Chapter 83 Elena Heart- POV
The dual sensation of his shaft inside me and his fingers on my clit was too much. I shattered around him, my body clenching and releasing in waves, and I heard myself sobbing his name.
He followed me over the edge a moment later, his body going rigid above me as he spilled himself inside. His groan was long and low, almost pained, and he collapsed against my chest with a heaviness that spoke of utter exhaustion.
We lay there in the aftermath, our bodies still joined, our breath coming in ragged gasps. The storm was beginning to move on, the thunder growing distant, the lightning less frequent. Rain still fell, but it was gentler now, a soft patter against the shutters instead of the earlier assault.
He pressed a kiss to my shoulder, then another to my throat. His arms tightened around me, pulling me close, and I could feel his heart pounding against my chest.
I closed my eyes and held him tighter and I knew, with a certainty that went bone-deep, that I would move heaven and earth to help this man.
The morning light filtered through the cracks in the loft’s rotted timber, painting long, dusty stripes across the burlap sacks and the tangled mess of the single, scratchy blanket we shared.
The storm had passed, leaving behind a silence so heavy it felt fragile, like a thin sheet of ice over a rushing river.
Xavier’s weight against me was a grounding reality. His breathing had evened out, a slow, rhythmic puff of air against my shoulder.
I didn't move. I didn't want to break the spell. In the first timeline, our moments together were always frantic, shadowed by the impending fall of the kingdom.
But here, in this derelict attic, surrounded by the smell of rain and rust, we were just two people clinging to the wreckage of a world.
I held him tighter, my fingers curling into the muscle of his arm. I wasn't just his spy anymore, and he wasn't just my king. We were two souls who had somehow cheated death to find each other in the dark.
The frantic heat of the night had cooled into a heavy, bone-deep ache, but the weight of Xavier’s arm draped over my waist was the only thing keeping me anchored to the present. I didn't want to move.
I wanted to stay in this pocket of time, where the world was just the two of us and the scent of rain-damp wood.
I felt him stir. His breath hitched against the nape of my neck, and then I felt the soft, dry brush of his lips against my shoulder blade. I closed my eyes, a shiver tracing my spine that had nothing to do with the morning chill.
"You're awake," he murmured, his voice a low, gravelly vibration that settled in my chest.
"I didn't want to wake you," I whispered, turning slightly in his arms.
He shifted, propping himself up on one elbow. The blanket slipped, revealing the jagged, half-healed gash on his chest, but his eyes weren't on his own wounds.
He was looking at me, really looking at me, with an intensity that made me feel more exposed than the lack of clothes did.
His fingers reached out, tracing the line of my shoulder down to my upper arm, where a thin, silvery line of puckered skin broke the smoothness.
Then his gaze traveled further, to the cluster of faint, jagged scars near my ribs, the marks of the "correction" whips from the House Heart training pits.
"Who did this to you?" he asked. The gentleness in his voice was gone, replaced by a cold, royal iron that made the air in the loft feel thin.
I tried to pull the blanket up, to hide the map of my failures, but he caught my hand.
"Elena. Tell me."
"It doesn't matter now," I said, my voice trembling. "It was the price of becoming a weapon. My parents... my father he believed that a blade is only as good as the fire that tempered it. I was just the steel."
He didn't say anything for a long time. He simply sat up, pulling me into the space between his knees. He reached for the basin of water we had used the night before and a clean strip of linen.
"Stay still," he commanded softly.
It was a reversal of the night before. Now, it was the King who played the healer. He dipped the cloth in the cold water and began to slowly, methodically wash the dust and dried blood from my back. His touch was incredibly light, as if he were afraid I might shatter if he pressed too hard.
As he worked, I felt the walls I’d built around my heart begin to crumble. I told him. I told him about the cold stone floors of the Heart estate, about the nights spent in the dark being told my only purpose was to kill a King I had never met.
I told him how the first time I saw his face in the previous dream, I can't tell him about the first timeline, all he knew was I had the vision, a dream. I told him that I had hated him because it was easier than hating the people who made me.
I felt his fingers pause on a particularly deep scar near my spine. I heard him take a shaky breath.
"In my first dream," he whispered against my skin, "I saw the assassin. I saw the girl who wanted my throne. I never saw the woman who had already died a thousand deaths just to get to my door."
He leaned forward, pressing a slow, lingering kiss to the center of my back, right over the worst of the marks. It wasn't a kiss of passion, but one of atonement—as if he could wash away the cruelty of my past with his own lips.
"I am the King of Drakmor," he murmured, his forehead resting against my neck. "But I have been a King of shadows if I allowed a house in my own kingdom to do this to a child."
He turned me around then, his hands framing my face. His blue eyes were burning with a fierce, terrifying devotion.