Black Moon Draw (34 page)

The torches lead me through several more hallways and up a set of stairs, followed by another confusing maze of halls. The torches start to flicker off and I freeze, watching. The fires go out ahead of me as well as behind me, until the light of one room is all that there is. With some reticence, I approach the doorway and pause, afraid of what I’ll find.

The opulent bedchamber is the grandest I’ve seen yet, with murals made of dusty gems on the ceiling and along one gilded wall. Windows look out at the darkened sky. Two huge hearths are burning and the room is large enough to have its own sitting area, dining area, and huge bed, in addition to four squatting wardrobes.

The Shadow Knight is on the side of the chamber opposite the bed, standing before a hearth and gazing into it.

“Atreyu!” I exclaim, relieved to see him. I enter. The door closes behind me and I wait for him to speak or move.

He doesn’t.

My god – that body.
My eyes go over his muscular, thick frame slowly, from the dark hair to his broad shoulders, slender hips, and the thighs that make my panties melt. Already my blood is heating. The only part of him I don’t find attractive: the boar head.

“I’m here to help,” I say awkwardly.

“No one can help.”

“Isn’t this what we’re meant to do?”

The boar head swivels towards me, revealing the light gray eyes of the warrior side of him that’s never fully under his control. He’s ready to kill me or make love to me.

I stop where I am, heat blooming in my lower belly, along with fear.

“’
Tis too late,” he growls.

“You have to try, right? You can’t let the world go without fighting until the last minute.”

He says nothing, watching me.

I really don’t like that look.
“Can we talk without the head?”

He doesn’t move.

“It’s me, your battle-witch, not your enemy,” I remind him. “Just for a minute. No boar head. You can put it back on before you . . . whatever.”

He raises his hands and pulls it off. His face is stony, almost unrecognizable with its coldness. I had hoped to see a glimmer of something in his eyes indicating he had a plan.

A little less freaked out, I nervously inch closer. “You have to try, Atreyu.”

“Two kingdoms stand defiant and I have surrendered my hold.”

A flair of heat ignites inside me. “So you’re giving up?” I ask, baffled. “Just like that?”

“I tried to enter the chamber where the fog originates. ‘Tis not accessible by any means. I cannot defeat Brown Sun Lake when my armies are too far. I cannot win,” he responds. “I am the final Shadow Knight, the last of my line to have failed.”

“No! I refuse to accept that answer! You spent twenty-five years away from home to prevent this. Your forefathers spent a thousand years doing the same! You can’t give up when you’re so close!” Nearing him, I stare up into his face, seeking some part of him that’s willing to reconsider. “Atreyu, you
must
fight!”

“You should not have come.” His voice is softer. He cups my cheek with a hand.

“You led me to you. You wanted me to find you.”

“’
Tis not possible. I control none of this.” He waves to the fog on the ceiling. “You used magic to find me.”

“Since when has my magic worked remotely well enough for me to do that?” I snap. A flicker of amusement crosses his features and I seize on it. “Please. There are so many people depending on you.”

His eyes turn dark and then back to the gray of fog once more. He takes my shoulders. I stand frozen for a moment, heart heavy with the knowledge that the medallion is gone, before I realize if ever there was a time to grow a backbone and fight for what I really want, it’s now.

“There’s a part of you that kind of likes me,” I continue. “The side that said you’d take me as a queen if you weren’t betrothed. I’d like to think it wasn’t for my witchly qualities, which means, you don’t want me dying tomorrow.”

“You are correct, Naia. You need to leave.” His tone is softer. “Go back to your home. Mine will not be here much longer.”

Crushed, I can’t help the tears forming. “For the first time in my life, I know what I want, and it’s not to sit in my depressing apartment going to a job I can’t stand! I want to help you save your world.”

He wipes away a tear with his thumb. “’Tis too late for my realm.” His gaze goes to my lips.

“Even if I didn’t want to be here, I don’t know how to go home. It means we have to stop this, no matter what.”

“’
Tis not possible.” His calmness normally steadies me. This time, it makes me frantic. I can hear his resolve, his acceptance of the situation. He’s truly given up.

