The Rebels of Gold (Loom Saga #3)(103)

“Defeat them with what they are.” It would be glorious. The idea of thwarting Xin with their own organs sent shivers up her spine.

“No.”

“Yveun—”

“Your Dono has decreed it!” Yveun roared. Coletta didn’t even flinch. “You will not put any more Xin organs into Rok bodies. That is not perfection; it is an affront to Lord Rok himself.”

Coletta started for the door.

“I have not dismissed you,” he growled.

“I have dismissed myself.” Coletta stood as tall as possible. She was shorter than him, smaller and frailer, yet she could still look down her nose at the short-sighted man who claimed to be her mate. “I will only speak to you again once you are ready to see reason.” Her eyes dropped to the papers still scattered on the floor, nothing more than a pathetic list of failures. “I hope it will not be too late by then.”

She closed the door gently behind her. Coletta would not give in to sudden outbursts or rage. She was not her mate, who, judging from the crash, promptly set to destroy what remained of his beautiful fa?ade.

Let him ruin it, she thought, starting down the hall. Perhaps once he had made a mess of the illusion, he would be ready to face reality.





Cvareh


“Arianna, what are we?” he moaned against her mouth, pressing his hips against hers.

“You talk too much,” she sighed back in reply. For all the brilliance the woman could craft with her fingers, they seemed to be thwarted every time by the clasps Nova’s tailors could conceive.

“What are we?” he repeated.

“What does it matter?”

He heard the fastenings holding up his trousers click open and Cvareh knew there was little more he could do. He was helpless before her, trembling like a mortal before a god whose altar was a small bed in the back of the refinery-turned-factory.

Cvareh pushed her down and heeded her hands. His body swelled, enveloping hers. Arianna pushed and pulled, contorted herself to meet him until that moment when they both could breathe again, when he was fully immersed in her.

It was the greatest feeling he’d ever known, though it would be impossible to attempt to explain to anyone else why it was so wonderful. He didn’t try. Cvareh kept them, and whatever they were or weren’t, between them. He kept this feeling between them.

This blissful, all-too-short feeling.

It was the fourth time he’d had her in two short months and the wait between each time became harder than the last.

Every time was the same. Every time, she’d arrived to take flowers, bring resources. Every time, she’d ended up fighting alongside Xin men and women against Rok. Every time, she was met with the same apprehension from his people that Arianna would claim didn’t weigh on her until the day she died and yet, there was something to it. Some kind of jealousy that came over her like a shadow when those same people praised Cvareh for his actions as their Ryu.

The more others learned of her, the more she withdrew. Her demeanor had even begun to earn praise from Cain, so much that the man had stopped pestering Cvareh at every turn about his fondness for Arianna.

He never thought he’d actually miss Cain’s nagging. But at least when his friend complained, it meant things were as they had always been. His silence underscored the distance he felt growing between them.

Cvareh lay at Arianna’s side, tracing the outlines of her ashen skin with a long finger. He graced over the scars of her body—the gash where her chest had been cracked open to allow room for his lungs, the ring on her wrists where the hands Finnyr had once carried met her natural flesh, the horizontal slit where her stomach had been scooped out. On and on, her body was pockmarked and flawed. But every curve, every gnarled scar, was hers. Her hands belonged to none but her. Even the lungs, still heaving from their lovemaking, he no longer saw as his own.

“Ari . . .” He leaned in to press his nose against her cheek, nuzzling it.

“I should go.”

“You’ve barely caught your breath.” He watched her get up, locating her underthings first. Cvareh was proud to say that this time he had not shredded them in his zeal.

“We can’t afford time for things like this.”

“I object,” he said with a chuckle. “We’ve afforded time, every time.”

“And we shouldn’t.” Arianna buttoned up the fly of her trousers—all seven needless, frustrating, delicate buttons.

“Why?” He watched as she shrugged on her shirt next, back still to him, as her form in all its beauty began to be shrouded from him once more. Arianna located her vest and was buttoning it before he pressed again, realizing she had no intention of answering him. “Why shouldn’t we?”

“You’re the Xin’Oji.”

“Since when have you cared for Dragon titles?” He stood with a soft chuckle and gripped her shoulders, half-turning her to face him. Arianna’s eyes were full of all the life and fire he loved in her, even when it was directed toward him. “You are right, I am the Xin’Oji. But that merely means no one will object to me—to us.”

“When you kill Yveun . . .”

He appreciated her certainty. “When I kill Yveun, what?” he repeated. It wasn’t like her to leave a thought hanging.

“What then?”