Soren
I’ve never told anyone the whole Goddess-damned truth before. Not even Patton. He doesn’t know everything I’ve done, everything I’ve been forced to do or did willingly… but as we spend the rest of the night in that shitty little hovel in the middle of nowhere, I tell Maeve everything.
I tucked us in a corner as rain pounded against the roof. I covered her chilled body in blankets and gave her my warmth while I poured my story into her mind, telling her everything, every insignificant detail, every damning moment, and she took it and carefully folded it, tucking it away.
I don’t know what my life is going to look like after this, after her. Once she’s safely on that train, I’ll go to Twin Rivers, maybe after lying low for a few weeks, but I’ll pay off our debts. Patton can return to his home, and I’ll… find somewhere to go, something to do.
And she’ll be queen, like she was meant to be.
But without me in her life, and that’s the best route for her, even if I’m having a fucking hard time accepting it.
My warmth begins to heat her body as night bleeds into the earliest hours of morning. I fall asleep at one point and wake to her stirring, her hand pressed against my lower stomach, her cheek resting against my chest. Her hair falls over her shoulder when she rises to look down at me, her eyes slightly puffy and red from tears that stung and wouldn’t stop.
And I shouldn’t do it, but when she lowers her mouth to mine and kisses me, I kiss her back, because we both know it’s the last time.
I don’t believe in fate. I don’t believe in second chances. I’m not sure I even believe in the Goddess, but this woman is real. Her mouth on mine, her tongue drawing an exploratory line across my lower lip–that’s real. My fingers ghosting over each vertebrae of her spine as my hand smooths up her back–also real.
The kiss takes on a mind of its own when we both give in, let go, and lean into whatever sensation we’re seeking from each other in the moment. I pull her onto my lap where she straddles me, giving me the access I crave to run my hands up her thighs, under her skirt, to that beacon of silken heat I can’t get out of my head and likely never will.
She’s sore from yesterday. I was too rough with her, too hard on her innocent, untouched body. She drags out a breathy moan when I slide my fingers through her folds, the sound turning to a hungry, strangled whimper when my thumb dances over her clit in slow circles. And I just… look at her. I drink her in, memorizing the planes of her face, the sparkles in her eyes. I want to remember everything, even if it’s my fault things are ending this way.
At least I’ll have this memory of her, and the memory of yesterday, to look back on.
Because there is no one else for me. No one who could even come close to what she makes me feel.
She reaches between us to unclasp my belt, her eyes locked on mine and cheeks flushed. Neither of us speak. We don’t need to. We’ll let our bodies do the talking this time. There’s nothing we could possibly say to make this easier, to make it better, to make it hurt less, because I’m instantly reminded, the moment her fingers grip my cock and guide it to her entrance, that this is it.
It’s over.
“Maeve,” I grunt, my neck arched backward as she slides onto my cock, her inner muscles flexing and gripping me with so much strength I might actually just come right now.
She gasps, smoothing her hands up my stomach, wriggling to find the best way to do this, chasing friction, moving her hips in a motion that makes me twitch and grit my teeth against a wave of ball-tightening pleasure that’s nearly enough to end this before it begins.
She’s so fucking tight. It’s impossible, really. My breath comes in a rasp as I pull her shirt over her head, groaning as I watch her breasts bounce free. She’s exquisite. Perfect. A fucking work of art.
And for a day, she was mine.
I clasp the back of her neck and drag her down to me, kissing her firmly while bending my knees, giving her more support while she writhes, riding my cock. She moans against my mouth–a pleading, whimpering sound that makes my stomach tighten in anticipation.
I flatten her against my chest, my mouth pressed against the upper rim of her ear, and start thrusting, hard, pushing past her soreness, giving her what she wants the way she likes it, with me in control. Me guiding her movements. Me calling the shots.
“Soren!” she pleads, gasping and trembling, her mouth on my shoulder where she bites down, moaning as her walls tighten.
I can’t take it anymore. I want her prone, sprawled out like a feast, undone and raw. I roll with her until she’s on her back, still buried inside of her, kissing her to distract her as my hands cup her breasts, her hips, her ass, memorizing every sweet inch of her soft skin. I calculate every thrust, every jerk of my hips to meet her needs, grinding my hips into her while she comes apart beneath me, her cheeks wet with fresh tears.
I kiss them away, closing my eyes and eating up the feeling of her pussy tightening, then spasming, her pleasure washing through her body, and mine, like a light. Like the brightest sun. Like a flame.
I grip her throat when she arches her neck, her lips parted as she comes again, and I bury myself deep, letting go of any restraint, and pour myself into her, imaging my seed dripping between her legs while she rides that train back to Moonrise, a small reminder of where she’s been, and who claimed her first.
“Did I hurt you?” I whisper against her neck, pressing a kiss there, something gentle, sweet.
“No,” she breathes, but her voice is like gravel, choked with the same grief currently ripping me to shreds.
She can’t feel it like I can. Maybe it’s a blessing. She’ll move on, find someone worthy to play whatever part comes with being romantically involved with the Queen of Eastonia. Someone who doesn’t have blood staining every inch of his body. Someone that doesn’t yet exist in her life, but that I hate, and want to kill, just thinking about him.
