Chained Soul by Eva Chase
28
Talia
The next time I walk into my bedroom, it’s clear that a lot of magic has been worked there. No trace of blood remains on the sheets or in the air. The only sign of how much has changed is how normal I feel—and the presence of the man lying on one side of the expansive bed.
Madoc is still unconscious but breathing more steadily than when I left him in my mates’ care to get myself cleaned off. They agreed that my room was a reasonable place to let him rest and recover from the ordeal his body has been through.
With his blood-splashed shirt removed, the daylight streaming through the window catches on the toned planes of his bare chest, highlighting the stark lines of the scars that mottle his skin. I feel a little strange seeing him partly undressed, but then, I saw him in nothing but boxers when we showered in the Refuge, so maybe he wouldn’t mind.
I’ve spent a lot of time lying in this bed in the past several days, but after my stand-off with the Heart and going out to offer tears to the winter fae who were waiting for me, one of them nearly totally frozen, I could use a little rest myself. My mates are conferring with the other arch-lords about how to best proceed with the conflict with the Murk now that destroying their Heart isn’t quite so urgent. I won’t be needed anywhere else for at least a little while.
And I’d like to be with Madoc when he wakes up.
I climb onto the bed and lie down on the other side, leaving enough space between us that I could only just graze his shoulder with my fingertips if I stretched my arm out straight. For a few minutes, I watch the rise and fall of the Murk man’s chest, take in the softening of his face in a deeper state of relaxation than I’ve ever witnessed before. How will he feel about what I’ve done?
I don’t really know, but I can’t regret my decision to do whatever I could to save him.
After a little while, I drift off into a more peaceful doze than I’ve gotten to experience since the curse dug its claws into me. I’m drifting in a serene, dreamless current when the movement of the body next to me jerks me back into full awareness.
Madoc is blinking, his arms flexing at his sides. He stares at the ceiling and then raises his hands to stare at them too. His expression shows total bewilderment.
I sit up, tucking my legs close beneath the simple dress I put on after I got cleaned up. The Murk man’s gaze snaps to me. He looks dazed, as if he wasn’t totally woken up yet. Maybe he isn’t sure that he really has.
“It worked,” I say, figuring that’s what he’d want to know first. “Your cure. As far as I can tell, the curse is gone. I can’t feel its effects at all.”
Madoc blinks at me, his eyes slowly clearing, a crease forming in his brow. He sits up too—quickly at first and then slowing, wobbling and catching his balance when he must realize he isn’t totally recovered. He pushes himself the rest of the way up carefully and touches his neck, the place where the flesh was slashed through. Not even a tiny scar remains.
“Then how— I was supposed to die for the cure to work,” he says, and I’m weirdly relieved to hear that the Heart’s touch hasn’t smoothed out the familiar hoarseness in his voice. “‘The life’s blood,’ he said, and—it should have…”
He looks at me, a clashing interplay of emotions crossing his face, as if he’s relieved and unsettled, pleased and concerned, all at the same time.
“It did,” I say. “Kill you. But I—I wasn’t willing to accept that ending.” My mouth twists into an awkward smile. “I asked my mates to bring you in front of the Heart, and I pleaded with it to heal you. And then I yelled at it for a while too. I’m not totally sure which part worked. Maybe it was both together. But one way or another, it did listen in the end, which is what matters.”
Madoc’s eyes widen even more. “The Heart—” His gaze jerks to the window, and his hand flies to the spot on his chest over his own heart. He breathes in and out, and every other emotion on his face walls away in the wake of a rush of awe. “I can feel it. Inside. The magic, the energy—I could—”
He halts abruptly and murmurs what sounds like a true name. A gleaming metal ball the size of a marble forms on his palm. He studies it for a long moment and then meets my eyes again, something startled but elated shining in his gray ones. “You brought me back to it. You—”
His voice falters. He seems to focus onward, his gaze going distant. His throat bobs. “I can’t feel Orion’s Heart at all now. My connection must have severed when I died, and the Heart of the Mists filled it in.”
I don’t know if I should apologize for that. “I didn’t know how it would happen,” I say quietly. “I didn’t know if it would work at all. I just couldn’t give up after… after everything.”
A moment of silence stretches between us. Madoc looks down at his hands and then back at me. His jaw works. “You know, don’t you? They told you the conditions of the cure, why the rest of them couldn’t have— Why it had to be me.”
