The Tangled Tree Read online

  I frowned. ‘Isn’t your uncle Ewan doing that?’

  ‘He was, but he was one of the ones that got injured this morning… didn’t you hear? Him and our Serein. Someone crushed her fingers when she tried to use her power to make them slip on the marble floors when they first breeched the castle.’

  I shook my head, horrified at the thought of the pretty Blue-haired Serein that I seldom got to see and sweet Ewan being injured. ‘No! Oh my God, are they okay?’

  Kohén sucked a breath in through his teeth. ‘Yes and no. Elasta- the Serein- has been healed by my brother, but Ewan got hit in the head pretty hard with a club that one of those Banished bastards hit him with when he rushed out into the fray instead of going into the ballroom like he was supposed to… Karol healed up the laceration, but he’s still suffering concussion. In fact, he’s lucky that he wasn’t killed.’ Kohén patted my hands. ‘He’ll recover, don’t worry, but someone suggested that he step down tomorrow night, and so when mother learned that I was without a date again- this late in the game that most of the eligible girls have already been spoken for- she said that I ought to do it, father agreed and now I get to go alone because the master of ceremonies is expected to do just that.’ He made a face. ‘I mean, it’s not exactly an ideal arrangement, because I’m going to have to tell little Karol anecdotes all night, which is a nauseating idea, and I’m probably going to be too busy to be able to come and check on you even once… but on the upside, I have a valid excuse for shadowing him all night, so if he gets it in his head to head into the north wing, I’ll be right on his heels. And, the moment his birthday wish is granted- guess what I’ll be doing?’

  The butterflies were back. ‘Returning to me?’

  Kohén’s eyes were smouldering now. ‘Racing back to you,’ he corrected me. ‘Hopefully to report that the other Given from your year are free, and that Karol is engaged to be married.’

  Tears of joy pricked my eyes. ‘I can’t believe you did this for me. I mean, I can’t believe that you almost went with another girl more but… but that was a big risk you took today, Kohén. You could have lost your crown!’

  ‘For the girl that said that she loved me, finally?’ Kohén grasped my face in my hands and kissed the tip of my nose. ‘There’s nothing I wouldn’t do.’

  I blinked, startled. ‘What? When did I say that?’

  Kohén smirked. ‘I didn’t think you noticed… but when you were yelling at me earlier, you said that I had no idea what it was like- when the person you loved more than you loved yourself couldn’t make it three days after taking your virginity…’ he swallowed hard as my eyes spilled over. ‘I know you didn’t mean to say it, Lark- but you did, and I love the fact that it wasn’t intentional. I love the fact that when you scrape all of the drama off from on top of us, all that is left is two people that love one another more than they love themselves… and possibly even more than they already know.’ He rubbed his thumb around my cheekbone- the uninjured one. ‘And you can deny it all you want- but those lilac eyes… they tell me otherwise. And the things they tell me speak louder than anything you could ever scream at me!’

  I was weeping again now and it was giving me a headache, but Kohén wasn’t going to dance with anybody else, not this week, at least, and I could have exploded from happiness. ‘I do…’ I whispered. ‘I love you more than even I know.’

  ‘Oh God… oh god… do you know how long I’ve waited to hear you say that?’ Kohén whispered, kissing my nose again, and then my cheek. ‘Say it again!’

  ‘I love you, Kohén!’ I wept as he moaned into the curve of my neck. ‘I can’t stand it, but I love you!’

  ‘I love you too! Not just for who you are, but what you bring out in me! I know you believe that your influence on me is the harmful sort but Larkin- I was a man today, and I was a man because you demanded it!’ Kohén pulled back, eyes searching mine. ‘How could I take a crown if it meant losing your respect? I am only ever going to end up being a king, because I will have earned the love of a natural-born queen! Without you…’ he swallowed hard and pulled my hair over my shoulders. ‘Can we kiss now, sweetheart? I promise that is all we have to do until I have earned the right to make love to you!’

  I smiled at him through my tears, clutching at his shirt and pulling him closer. ‘That’s another promise that you’ll certainly break,’ I whispered, gently kissing his soft lower lip, ‘and that’s all right, because I will die if you keep it!’