“You have to stop this.” I take his hand and squeeze. “No one else can!”

“’
Tis not so easy. I have tested the evil of this place. It cannot be defeated, not after a thousand years.”

I don’t know what to say and my throat is almost too tight to speak.

His eyes return to mine, flickering between gray and black, fog and man, death and life.

“Please try,” I whisper.

“I do not have that power.”

“Then who does?”

“No one.”

“Not even me?”

His eyes go to the spot on my chest where the Heart rested. “I felt it die.”

Oh, god. The tears are coming, accompanied by raw emotion I can’t stop. Afraid to feel and terrified of being hurt, I’ve spent a lifetime building barriers around my heart and feelings. The walls are crashing down, releasing every part of me I’ve ever tried to hide away. My body quivers with the effort it takes to prevent a breakdown.

“So that’s it?” I whisper in a choked voice. “It’s over.”

“Aye, ‘tis.”

“But . . . I just found out you’re not really betrothed.” What a stupid thing to say. On the edge of the apocalypse and all I can think about is how much I really, really want a shot with the man before me?

His eyebrows go up. “What say you?”

“She told me, and her brother, that she’s been bonded to the Desert Knight’s son for a year.”

“Desert Knight’s son,” he repeats. “I knew she was bonded . . .” A spark of something is in his eyes.

“What?” I ask instantly, my emotions careening from despair to hope.

He shakes his head.

“Please, please tell me you have an idea!” I plead, moving closer. I take his face and force him to look down at me. “Does it mean anything if I say I’ll consider your offer to become your queen, if you do it?”

“Offer
?” he repeats, offense in his tone. “A Knight does not offer.” As he speaks, his hands settle on my hips. “There is no way to stop this, Naia. I would take you as my queen tonight only to lose you tomorrow.”

“It’s my fault, isn’t it? If I’d believed you sooner, tried harder to help, prevented the-” My words are choked, barely audible.

“Nay.” He draws me into his hard body. “’Tis not your duty to prevent my realm from dying. It is mine.”

“
It’s why I’m here! And I failed. I always fail!” The tears are coming faster, the reality of my situation smashing down on me. I had a chance to make a difference, to help the amazing man before me – and failed. “I’m so sorry. So, so sorry!”

“You once said the war and my betrothed were between us. ‘Tis not the case now.” He’s mildly amused, his thumbs wiping away my tears.

I meet his gaze, every thought in my mind growing quiet at the intensity of his look. “Your last day on earth and you want sex.” For some reason, it strikes me as funny, and I begin a painful combination of sobbing and laughing, hiccupping and coughing.

After the embarrassing episode, I wipe my face and look up at him once more.

The corner of his lips turned up in a smile. “I would like to spend my last night with my queen.”

“I’m not your queen.”

“Do you wish to be?”

I stare at him, every hormone in my body jumping and screaming, while my brain seems to completely stop working. “Is this because I’m the only girl around?” I ask suspiciously, unable to process the idea of belonging to this man, of him belonging to me, even for one night.

“’
Tis because no woman has ever touched my heart the way you have.”

I melt. His grip tightens around me, his arousal growing hard against my belly. My pulse is flying, desire so hot within me, I’m about to spontaneously combust.

Attraction, need, and despair sizzle in the air between us. His eyes are almost white, a sign of the intensity of his emotion, one that terrifies me as much as it thrills me. It’s more than physical attraction between us and probably always has been, even if I wasn’t ready to admit it before.

He was made for me in every way, from the incredible, muscular frame to the way he sees through the barriers I like to keep between the world and me. The first to believe in me, the last to give up hope, his sexy-as-hell dominance is tempered by thoughtfulness, insight, and the ability to love something so much, he’s fought to save it since he could lift a sword. Dedication has nothing on this man.

Almost since I’ve met him, I’ve wanted to know what it’s like to be the woman his world revolves around. I’ve also feared knowing. He will tolerate no barriers, nothing less than absolute surrender, from the woman he turns his heart over to, and in exchange, he will love with all the ferocity of the fires of hell, hot enough to consume them both and the realm around them.