He sounds oddly nervous, as if he’s braced for some kind of rejection. As if he thinks I’d have brought him back from the dead mainly to tell him he didn’t stand a chance of winning my heart.
Even if my mates hadn’t given their blessing, even if I’d been going to bury these feelings down and accept that I was lucky enough as it was, I think I’d have told him. He’d have deserved to know even then.
“They did,” I say. “But it still means a lot—even if you were the only one who could do it, you didn’t have to. You could have let me go.”
“No,” Madoc says immediately, “I couldn’t have.”
The corner of my mouth curls upward, an ache of affection forming at the base of my throat. “I still have to thank you. There aren’t enough words to thank you. And in case it wasn’t obvious from the fact that I scolded the Heart of the Mists into bringing you back to life, I love you too.”
Apparently it wasn’t obvious after all. Madoc stares at me even harder for a beat. His voice comes out ragged, strained yet full of so much longing it tugs at my heart. “Talia…” He shakes himself. “I know how you feel about your mates—I wasn’t expecting anything. I mean, I expected to die.” He laughs roughly. “And that’s fine. Even that would have been enough.”
I reach across the covers and wrap my fingers around his hand. “I think you and my mates have a lot of talking to do to understand each other better. But they recognize the sacrifice you made—they respect it. There won’t be any more questions about your loyalty. And they’ve managed to accept each other’s place in my life. They’re willing to accept you too. I didn’t even have to ask. They took it upon themselves to inform me that you were welcome into the family.”
My lips twitch with a wider smile, but Madoc seems lost for words. He opens his mouth and closes it again, his brow furrowing. His gaze searches mine. “You’re saying…”
“I’m saying this castle has plenty of space, and everyone’s agreed there’s room for one more mate in it.” I hesitate, my stomach abruptly sinking. “I mean, if you’d want that. I know it’s not what most of the fae would typically hope for—to be sharing their mate. I know everything has been complicated, and you haven’t gotten a great welcome here to begin with. If you couldn’t see yourself in that kind of arrangement, of course I’d understa—”
Madoc’s fingers tighten around mine, and he hefts himself closer to me, close enough to bring his other hand to the side of my face and rest his forehead against mine. “Talia,” he breathes, “I’d take any amount of you over none at all. I’m only having trouble wrapping my head around the fact that you’d want me.”
Oh. I raise my hand to his cheek and trail my fingers along it to his jaw and then down his neck, feeling the thump of his pulse. His chest hitches at the contact. All at once I want to touch that too, the taut ridges of muscle all the way down to the waist of his jeans.
“You’re brave and generous and one of the most honorable of the fae I’ve ever met,” I tell him. “Even when it’s hard. Even when it means going against things you’ve always believed. You have the same kind of dreams I do, and I’ve seen how far you’ll go to see them through—for everyone who matters to you, not just yourself. So don’t sell yourself short.”
He swallows audibly and nuzzles my forehead. “And you’re my bright one, my light in the darkness,” he says, barely more than a whisper, and then his head is dipping and mine is rising, and somewhere in the middle our lips collide.
The kiss feels like being caught in a thunderstorm, electric and wild, a flood of heat washing over my skin. Madoc makes a noise low in his throat and pulls me closer. I wrap my arm around his neck and tease my fingers into his hair, my other hand tracing down his naked chest the way I imagined a few minutes ago. My fingertips skip over the tiny indents and ridges where the scars cross his otherwise smooth skin, but I don’t shy away from them. They’re a testament to the trials this man has been through to make it to this moment with me.
More desire than I realized I was holding in rushes up through me, filling me to the brim. We kiss and kiss again, until I can’t tell where each ends and the next begins. Hard, soft, urgent, and lingering, flowing into each other one after another.
It isn’t long before I’m breathless, clinging to him, wanting more. Wanting to get as close as I can to this man who literally split himself open for me and yet somehow still can’t see himself as a hero.
Madoc pulls back, but not far. A noise of protest forms in the back of my mouth, but the hunger in his eyes stops me from voicing it. He’s not done. He just rests his hands on the skirt of my dress in question. “I want to see you.”
I nod and lift my arms and my hips. With a ragged inhalation, Madoc lifts the smooth fabric up over my head and sets it aside. His gaze roves over me, nothing but adoration in it, and any self-consciousness I might have felt flees.
“So beautiful,” he murmurs. “My fierce little fighter. Mine.” He lingers on the word as if testing it out, and a smile tugs at his lips.
