To overthrow the cruel King who brutally slaughtered her foremothers, the last surviving water witch Elara Consuli must team up with novice warrior Juda Vikaris from the Serpent Order and realise an ancient prophecy, before the blood-thirsty ruler d...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
This wasn't how it was meant to be. This wasn't how it was meant to happen.
I am vengeance, I am hate, and I am death, and nothing more. By Ban-Keren, I am...
But what was he really? What had he become since this witch had crashed into his life and fucked everything up so much that he had risked it all to save her? All the gruelling training. All the pain. All the tides he had spent losing himself, desperately trying to cling onto the last vestiges of Aleina's son, trying to hold onto something—anything—just to stay in control.
Ever since he'd set eyes upon Elara in the catacombs under the citadel, the water plastering her undergarments to her body, he'd been losing his grip with the passing of each tide.
He should never have followed her into Koh-Miralus' house. He should have left her to her fate in the bathing chamber.
What the fuck had he been thinking?
And now, she thought she could control him with the palm of her hand, as if he were nothing but the water itself?
"Yours?" he said, looking into the witch's eyes. "Think I would fall into your clutches that easily?"
She smiled, tugging on her lip with her teeth. Had they gotten sharper? Would he see the nightmares from his childhood creep out from under her skin? Pictures from books brought to life, crawling up from the catacombs under Druvaria, the voice of his mother turning into a witch's scream?
"I think you're already in my clutches. At least, you certainly feel like you are." She pressed firmer, her thumb beginning to stroke him through his britches.
"It means nothing," he replied, although he had to fight to subdue his breathing. She certainly had a good mastery of it, that he could tell. "You could be any one of Clova's girls right now. A means to an end. That is all. How does that make me yours? Maybe you are mine, did you think of that?"
She shifted underneath him, not to dislodge his body from hers, he realised, but to press herself against where his knee rested between her legs.
"Is that why you followed me this moontide? Is that why you pulled me naked from the bath? Dressed me, brought me here, instead of back to Grimefell? Tended to my wound with such a gentle hand?" She ground herself against his knee, squeezed her thighs about his leg. A small groan of satisfaction whispered from her open mouth. "Do you want me to be yours, Juda?"
"I want..."
She arched her back on the chair, exposing more of her throat. Her hand moved a little faster, her fingers exploring the shape of his cock.
His thumb brushed her jawline. Droplets from her hair had formed a well in the dip in her collarbone. He thought about leaning closer, dipping his tongue into it and lapping it from her skin. She wouldn't taste of the sea now. She'd taste of sweet musk and redberry and desire. He could smell it on her skin, could feel it enveloping his senses and making his mouth water.
