The Ever Queen (The Ever Seas Book 2)

Once again, the king’s side of the bed had gone cold. The absence of the heartbond ached more when I could not reach out to Erik, when I could not sense him, nor find him. I tossed a diaphanous cloak over my chemise and slipped through the passage in the wall.

He’d grown stoic the longer we’d marked our plans earlier.

We’d strategized, altered plans, argued, but before we drifted away to find a few moments of sleep, it felt like we’d settled on a surer plan to approach Joron, to utilize his daughter, and find a way to learn more than one of Larsson’s secrets.

The study was empty, only remnants of the meet earlier left behind. Scrolls and books, ewers and cups.

Corridors were empty but for a few guards watching the entrances. A bit of worry gathered in my belly, a slow burn I fought to taper. If something wretched had befallen Erik, I would know. Heartbond or not, there was something fierce that burned between me and my serpent. A sort of heartbeat that raced when he was near or in pain, then slowed when he was at peace or still.

Flickers of light bled from the cracks of the heavy doors guarding the throne room. Two guards stood watch. I cleared my throat, and with only a moment of hesitation, they stepped aside.

Old, damp hinges protested the movement. Empty walls caught the echo and spread it around like the gossip of ghosts across the room.

My heart quickened, bruising my ribs, when Erik’s lithe form was slumped in his throne, shirtless, injured leg outstretched. The king was lost in thought as he spun his blood crown in his hands.

“No one enters until we give the word,” I whispered to the guards.

Again, they hesitated. I could not blame them. For a few short weeks, they’d known the Ever King had crowned a queen. I’d never exuded any sort of authority before I was snatched away.

Still, after a few breaths, they nodded and tightened their arrangement in front of the door.

So lost in his own mind, Erik did not glance behind when the doors moaned back into place, and he did not peek when my feet brushed over the stone tiles. The king didn’t move until my fingertips slid over the scars on his chest. His breath caught, short and rough, then his head fell against the back of his throne, tilted as my lips and teeth explored his throat.

“Songbird,” he said in a rasp. “You ought to be sleeping, love.”

“I thought you’d learned by now, Serpent,” I said between kisses. “I do not sleep well without you. I’ve grown rather accustomed to your overheated skin.”

“I am not overheated. You are merely made of ice.”

I came around the throne and stood between his knees. My fingertips tapped the points of the waves on his crown. “Troubling thoughts?”

“Nothing of great note.” He kissed the center of my palm.

The man owned my soul, as surely as I owned his. But he was not accustomed to baring his heart, his troubles, what he’d been taught to think of as weaknesses.

I traced the lines of his jaw, drawing his gaze to mine. “As it happens, Bloodsinger, I want to take note, no matter how small, of all the things burdening your mind.”

Erik’s eyes darkened in the flicker of candlelight. He placed the crown in the seat of my new throne, and slumped against his, more defeated than before. “I’m not certain this is worth it, the Ever, this fight, this plan.”

I lowered to my knees in front of him. “What are you saying?”

Our eyes locked—fire and water—and there behind the fight and ferocity of the Ever King was the worry of a man. “I want to give it up, hand the crown to Larsson, and take you away from here. But if I did, what a pathetic reward to you after all the pain you’ve endured.”

A touch of frustration scorched through my veins. “Reward? You think all that matters is that I am given a title as some sort of reparation for how we were brought together again?”

“I put you at risk by bringing you here, Songbird. The smallest consolation I keep trying to reconcile is that you are a queen. But I still want to take you away, live as mere peasants if we must. I want to get you so far from Larsson, so far from danger, it is maddening.”

I cupped one side of his face. “You brought me here, but my consolation does not come from the title you gave me, Bloodsinger. It comes from knowing I have this.” Slowly, I dragged my palm from his cheek, to his throat, down his chest until it halted over his heart. “Don’t you dare start bemoaning how you have only added burdens to my life.”

“Even if it’s true?” He arched a brow. “You would be with your family, safe. You would not have been harmed by him if not for me.”

This man. Beautiful and vicious. A man who’d fought since childhood for his people, loved so fiercely he’d give it up for my sake, and he was yet to realize what a remarkable force the darkness, the passion, of his heart could create.

“I would still be searching for something I could feel but could not find.” I rested my palms on his thighs. “Not until I caught the eye of a masked stranger across the ballroom. Something awoke within me in that moment, and no matter the fear, the pain, no matter the risk, it has been worth it all.”

Erik studied me but said nothing, as though he did not fully believe my words. I stood, released the clasp on the cloak on my shoulders, then lifted the hem of my chemise over my head. A deep, throaty sort of growl rumbled from Erik’s throat.

“What plans are you making, love?”

Naked, bared for my king, I tapped the bone necklace around my throat. “I thought you requested nothing but this tonight?”

Erik’s tongue swiped out, licking his lips. He curled two of his fingers, gesturing me closer. I leveraged my body over his lap, straddling him in his throne. Erik’s lips quirked at the corners; he palmed my waist, drawing me closer.