Do I really want that woman to be me? To surrender every part of me?

He’s right. There’s nothing between us now, not the war, not his betrothed. It took his world ending for us to arrive here. One night can never be enough.

I opened the door to my soul yesterday and refused him entrance. But if we’ve got less than twenty-four hours left, what’s the harm in letting him in? In surrendering every part of me for one night in his muscular arms?

In taking the chance to live, feel, love, and be loved?

An eternity in darkness or one night with the light on?

“Yes,” I whisper, the tears forming once again. “But only if you swear we’ll try to find another way in the morning.”

“Agreed. The morning is yours. The night is mine.”

I nod. Am I really ready for this? For him?

“And I expect obedience in bed as well as on the battlefield, my queen,” he says, a slow smile crossing his features. “Absolute obedience.”

The hunger in his gaze makes my breath catch, his intensity already rocking my world before he’s even kissed me.

Tonight is going to be something I never forget.

Taking his cheeks in my hands, I rise up on my tiptoes and kiss him hard, sliding my tongue between his lips to taste him once more. His response is instant and he deepens the kiss, his velvety tongue moving expertly against my lips and inside my mouth. Any second thought fizzles and disappears, along with the emotions and barriers that have guarded me for years.

The feeling rising in their place is one of pure joy, happiness I’ve never experienced, a sense of being where I belong so intense, it anchors in my soul.

“My god,” I breathe, dropping onto my heels. The sense I experienced when I first saw the emerald hills is back, piercing me to the core.

Home. It’s not just the place – it’s the man.

“’
Tis the bonding, I believe,” he whispers, temple against mine. “Did I not tell you to cease fighting your destiny?”

“You also threw me out of a tree,” I point out breathlessly. I can’t help it – I’m crying, laughing, aching so badly to feel his skin, I can’t think of anything but feeling him inside me as he claims me, running my hands over every inch of the warm, smooth, fragrant skin coating his incredible body. To smell, touch, devour . . . I
need
him in a way that goes much deeper than physical lust. I need him to be a part of me, to become one.

“I need you too much to be gentle,” he says huskily. His palms skim down my body, one hand going to my ass and pulling me hard against his straining cock. He’s long and thick.

“I don’t care,” I gasp, already lost to him. “Wreck me. I’m yours.”

With a growl that doesn’t sound human, he claims my lips. His touch grows rougher, commanding my body.

This can’t be the end.
The thought quickly fades, burnt up in his passion, and I take the step I never thought I’d ever take.

I surrender. Every last part of me.

The Shadow Knight had never intended for his witch to be drawn into the final day of this curse. In his last moments alive, he wanted to be numb, to watch the world crumble from a place of neither emotion nor memory of how he had failed. He planned on being alone, on sequestering himself in the bedchamber that was supposed to become his when he was master of the castle.

He didn’t expect his witch to find him, especially once the Heart was destroyed.

By some miracle, she had, and he began to realize they were reliving the fate of his ancestor, the Shadow Knight whose death started the curse. Naia had predicted his death at the hands of Brown Sun Lake and they’d bonded the night before the final battle.

The only real difference: the world was ending this day and there was no Heart for Naia to use to cast another thousand-year spell.

His feelings and mind refused to give him peace and grant him the respite he hoped to have today. Pain so raw it caused physical pain made him touch his heart, and he rose from the bed where he had spent the entire night making love to his battle-witch, his queen, his Naia, who slept deeply after the long night.

She proved to be as intriguing in bed as she was during daylight, her complete submission making his sense of possessiveness roar in satisfaction. He had laid with her every way possible, unable to get enough of her, needing more despite the hours they spent with their skin pressed together.

Sweet, gentle, spirited, beautiful. His queen was not traditional, but she was his in every way, a woman with compassion greater than all the magic of the medallion she wore, whose tears for him and his world were genuine, and whose cries and sighs as she writhed beneath him made him want to do what he thought impossible.