Holding my gaze, he brings his hand to my breast, cupping it and then slowly sweeping his thumb across the peak. At the jolt of pleasure, my nipple pebbles instantly. He swivels his thumb over it again, sending more sparks shooting through me until a gasp slips out of me and my head tips back, my body swaying into the caress.
He growls and tips me back on the bed, kissing the crook of my jaw and then down my neck with gentle nibbles here and there. “You have no idea how many times I imagined doing this. It’s like a miracle getting to touch you for real. It’s a miracle I’m here at all.” A chuckle tumbles from his mouth with a wash of breath. “The one woman who could boss around the Heart of the Mists.”
I make an impatient sound, my fingers curling into his hair, and he drops his head lower to suck my unattended nipple into the heat of his mouth. At the flick of his tongue, I whimper, my fingers digging tighter. I trail my other hand over his shoulder and arm, caressing every inch of skin I can reach as he worships mine.
He dips lower, kissing his way down my sternum and across my abdomen. When he reaches the spot just below my belly button, he pauses and presses his most tender kiss yet there. He glances up at me, sorrow momentarily overcoming the desire in his expression.
“There will be more,” he says, as if he can conjure the future he’s talking about into being like a spell. “A wolf and a raven both. I know the Heart will shine on you.”
A pang fills my chest at both my loss and the way he’s left himself out, even now. I stroke my fingers down the side of his face. “One of each then. A wolf, a raven, and a rat.”
His stormy eyes flare, and all at once he’s rising back over me, claiming my mouth so passionately that every nerve in my body quivers with delight. His fingers hook around my panties, and I grope at his jeans. The knot of longing swelling in my core turns desperate with the need to be fulfilled.
As Madoc kicks off his jeans and boxers, a tremor runs through his arms where they’re supporting his weight. He did die just a few hours ago—he isn’t quite back to his usual strength. But he simply sinks onto his side and rolls me toward him, enveloping me in his embrace and capturing my lips with another kiss.
I reach between us and wrap my fingers around his shaft. It presses rigidly into my palm, so hard the sensation is giddying.
Madoc groans and kisses me harder, guiding my thigh up over his at the same time to spread me open. I tuck myself closer to him with a whimper when he grazes the head of his erection over my opening.
“So many things I want to do with you when I have all my strength back,” he mutters. “But this is more than enough for now.”
I arch toward him, and he sinks into me, slow and steady. Another gasp ripples up my throat. He grasps my hip, angling me to receive his next thrust with an even headier burst of bliss. His other hand closes over my breast. His mouth drinks in my whimpers and moans.
And something else, like a silky finger, traces over my bowed back, across my bottom, and down the back of my thigh.
My muscles twitch in surprise, and Madoc pauses. His tail sweeps up to stroke across my upper arm like a fifth limb. “I can stay totally human-like,” he says, watching my expression, “if you’d prefer it that way. There’s just… more I can do with more of me to work with.”
A sly gleam comes into his eyes, but I can recognize the wariness there too. The fear of rejection he’s still grappling with—and why not, after how the fae I’ve allied myself with have treated him because of what he is?
I rest my hand against his cheek, gazing back at him. “I want to enjoy every part of you.”
That’s clearly the right answer, because Madoc dives in for another kiss. His fingers massage my hip in time with the building rhythm of his thrusts inside me, and his tail drifts down my back again.
When it dips, carefully, to tease across my other opening, the tingling pleasure brings a fresh gasp to my lips. I kiss him harder, in case there’s any doubt about me enjoying that, and he starts to stroke up and down across that sensitive area in time with the rocking of his hips.
Bliss is radiating through every bit of my body now. It builds in an expanding rush. I’m awash with the giddy burn between my legs, the shivers of delight as Madoc fondles my breast, the deepening tingles with each caress of his tail, and his tongue twining with mine to draw out a moan.
When I start to tremble, he picks up the pace just a little, just enough to send me spiraling right over the edge.
I cry out and clutch onto him as if I’ll soar away completely if I don’t hold on. Madoc groans and buries himself even deeper inside me, shuddering with his own release. He kisses me and kisses me again, murmuring gentle sounds that aren’t quite words, hugging me close against him.
I hug him back, the joyful ache inside me spreading until it fills me completely, as if I’d been missing something up until this moment and now I’ve finally found that lost piece.
