digging up past similar occurrences. Then somehow past feelings creeped up top. The crippling feeling of knowing he was somewhere I really didn’t like him to be.

Straight after returning from my very short trip to Grasmere, I headed to my room—our room.

Only to find it empty.

Entirely void of life or death.

I couldn’t even smell his eucalyptus perfume in the air.

It meant he hadn’t been there since he left early this morning, and it was now evening time.