  Kohén’s eyes became black- indicating that he was lost to himself, and the butterflies in my tummy burst free of their cage as I prayed our love would someday. And despite the fact that we’d just exchanged the sort of tender, delicate and heartfelt words that called to mind images of making love slowly under a star-filled sky, the heat between us was too intense to be handled slowly and sweetly and so we crashed into one another instead- hands tearing frantically at zips and buttons until they were caressing the hot, humming skin beneath, lips reaching for everything that our hands had not yet managed to caress. Feeling sweaty and feverish and frantic, I managed to slip and shoulder my way onto Kohén’s lap and Kohén growled into the curve of my neck as he wrapped my hair around his arm and yanked me backwards, forcing me to arch my back while his hand roughly jerked my toga down off my shoulder, shredding it until I felt the chilled air kiss my sensitive flesh.

  I want this! Heaven help me but I want this!

  ‘Oh!’ I breathed, closing my eyes when I felt the blood rush to my head just as Kohén palmed both of my breasts and kneaded them with his strong, smooth fingers. He groaned and hummed when my nipples tightened, and I panted, jerking about as he massaged me deeply and sweetly while grinding his hips into mine, freeing himself quickly with one hand and then tugging at my panties. ‘I love you! Kohén Barachiel I love…’

  I was so out of my mind with lust that I didn’t notice that anything was wrong until Kohén jerked me back up, mashing my breasts to his chest so that he could reach behind me and tug off my belt. ‘I’m going to make you scream that out, Lark!’ Kohén swore, lifting me again and guiding himself inside me while the world throbbed before my vision- first red and then black. ‘And I’m going to cum so hard when you do that you’re going to be flooded with hot seed, do you hear me? I’m going to explode inside you, flip you over, take you by the hair and then fuck you from behind until your juices flow as freely!’

  ‘Oh…!’ I moaned when I felt the delicious impalement timed perfectly with his filthy promises. ‘Yes!’

  ‘Fuck!’ I felt him thrust up into me, and then bend me backwards at the waist so that he was now driving down and into me while holding only onto my hips. It felt incredible and I was astonished by his strength, but when I tried to brace myself on the floor with my arms so that I wouldn’t slip off of him, my arms collapsed. Rather than let me slide away, Kohén followed me down onto the ground and ducked so that his shoulders came up underneath my thighs. The penetration was borderline brutal that way and yet I knew he was holding back by quite a few inches yet- inches I desperately wanted to learn to take for him-so I pushed my feet down over his shoulders and forced him further into me.

  ‘Oh fuck!’ Kohén tried to pull back, considerate lover that he was but I was out of my mind with want and out of my mind in general (what was that buzzing sound that was growing louder?) so I squeezed him harder against me until our bellies were pressed together and he buried to his very hilt and he cried out, thickening inside me. It hurt at first but then the sharp pain became a dull throbbing and then a hot, sweet, slick ascension towards a climax, but when my sex began to flutter around him, I felt it echoed in my mind- flashes of dark and light that got darker and darker with every gasp of my breath.

  The shift was barely perceptible but it happened fast: one moment I had been upside down and growing dizzy for it, and the next I was the right way up but feeling even more disorientated than I had before. Like someone had flipped a switch, Kohén’s features became a streak of watercolours across my visi
on, and the dirty things he was saying were drowned out by a loud ringing sound.

  ‘Larkin, I’m going to… are you with me…? Larkin…?’

  ‘What?’ I asked loudly, turning my face away from his because we were too close and too hot for me to be able to draw a breath. ‘Kohén… what? OH!’ the fluttering became spasms, in my core and in my heart and head but I didn’t care. ‘Oh… yes…’

  And then I was coming undone, while falling through an abyss of watercolours.

  PART II

  15.

  The water colours had vanished and now I was dying and descending into a tunnel of flames so large and thickly flaring that I could not tell where one crimson tongue ended and another began- and I was in agony for it.

  As I probably deserved to be.

