The Infernal King | 1 ✓

CHAPTER XL | DAGGER OF TRUST

       FROM THE VERY moment nightfall had struck, it had left in its midst a castle with corridors dark as death and just as sinister. It was not the architecture, nor the artwork adorning the walls, that made it so, but rather something that ran deeper—if the palace, for instance, had been a hissing beast, its veins would have been filled with a malevolent bane that struck the frigid heart at the core, poisoning every fissure and crevasse. However, to date, it remained nothing but a slab of stone stained with blood and wasted riches, and encrusted with rubies and vice. Echoes of the innumerable ghastly injustices that had been dealt within the ramparts twined with the souls of all those who had perished there, among them being the soul of a young man who was dead in every manner of speaking but in flesh.

       Normally, Maarit would be experiencing an apprehension simply for traipsing through the dusky corridors on a night such as this; instead, she found herself embracing the shadows, for they ate away the flush as it crept onto her face. For the most part, she couldn't see Theodoracius through the thick blanket of obscurity, though his fingers were interlaced with hers. Every few seconds, however, she and Theodoracius would pass a window, and a moonlight waterfall would come cascading through the glass pane, shedding light on them.

In the silvery glow, he was both a horror and a wonder to look upon all at once. At times, he appeared too glorious to be anything more than a phantasm; at others, he was a soldier ravaged so thoroughly in battle that he himself had become the evil he fought. The scars that sullied his chest—only partially concealed by his shirt—were a mere preview of the wreckage that his father had caused.

Yet the cicatrices were what gave him a paradoxical beauty that he alone knew how to wear.

When they stumbled upon a wooden pair of double doors, Theodoracius turned to face them, his hand slipping away from hers momentarily. He turned the knob, threw them open and led Maarit inside. Before she even had the opportunity to allow her eyes to explore the splendour of his bedroom, he was crowding her against the nearest wall, and her senses became engulfed—all she could see and feel and smell was him.

       Up close, she watched the way the hard set of his jaw softened and the sharp planes of his face dulled, as they did for her alone. The irises of his eyes, aureate glister breaking through the gloom, barely contained the blown pupils trapped within them. The floor swayed beneath her feet as though the entire world was quavering with her.

       His arms slid up the wall to bracket her head and as he did so, he moved closer until his chest was pressed firmly against hers. Through the layers of fabric between them, Maarit could feel that the staccato of his heartbeat was just as erratic as her own. Desire pooled in her stomach, causing her insides to writhe; she needed something to hold onto, so she fisted one hand into his shirt and inhaled the air that he exhaled. Her other hand moved up to his face, fingers curling over his cheek, combing in a soft arc. Almost instantly, his eyelids fluttered and closed halfway. He leaned into her touch like he was starving for it.

       A breathless whisper poured suddenly from his mouth, entwining its beguiling tendrils around her heart. "How can this be real?" he asked Maarit, nudging his nose against her temple, dragging his lips languidly from the shell of her ear to her jaw. He seemed to have returned to his previous hesitance, his mouth hovering above hers but never meeting it. "I must be dreaming," he sighed, his breath hitching in his throat as he ground the last word out. He pulled back just enough to cast her a weary gaze through eyes three oceans deep. "Hell, I am dreaming. I hope I never wake up."