Chapter 43: Chapter 44: Fuck me

Elara’s POV

The meeting finally ended. After moving into the marriage aspect, I couldn’t even stand anymore.

The heavy wood door of the council room closed behind me with a sound that bounced off the stone walls like thunder. I did not stop walking. I could not stop. If I stopped moving, if I let myself stand still for even a moment, the noise of my own blood in my ears would make me crazy.

“Marriage.”

The word tasted like dirt in my mouth. Like poison I had been made to sit for the last hour while sitting in that room, listening to Thorin’s calm voice, watching his smiles that made me feel small, hearing his careful talks about how things would be.

I could still smell him. Pride and something else, the heavy smell of his own belief in himself. It stuck to my clothes, to my skin, making me feel dirty in a way that had nothing to do with real dirt.

“Consulted,” I hissed, my voice hitting the cold stone walls of the hall. “Not needed. Consulted.”

That had been his exact word. When I had asked, very calmly, very politely, what power I would keep as queen if we married, he had smiled that patient smile and said, “Your voice would be heard, of course. Consulted on all big choices.”

Consulted. Not equal. Not a partner. Consulted.

Like I was just another advisor in my own kingdom. Like my thoughts would be one among many, to be thought about and then finally pushed aside by the man with “real experience.”

I got to my sitting room and pushed through the door, barely closing it behind me before I started walking back and forth. Across the rug, my shoes digging into the cloth with each sharp turn. My body felt wrong. Too tight. My skin pulled over a body that felt hot and weak at the same time. A dull pain beat low in my belly, part anger, part being tired, part something else I could not name.

I felt like a bell that had been hit, shaking with a sound that might break me apart.

The heavy formal coat I had worn to the meeting was suddenly too much. I pulled at the hooks, my fingers not working right with anger, until it finally came loose and I let it fall to the floor in a pile of blue and gold. The air in the room felt too thick. Too still. I needed to move. I needed to hit something. I needed something to break.

“I hate him,” I growled at the empty room. The word felt rough in my throat. Not polite. Not what a queen should say. “I hate his advice. I hate his experience.”

“I hate all of them.”

But the word was not enough. Too small. Too polite for the storm inside me. I wanted to tear at the pretty silk of my dress until it hung in pieces. I wanted to throw something heavy at the wall and watch it break. I wanted to scream until my voice gave out.

Instead, I walked back and forth. Back and forth. Playing the meeting in my head.

Thorin had been so calm. So polite. So perfectly nice as he told how a marriage would work. How our kingdoms would be “joined” with him as the main leader, with me keeping a “pretty role” as Queen of Dravara. How all big choices would be made “together”, which really meant he would choose and I would be told.

“Your council seems quite… loud,” he had said at one point, that patient smile never leaving his face. “In Valerium, we find that too many voices fighting can stop good choices from being made. A strong hand, led by experience, tends to make better things happen.”

A strong hand. His hand. Leading my kingdom because I was too young, too new, too female to do it myself.

“You would keep power over home things, of course,” he had gone on. “Court events, helping people, the things queens usually do. But army choices, deals with other lands, big trade talks, those would be mine to handle. I have many years of experience in such things.”

And when I had pushed bac, when I had said very clearly that I did not want to be just a pretty face in my own kingdom, he had looked at me with something that might have been sorrow for me.

“Your Majesty, I know this is hard. You are young, and you have been put in a place of huge duty. It is normal to feel… too much. To want to keep control even when taking help would be smarter.” He had leaned forward a little. “I am giving you partnership. Help. The good of my experience and my people. All I ask is that you trust me to lead us toward the best results for both our kingdoms.”

Trust him to lead us. Trust him to make choices. Trust him to rule my kingdom while I smiled and waved and went to court events.

My hands were shaking. I looked down at them, watching my fingers move, and felt a new wave of anger wash over me. Even my own body was failing me, showing weak when I needed to be strong, proving Thorin right that I could not take the pressure.

I turned toward the door to my private rooms, my eyes finding the heavy wood panel. Past it, I knew exactly where he would be. Standing just outside, a quiet guard.

Kaelen.

“Kaelen!” His name tore from my throat. Not a call. A demand. A wild, sharp need.

The door did not just open, it filled with him.

Kaelen stepped inside, and the heavy wood closed behind him, shutting out the rest of the palace. He looked like a storm trapped in a man. Wide shoulders blocking the light from the hall. His hand resting on his sword, not just there but ready. His eyes swept the room in a quick check, looking at corners, windows, danger, before finding me.

Those dark eyes. Usually so controlled. So careful. But now, as he saw my chest heaving, the wild mess of my hair that had come loose from its pins, the angry look that must have been all over my face, something real broke through his calm.

“Your Majesty?” His voice was a low sound, careful. His eyes moved to the door I had pulled him through. “Is everything okay? ”

“Nothing is okay.” I answered my voice shaking not with fear but with wild, hot energy. “He tried to tell me what to do, To own me. Yes. Every single word out of his mouth was a chain wrapped in pretty cloth.”

I started walking back and forth again, not able to stay still. The room felt too small, yet the space between us felt like a big hole. My moves were sharp, rough, missing any of the grace Lena had spent years teaching me.

“Tell me, Kaelen,” I hissed, and I heard my voice break around the edges of my calm. “Did you stand there and listen? Did you hear him talk about ’real experience’? Did you hear him explain how my power would be ’heard’ but not really matter next to his?”

I was in front of him now, looking up. My chest heaving. The air between us felt full, electric with the charge of my wild feelings.

“I did,” Kaelen said. His jaw was tight, so tight I could see a small move in his cheek. His eyes were dark, fixed on my face. “It took every bit of control not to break his neck.”

“He would have liked that,” I spat, though the anger in my voice was quickly turning into something breathless and rough. “He would have loved to show that I cannot even control my own guard. That I need a stronger hand to handle the wild animals.”

The thought made my skin crawl. Made something hot and wrong turn in my stomach. Thorin’s “good advisors,” his “choices together”, it was all just a nice way of talking about a cage. A pretty, gold cage where I would be kept safe and controlled and with no power at all.

I looked up at Kaelen. He was a wall of muscle and barely held violence. The full opposite of Thorin’s clean, smart cruelty. He smelled of leather and metal and the cold night air I had been kept from while sitting in that hot council room. He was real. True.

“Thorin thinks you are just a fighter, who can’t protect me” I whispered, the words carrying a rough, sharp edge.

I saw the muscle in Kaelen’s jaw move again. A flash of hot anger that he fought to keep down. “He can try to take me from my place.”

“He will not have to,” I said, my voice dropping. “Because I am not some weak doll who needs to be kept from you.”

“Then what are you?” Kaelen growled, the question low in his chest.

“I am a queen who cannot breathe,” I hissed.

And before my mind could catch up to the wild thing my body was doing, I grabbed him.

I did not reach for his shoulders or his waist. I closed my hands in the front of his shirt, pulling him down with rough, shaking strength. The move sent a spike of pain through my sore wrist, but I liked it. It was real. It was not the dull, aching politeness of the council room.

I did not wait for him to say it was okay. Did not wait for him to get past the shock of being grabbed by his queen.

I rose on my toes, pressing my lips to his, the heat between us. Then I broke away just enough, leaning into his arms, my voice low and trembling: ’Fuck me, Kaelen… I want nothing but you, nothing but feeling you inside me

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep