She moaned, her head dropping back.
“One day,” I swore as I pumped my fingers into her and memorized every breath and groan that slipped from her. “One day, we won’t have to worry about any of this. One day,” I added, picking up my pace, “we’ll have weeks where the only curses we know are the ones you swear to the Angels in our bed.”
Her hands clenched the table, desperate to let go as she began to flutter around my fingers. “One day,” she panted, “we won’t have to worry about the sacrifices.”
And that word on her lips broke all the resolve I’d held to. I pulled my fingers out of her, quickly undoing my belt and dropping my pants, until I was slamming into her.
She cried out, neither of us giving a damn who heard. One of her hands gripped tightly to my hair, pulling my lips to hers as I pounded into her again and again and drove us toward that frenzied peak.
Tongues and teeth clashed, the room echoed, and as I hit that spot I knew would send her to ruin—as she squeezed my cock so tight I was coming harder than ever before—I memorized every damn reaction playing out across her beautiful face.
“I love you, Tolek,” Ophelia breathed. “More than all the damn Angels.”
“Infinitely, Alabath.” I crushed her lips to mine. As we both caught our heaving breaths, I whispered again, “Infinitely.”
Chapter Nineteen
Ophelia
“What’s this part say?”I asked, leaning across Tolek’s lap to point to a section of the scroll he was currently reading.
We’d been traveling on horseback today—I was riding Sapphire with everyone since we were in a secluded stretch of jungle and felt it safe to let her walk with us—and we stopped for lunch around midday. Tolek and I found a stream to wash up in, eating and resting on the piled rocks along the bank, slick from the spray of the current. Roots tangled down the sloping edge, disappearing under the babbling waterfalls.
“That part gets into the consequences and awards of the races,” Tolek explained. “Below ground where the dead rest…”
“Where the dead rest,” I considered, scanning the trees around us.
Tolek had been picking apart these scrolls since the day we left the outposts, using every available moment to translate Endasi with Mora, from which he and I were trying to build theories of what the next trial could contain.
The fae female seemed to have a natural talent for spotting patterns, so she’d been reading over the coded scroll in between our travels. Though she didn’t speak Endasi, she and Tolekestablished a system. She would note down what she found, and once Tolek got through the other two scrolls, they’d shift focus to that one. No use wasting time fixating on the hardest one.
Tolek had picked through the first scroll about Valyrie’s final reading while on the ship. Though it was interesting, we didn’t think it held the answer to the Starsearcher emblem.
“Explain it from the beginning,” I said. My hair brushed across his bare chest as I leaned back and his hand dropped to my leg. “The purpose of the races was…”
“For Valyrie to determine her fiercest warriors, the ones who received the honor of lining her cabal. They became her sworn protectors, daring advisors, and cherished friends.”
I scoffed, eyes on the stream slipping across the stones. “Cherished friends, though many died to get there.”
“Those ones weren’t worthy,” he said, brushing his thumb absently over my knee as he studied the ancient words. “According to the Angel. From what I can infer, she seemed to be ruthless. She barely knew the dozens of warriors who entered their names for the races before the games began. If they died, it meant little to her at that point.”
Higher powers, always so careless of the lives they toyed with. Anger wound through me at the thought.
“What was the first stage of the races?”
“Duels,” Tolek answered. “Physical battle first, then they moved on to one of wits.”
I tilted my head. “Which was?”
“Poison. Deciphering what cups were deadly before the Angel drank them.”
“Angels can’t be poisoned.”
“No longer. But before the Ascension—before they were truly flooded with almighty power—they were part mortal. I assume they were more fallible then.”
A drop of poison would not likely have affected an Angel as it would have a mere warrior or human, but a stronger dose? Even the almighty could have feared it.
“Spirits, I hope this trial doesn’t involve poison.” I shivered. Tol’s grip on my knee tightened, and I stifled my fear at the possibility. “How did it work?”
