A Priestess for the Blind God (Legends of Rahasia Book 1)

Chapter Sixty

I try to get to my feet, but Kane only holds me tighter, his face buried in my hair. His nose presses into the ridge just above my bare spine. Lips so close, so full of promises to come.

"No," his breath tickles me, "I'm not letting you go."

I shove back, and Kane reluctantly drags his hands away, pillowing his silver head on them. He rolls onto his belly, stretching out on the bed. I stick my tongue out at him. "Well, you better let go, because I can't fight your bloodthirsty brother without my armor."

"Sure, you can," he yawns, and I note how his hair flutters over his face again, starlit moths hovering over a swathe of obsidian skin. "You could do anything. You inspire me, love."

I snort. "Next, you'll say I could fight them naked while riding on horseback, streaking towards the horizon with only my fists as weaponry."

Kane raises a teasing brow at that.

"Well," I turn away from him, tying the final loop over my belt, hefting the mirror and scimitar. "Maybe I will fight them that way. So there."

He chuckles, white teeth flashing impossibly bright, reminding me that he's not human, no matter how much I might wish it. "It'd certainly offer the element of surprise."

It takes a while to finish dressing. Another lengthy pause, and he glances at me, uncertain, his muscles tensed.

"Ode..." He trails off, getting to his feet with the sheets tied around his middle, warm sheets hushed over that dark, star-scape of skin. "have you ever given thought to your future?"

I run my hands nervously through my hair, my nails digging into the tender skin at my scalp. "My future is simple. I'll die in glory on a battlefield. Die a legend."

"And if I could change that?"

I stare straight at him, the blood-moon clashing against the night sky, fighting for dominance as two lions would. "You couldn't."

He shrinks back, the lover's sleeping gaze awakened into something else, something far more distant. Something fragile. Something breaking.

I don't understand. How could I have hurt him? He digs his fingernails into his tender palms, a faint trickle of godly blood seeping from the crescents.

"I see." Kane turns his broad back to me. I see scars zag across his shoulders, wars fought before the earth even existed, before time itself. "Is that all I am to you then, Lady Ode?" He laughs, the sound bitter, hollow. "Another conquest?"

I pause, revelation dawning, forbidden thoughts rippling across my consciousness. "I thought you understood. It was a fleeting moment, Kane. You'll find that in our short, mortal lives, we have many of them." I walk toward him, tracing my fingers along the curvature of his back, feeling how his flesh molds to my touch. "In the end, my entire life will be a fleeting moment compared to your immortal one. Why fall in love with a butterfly if it just dies before the next harvest?"

He can't love me.

He can't love me.

There are no happy endings for someone like me.

***

Champions,

It seems Ode and Kane are at an impasse...

-Sophia