Eona - Alison Goodman [82]
“Then maybe the bringer of doom is you.” I saw the barb hit home. A small uneasiness pricked at my anger, but I ignored it. “Doesn’t feel good, does it, Kygo? To be a bringer of doom.”
He came toward me. “I am emperor,” he yelled. “You are just a woman. And you know nothing.”
“Yet you made me your Naiso,” I shouted, his scorn pushing me into reckless challenge. “You said you wanted the truth? Well, here it is. You tell yourself stories about how I lie and self-serve, but everything I have done has been in your interest.” I counted off on my fingers. “I told you the truth about my sex; I pulled you out of your killing rage; I woke you from the shadow world. I did not heal you and compromise your will. Yet you still distrust me.” A roar of intuition burst through my fury. “Because you are afraid of me!”
The words felt like a leap into an abyss.
He stopped in front of me, his eyes alight with his own fury. We stared at one another, locked in a moment that held either a new beginning or an end.
“I am not afraid of you,” he finally said. “I am afraid of what your power means.” The tension dropped from his body, making him sway.
I nodded, suddenly exhausted myself. “I am, too. I know so little, and yet now I must save the dragons.”
He touched the pearl at his throat. “Yes.”
“It is too much.” I flung my hand out, as if I could push it all away.
Kygo caught my wrist. “Yet it is your burden, as mine is the empire.”
At his touch, all my anger shifted. I gasped as his hand tightened, the same shift searing the fatigue from his eyes. He pulled me closer.
“We do not have a choice, Eona,” he said.
Were his words of our duty, or the energy that leaped between us? I turned my head, seeking refuge from the intensity in his eyes, but only found the sensuous curve of the Imperial Pearl and the shift of light across it. The memory of our lips and bodies touching shivered through me.
“I know.” I lifted my other hand toward the glowing gem. Was it Kinra pulling me toward the pearl, or was it my own desire?
“Do you know what happens—what it does to me, when you touch it?” He was breathing through his mouth, hard and quick. “It is like a thousand lightning strikes through my body, all tipped with pleasure.”
“I think the pearl is linked to the energy world,” I whispered. And maybe to an ancient traitor, but my fear of Kinra’s influence was lost in the drum of my blood.
He gave a low laugh. “You know it is linked to more than the energy world.”
His wry tone pulled an answering laugh from me, but the entreaty behind his words sent a soft answering surge deep into the delta of my body.
He looked up at the cave roof, his teeth clenching for a moment. “If you touch the pearl, could it bring the ten dragons?”
“Perhaps,” I said, but I could not pull my hand away. “I don’t know.”
I saw his battle against caution, duty against desire. It was my own battle. We stood leaning toward one another, my fingertips hovering above the pearl, our only connection his hand around my wrist. Yet I felt as if his whole body was holding mine.
His head strained back, the pulse in his throat pounding. “Gods’ venom!” he swore, and pushed me away.
I staggered, still caught in the moment, my body reaching toward him.
“Eona, no!” He lowered his head, eyes fierce. “Do not step closer.”
“You do not want to?” I demanded, the shameless words coming from somewhere ancient and thwarted.
“Of course I do,” he ground out. “Are you blind?” He pressed the heel of his hand against his mouth and turned away. This time his laugh was harsh. “It would almost be worth it.”
I balled my fists, trying to find some control of the turmoil that raged through my Hua.
Kygo strode to the upturned table, bent, and, with a deep sound of effort, picked it up and slammed it back onto its legs. For a moment, he stared at the split top, then drove his fist into its edge, pushing the whole table across the floor in a squeal of wood against stone. I winced. He cradled his hand, a trickle of blood between his knuckles.
“Always