We wordlessly dress. Silence hugs the small cottage while we gather whatever supplies survived the attack. We walk out into the drizzle, into sunlight we've been ignoring, rainy, gray sunlight that illuminates the bodies all around the clearing that we forced ourselves to forget about.
I walk Maeve another five miles to another small, insignificant town. The train depot is tiny, but covered. I buy her a ticket. I sit in a metal chair beside her, my hand resting on her thigh while her fingers absently stroke mine, and we wait.
There’s nothing I can say. Nothing that would make me believe we have a shot, a fucking future, because that would be insane.
It would almost be better to believe that everything we went through meant nothing, that it was a coincidence, that it was a fray in the fabric that holds our world together.
The train comes on time. Only a handful of people depart. Maeve turns to me as she rises, but I’m frozen, exhausted, and utterly, inexplicably… empty.
I close my eyes when her lips press against my cheek, and then she’s gone.
* * *
Maeve
I sink onto a plastic bench covered in blue, shaggy fabric at the very back of the train. There’s another car behind me, but it’s empty, full of sleeper cabins I might use if I find the nerve to shut my eyes. My body feels… broken, numb, and cold, so I knit my fingers together, trying to will myself to take a breath.
This feels wrong.
No one can really feel this deeply, can they? For someone who isn’t their family?
My chest caves in when the train starts to move, lurching forward, gears grinding, and I… I look out the window at the platform beginning to inch by.
Soren is standing, stepping to the side to allow a couple to move past him with their suitcases. He’s pale, his eyes catching the sunlight as another lurch has the train picking up speed, but then his eyes meet mine and…
I whirl toward the last car and yank open the door, carefully walking over the divider into the next car, where I sprint to the edge, to a door so similar to the one I opened, the one he pulled me out of and jumped to what could have been our deaths, but was the beginning of the greatest adventure of my life. He’s running along the platform now. I throw open the door to the back of the train at the last possible moment, and he jumps, crashing into me, pinning me against the door.
The kiss is… damning. Passionate and desperate, it takes my breath away. He pants against my lips, closing his eyes while his hand curls around my nape and drags me closer, throwing everything he is into the kiss like it’s a silent promise, a silent confirmation that I wasn’t the only one feeling like my heart was being torn from my chest.
“Please come with me,” I whisper, looking up into eyes I’ll never forget.
“We can’t,” he says, then backs away. “We know we can’t. We both know it.”
But he… smirks. That wry, charming, utterly irritating smile that used to make me see red.
“You’re an asshole,” I laugh past tears.
He licks his lips, and bends into a deep bow at the waist. “Queen Maeve.”
I straighten my spine on instinct, and Soren rises slowly, his eyes uncharacteristically wet, and he backs off the train, disappearing in a burst of fabric shredded to ribbons.
I watch his wolf dart into the woods as the train speeds along the track, leaving the Roguelands behind.
That’s it. It’s over. The end.
I’ll never see him again, will I?
It takes over a day to reach Moonrise. Dozens of stops later, I walk onto the busy platform at the grand station, alone, my body worn, my clothes dirty and hair untidy. No one even looks in my direction. No one recognizes their princess in this state, but the castle is another animal entirely.
The guards look confused when I pass through the front gate. Several follow me, asking questions, none of them knowing I’ve been gone for over a week, which means Jane did her job and did it well.
I ignore the maids casting looks in my direction as I weave through the castle, my heart lodged in my throat. That warmth in my chest? That warmth Soren gave me? It’s gone, leaving nothing but a gaping void of nothingness in its wake.
I walk into my apartment and close the door. I shed my clothes on the way to the bathroom, where I shower, scrubbing my skin raw. Familiar scents erupt around me, blurring the memory of the ancient forest, of Patton’s house, of the hotels, inns, the bar, and the clinic, turning them into something so distant it could have only been a dream.
But I can still taste him on my tongue when I emerge from my room dressed in comfortable, silken pajamas that smell like me and my home–not him.
I can still feel his mouth to mine, bruising and demanding, forcing me, the Firestone princess, the Firestone queen, into submission.
Blake told me to find that thing that turns my mind off, that thing that keeps my power in check, and I did.
For a beautifully heartbreaking moment, I had it.
But I was never meant to have something like my parents have, or my sister, was I? That’s not the Firestone way. I am still, inexplicably, alone, and I have to accept it.
No matter how badly it hurts.
Jane rushes in the second I drop onto my favorite couch in the sitting room, my eyes locked on the sunset bleeding over the lake.
“Princess Maeve, are you all right? You’ve been gone for so long! Goddess, I did everything I could to keep it a secret. No one knows so far.”
“Good,” I say with a click of my tongue, sniffling indignity and wiping my tears away.
I have to move on. It’s over. It ended. I will likely never see Soren again, and I have to accept that. Maybe in time, it’ll feel like nothing. This ache will fade to something dull, something I can easily ignore. But right now, all I feel is pain. Pain lodged deep in my chest, writhing, clawing, trying to force me to recognize it. But I’m not a little girl anymore. I have to be rational. Soren was right when he told me there was no future for us, no future where we could live together, waking up in the morning together, kissing each other good night.
I am a queen before everything.
He’s… the assassin I swore I’d kill and now must forget.
I turn to Jane, giving her my best smile, and it takes all of my strength to ask, “So, what did I miss?”