DOFAB#3

Chapter Twenty-Six

~ TRISTAN ~

Mercy isn't synonymous with the act of living. Mercy is reserved for when we meet our maker.

A half-suppressed laugh hinged on the side of mania rumbles from my chest into my stomach, following Kinley's overly eager mouth. Brukha enhanced strength allows her to rip my shirt as if it were made of brittle leaf. Damp warmth glides along the contours of my chest before moving on to explore the ripples of tensed muscles thousands of years of war and two worlds have created.

"How is your skin so tough and silken?" Kinley asks between open-mouthed kisses befitting the parched flower she is.

Life is the perpetual battleground that is never in your favor. It will test you until you break to its rule or succumb to the fate being alive entails. The rules are dependent on which god you hail from, mapped out by our own choices. The rules life tries to break you against are the voices in our heads. Little whispers that bubble in our blood, tease our souls, and ignite the vigor of standing on the precipice of ruin.

The carved grooves of the bedpost Kinley have me against in her frenzied rush could have easily turned to splinters. Still might as she alternates between kissing and testing my skin's durability with nips that bite right into the bedrock of primal need.

"You're warm and cold, like sunrays seeping through a morning frost. Or at least, I think. The Southern Weeping Isles don't have frost." Her hands take the place of her mouth as she rubs her cheek against me, reveling in the bump-bump of the frosty abdominal mountain terrain she's exploring.

Mercy is death. The act of living is the hunger we chase as we walk our tight ropes. And life? Life isn't the rope. It isn't the rocky bottom below that awaits you either. That's your mercy. Life is the invisible foe standing before you, asking a simple question. Will it be death or submission? The wise know there is a third option. Become the knot your invisible foe trips over. Right now, Kinaley is that knot. I must ask myself, will I succumb to ruin, fall to my death upon my maker's crown, or tie myself right next to Kinaley and may the better-tied knot win?

"I think you have a fever, Overlord of Blizzards and Sinful Kisses." She mutters the last part against my chest to herself. "Set aflame by the ember."

"Hisss." An electric current sent from Haysha tests my will against Kinley's not-so-gentle bite to her latest object of fascination, an anatomical part most mammals share regardless of gender.

"Not so invincible now, are you?" She coos, pleased with her ability to inflict what she perceives as pain upon me.

Pain and pleasure conjointly mix for those of us of the warrior bloodline. It's what we crave. It's also why we crave the gentleness of another with equal amounts of fervor. Because tender affections go against everything we are. Everything we stand for.

"The fevered one is you." I catch Kinley's wrists, suspending them before her fingertips can do more than dip past the waistline of the ebony fabric that covers me.

"I do. I do have a fever." She draws the edge of her lip between her teeth, those go-to-war sea-greens turning up to me. "A fever for you."

I should have let her stake me.

"You're strong and devilishly angelic handsome," Kinley continues. "Handsome like all three of the gods conspired to make you to test our loyalty...to make us fall...to teach us even the darkest of things sparkles like those ebony stones, except Haysha's stones glint purple. Not you. Your soul plumes with beautiful emerald embers as if a piece of Rien's flame lives inside you too."

The drunken lulls of Kinley's tone paired with her come-hither night attire have me standing on the precipice, toes already over the edge. She's experiencing side effects from the elixir.