  I knew that I’d been falling for quite some time and yet I hadn’t come close to reaching the end of my descent because I wasn’t hurtling through the flames as I had through the watercolours, but drifting down at an unbearably slow rate, like the first leaf of fall that has been ripped off the top of the tallest tree, that is then forced to hit every branch on its way down to the forest floor. I was meeting my end, yes- falling into Hell as Satan had predicted I would- but I was dying too slowly for death to yet be imminent and that was what was torturing me. I wanted to scream to let some of my anguish out, but if I opened my mouth, I knew I’d only inhale more of that unbearable heat, and the flames licking at my blistered and charred skin were painful enough as it was so I suffered with my lips pursed tight and thrashed out against the agony without making a sound.

  Breathe in! My sub-conscious urged me. It will hurt, but it will kill you faster if you do! Breathe in the flames now that you are completely surrounded by them, and end it already!

  But I could not bring myself to open my mouth. I didn’t know how long I’d been falling through this fire for- minutes or years? But I was sick of being tormented by the process of dying when it was a swift death that I craved, so because I lacked the courage to inhale the fire, I curled into a ball, trying to weight myself so that I would drop like a stone through the heat, rather than flutter like a feather. Then I slowly began to release the last of my breath, using the very same trick that I’d used in the past when I’d wanted to sink quickly to the bottom of Eden’s pool or Pacifica’s waves.

  For a moment that seemed to work: everything turned darker more swiftly, and even the flames began to turn a dismal shade of burgundy and grew louder and angrier-sounding... but when I closed my eyes and tried to will myself to exhale the last of my final breath so that I’d have no choice to suck in fire and carbon-monoxide after (surely it would hurt less and for a shorter period of time now?) something cold touched my head, and it was as though an icy wind had sluiced through me. My eyes flew open against the brightest, most painful white light I’d ever seen, and my skin hissed where that icy draft touched it, making me shiver uncontrollably.

  No!

  I threw out my arms and legs like a startled infant as a violently cold shudder rocked me- a chill unlike anything I’d ever experienced before that rushed into my lungs, inflating them- and then suddenly I was being pulled back towards that light and away from the promised darkness. I let out a shrill screech of protest that I could barely hear over the roaring of those flames and tried to duck-dive back into that river of lava before I lost all of the progress that I’d made, but that cold thing had gotten enough of a grasp on me to make the flames flicker and shrivel, and in a matter of seconds, the roaring began to lessen too, allowing me to make out voices for the first time in what felt like an eternity.

  ‘God! It’s like she’s fighting something off!’ someone cried- a voice that I recognised but could not place. They were touching me too- holding me down- but their touch was as scalding as the flames of Hell had been and I fought savagely against them. ‘Look at her!’

  I’m fighting you off! I wanted to scream, wincing when I realised that I could hear someone sobbing steadily. Let me fall! Let me go AND LET ME BURN! But when I opened my mouth to holler that, more oxygen entered my lungs, making the light brighter and the places where I’d been scalded sting more violently.

  ‘I know…’ the coldness was all over me now- like someone was rubbing handfuls of snow onto my blistered skin. It brought physical relief but more mental anguish with it. Could they not see that I didn’t want to be saved? That I wouldn’t want to live in a scorched, blackened body? ‘It’s quite astounding. Her temperature is so high and her heart rate much too accelerated- she should barely be able to lift a finger against us now, but look how she thrashes!’ That cold thing swept up both of my lower legs and I cried out when it stung like I’d been rolled into a nest of wasps, but that unbearable heat clutched my hand (was it another hand?) and I heard a voice I knew all too well sob out a plea:

  ‘Keep fighting baby, please? Come back to me… I can’t bear this!’ More sobbing, and then the hand released mine and pressed against my chest. ‘Oh God… oh God it’s lighter now than it was before! Are you sure you’re bringing her temperature down?’

  ‘Kohén-’

  ‘I’m doing all I can!’ that unfamiliar voice snapped. ‘But my power is limited here- I can only keep the damaging fever at bay, not reverse the damage it’s already caused!’ More sobbing (a woman, I could tell that now) and then the other voice went on in a more controlled voice: ‘Look, if you want to give her the best chance to live, then she needs a healer-’

  ‘A doctor is on the way!’