I dragged my knuckles down his face. “King or not, Erik Bloodsinger, I would follow your darkness across the skies and seas. You are mine, a beautiful monster, a passionate lover, a loyal friend, a vicious king. All mine. And that is all I will ever want.”

Erik kissed me before I finished speaking. Not a sweet kiss, it was a kiss of hunger, almost brutal. Our teeth clacked, our tongues battled. This was a kiss edged in promises of desire, of unbendable devotion.

This kiss dug deeper than the heart—Erik was mine to the soul.

Something snapped Erik from his melancholy. He tangled my hair around his hand, tilting my head back. With a glance, dark with desire and no longer than a breath, the Ever King claimed the slope of my neck with his mouth.

A strangled sort of sob rattled over the empty throne room when the sharp points of his teeth broke my flesh. Erik bit my skin, his tongue following the sharp ache, pooling heat and want in the pit of my belly.

My body responded to every brush of his fingertips, every press of his lips. I rocked over his lap, desperate for more.

“Dammit,” Erik breathed out, his brow pressed to my shoulder, his palm gliding up the divots of my spine.

“Don’t want this?” Gods, I felt I might peel out of my skin if he stopped.

Erik’s eyes flashed in a dark frenzy. “Yes, Songbird, I want this. You’re rocking against my damn cock, and I fear I’m going to spill all over myself like a bleeding boy.”

My cheeks heated. I widened my knees and lowered my core over the strained bulge in his trousers, rolling my hips until Erik coughed. His fingers pierced the flesh of my hips.

Gods, I hoped there’d be marks in the morning.

Head back, Erik’s eyes shuttered closed. On pure instinct, on nothing but the sensation of me, he guided my hips over his shaft.

“I need to be inside you,” he whispered, voice slurred with desire.

“Agreed, Serpent.”

One palm slid down his chest, the flat planes of his stomach, to the laces of his trousers. Erik moaned and tightened his mouth, almost as if his body burned in pain, not pleasure.

I unthreaded the top lace and kissed the beat of his pulse. “You think you added more danger to my life. You’re wrong. The moment I laid eyes on you—the real you—every dark, beautiful piece brought more light to my heart than I’d ever known. In that moment, all the fear, the panic, the risks, faded.”

Erik cracked his eyes and studied me through his lashes as I hooked my thumbs in the waist of his trousers. He lifted his hips enough for me to slide them down his legs. He covered my hand when I gripped the smooth skin of his cock and stroked himself with me.

The Ever King watched in silence, almost awe, as I guided the tip of his shaft to my soaked entrance. His grip on my body froze, tight and possessive, when I sank onto him, tip to root. For a moment, we didn’t move, we simply looked at each other, sharing breath.

Erik gently tugged on my bottom lip with his thumb. “You are my light in the sky, love.”

He soothed my heart when fears kept me in a rotten grip, but in this moment, the unbending Ever King offered his confession like a man surrendering to a lifelong battle. Taught to be as stone, cold and unfeeling, Erik Bloodsinger drew me close and told me with his words and hands, that he wanted to bend, wanted to fall, so long as it was me who caught him again.

Erik kissed me again. He bucked his hips, teasing me, testing me.

I nipped at his ear and whispered, “If you think I am looking for gentle, Serpent, you’re mistaken.”

“Woman,” he hissed and speared deeper into me with a rough thrust. “Be ready to stand by your words.”

I clung to his neck, gasping over his shoulder. Our bodies, feverish, rocked on the king’s throne, taking and giving. Frantic and controlled.

Erik gripped my jaw, drawing my face in his line of sight, to watch my features. He grinned like a challenge was won the moment my brow gathered as pleasure built. My fingers coiled in his hair, tugging at the roots, desperate for purchase when he lifted my hips, only to slam my body back over his length, again and again.

He answered my demands for fervor, not gentility, and ground our bodies together until there was no space between us.

My neck bared, I lost control, moaning and sighing the king’s name, unbothered that guards were paces away, standing watch. Erik bucked his hips hard enough the throne scraped over the stones. Pleasure numbed my mind. All I could do was sink into a fluster of instinct to draw out more raw grunts from his chest, more rasps when his own arousal pinched over his face.

“Livia,” Erik gasped my name like a final plea when I angled my body differently, drawing him in deeper.

I closed my eyes when the heat between my legs boiled over. My fingers dug in his shoulders, my body went taut, twitching as I called Erik’s name over and over. A haze clouded my mind as Erik thrust harder until the rush of his own release spilled into me.

We sagged against each other, trading weak kisses, chuckling when we took note of how out of line Erik’s throne had drifted compared to mine. With care, Erik helped me back into my chemise, then readjusted his own trousers before curling me onto his lap and burying his face into my neck.

Perhaps the Ever King was not a man who knew how to speak his heart, but he was mesmerizing how he conveyed it with his touch. In these moments, when Erik Bloodsinger held me, still and calm, I could understand every damn word.

For my heart screamed the same—this world, this kingdom, all of it mattered only if he was part of it.