  ‘A doctor cannot do for her what your brother can, and you know it!’ wailed the crying woman- was it Constance? Surely not!

  ‘Yes! I don’t know why you’re refusing to let the crowned prince come in and save the girl that apparently means the world to you, but whatever it is, you need to get over it! And if you cannot, then you need to prepare yourself to say goodbye to her, or shut up and back off, for I can lose my cool and burn too, your highness! And she will surely lose her life if I do!’

  I gasped. Fetch Karol? Bring Karol into heal me? No! No anything but that! I screamed, bucking against those holding me down. Let me burn! Don’t bring him in here, don’t do it!

  ‘She’s burning up again!’ the strange voice cried, as I writhed against her hold on me, trying to force my way out of my own body if that was the only chance I had to escape Karol now. ‘My God, her temperature just spiked another two degrees! Prince Kohén…!’

  And then I was free-falling through the flames again, and the relief was so great that this time, I made my peace with floating through it, knowing that there were things that could cause me a lot more pain than flames would- and Karol Barachiel’s hands were one of them.

  I’d do anything to escape the promise I’d made to him. The promise I’d made that had broken Kohén and I.

  Anything.

  Even burn in Hell.

  *

  The room was so bright that I felt it like a weight against my eyelids, but my curiosity to see what was responsible for such an evanescent glow after centuries of tormented nightmares forced me to open my eyes and then immediately wince when I found myself looking at the ceiling of a room that was familiar, but not overly so. The littlest room in the harem- the one referred to by Elfin as the ‘Gyno’. I had no idea why I was there, but considering as how the last clear memory I had was of kissing Kohén, I knew it was a very bad sign that I’d been moved without being aware of it.

  Oh sweet Jesus… what the fuck happened this time? Fire- I remember fire! Did my room catch alight? No, no I was in Hell, wasn’t I?

  ‘Lark?’ Kohén whispered, and his smile was brighter than the sun as he leaned in and pressed his forehead to mine. ‘Oh God… you’re awake!’ I felt his sweet, minty breath join with mine as he lowered his lips to mine in the gentlest kiss I’d ever known- gentler even than when Kohl had pressed a frangipani bloom to my mouth in Pacifica. ‘Praise God, in all of his glory!’

  I blinked rapidly. I’d never heard Kohén sound so… devout, an
d it was rather unsettling. ‘Have you been hanging out with Amelia-Rose while I was burning in Hell?’ I asked, in a voice that burned my throat. ‘Or are you becoming a shepherd now?’

  Kohén snorted gently and leaned his forehead against mine once more. ‘Burning in Hell? Is that what that was?’

  ‘It wasn’t?’ I tried to sit up, but my movements were restricted by a line that was connected to the back of my hand. A needle had been jabbed into my skin, and the sight of it made my heart flip in fright. ‘Oh… my!’ I lifted my other hand, trying to tug the cruel-looking device out. ‘What is that thing? What are you doing to me?’

  ‘It’s a cannula,’ Kohén said, catching my hand and pinning it back down to my side. ‘It’s connected to a bag of fluids that are being fed into your bloodstream to rehydrate you.’

  Rehydrate me? So I had burned? I touched my face, but it felt smooth if not a little cool. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it before.’

  ‘I’d expect that you wouldn’t- I only saw one for the first time myself yesterday morning when we had to treat a young woman that was burned by one of those kerosene bombs. They still use them in the hospitals in the villages sometimes, but we haven’t needed a doctor in Eden for years because we’ve had the luxury of having two healers around- so it was good that mother knew where to find one and how to use it, because I wouldn’t have had a clue.’

  I stared at him, astonished. ‘Wait… your mother was here? Here in the harem?’

  ‘Was. Nobody knows it though, and I made her leave as soon as you were through the worst of it so she could sneak out unseen…’ Kohén nodded to the cannula again. ‘I’m sorry if it’s unpleasant, my love, but you’ve almost died a few times in the past sixteen hours and this drip has helped keep you stable since your last severe episode around three in the-’

  ‘SIXTEEN HOURS?’ I sat up and the room spun, so I groaned and closed my eyes, sinking back against the pillows that had been propped up beneath me. ‘What are you talking about?’