Curiously, he hadn’t finished with her while she’d come twice in the matter of moments I’d watched her through his memories. That, and the map, had been worth the pain I endured to reach inside the mind of someone and see what or who they were. Normally, they never knew I was inside their minds, but Torrin felt me there immediately. It was disturbing and a little unflattering how quickly he’d sensed me searching his memories.
We were at an impasse. His eyes searched my face while I felt the telltale sign of a blush, heating my pale cheeks. Torrin’s lips curved into a knowing smirk that I wanted to slap from his face. Violently.
“You undressed me,” I stated, not bothering to frame it as a question. It was a fact.
“You got blood on your—whatever the hell it is you women wear. It’s being washed since we’re about to travel through the passes, and there are starving creatures within the darkness. I figured it was easier to have it cleaned than bring you to my king in torn up pieces. Not that I’d be opposed since you’d be much easier to deal with.”
“I won’t help your king, so you might as well walk away now.”
“Oh, but I think you will. You see, your people are suffering from moon sickness, and you’re after the same thing we are. You want to stop your people from dying, and we want to find the library that holds the answers you seek.”
“I’d rather suck you off than help your king find the Sacred Library,” I admitted, watching his eyes sparkle with intrigue, lowering to my mouth. “What could Aragon possibly want inside that library, anyway?”
“That’s not something I’d ever tell you,” he growled, rubbing his eyes.
I injected myself into his mind, closing mine off to him. Instead of gaining access to his thoughts, I was met with a vision of him peering down at me. My legs were up around his shoulders, and he was devouring my mouth as I whimpered, crying out for him to thrust harder, faster, and deeper. He lifted, showing me how he looked within my body, and I ejected my mind from him, gasping as pain lanced through my head and blood dripped from my nose.
Wintery eyes sparkled with amusement. I continued struggling to regain control of my breathing that was ragged and stiff, unable to get enough air into my lungs. Nausea swirled through me, and I blinked past the pain that caused my eyes to water. He’d fucking blocked me from his thoughts, showing a vision of us together. I trembled at how his cock had looked within my poor vagina.
A knock at the door sounded, and Torrin stood, stretching his arms before he walked to the door and accepted the clothing. He walked back into the room and dropped them beside where I sat. His eyes locked with mine, and he smiled wolfishly, leaning down and holding his mouth a hairsbreadth away from mine.
His hot breath fanned my lips, forcing my eyes to close. I waited for them to skim across mine. Dark, deep laughter escaped his throat as his hand slid through my hair, gripping it firmly while he tugged on it, stealing a moan from my lips.
“You try to get into my head again, and I’ll use my magic on you. Mine makes your nightmares into reality and holds you there in my mind until I allow you to escape. I can do whatever I want in your dreams, and when you awake, you’ll still feel me there. Now, be a good girl and get some rest. We have a long trip ahead of us.”
“You expect me to sleep like this?” I asked, watching his lips curl into a smile.
“You should try because you look exhausted. You just fought off a horde of dark creatures less than three days ago, Alexandria. I know because I’ve watched you from the shadows. You were led here because I wanted you to be. Your brother wasn’t ever in this village. He never reached this far before the sickness set in,” Torrin stated, exhaling as he lifted the glass and polished off the whiskey.
“How do you know that?” I asked softly, hiding the pain his words caused me. My chest tightened, and I swallowed hard past the uneasiness that fought to swallow me whole.
“Goodnight, Alexa.” He smiled tightly, ignoring my question as he returned to the bed, lying down.
My eyes swam with unshed tears, pricking my pride while my chest constricted with pain. Landon had shown signs of the moon sickness before he left. Or at least, the first sign of it. I turned my eyes to the fire, watching the flames dance as the use of my nickname clicked.
“How did you know that?” I asked, turning to look at him. “How did you know that was my nickname?” It wasn’t, not really. I was Lexia to everyone but Landon, who preferred to use the name my mother had called me before she’d died from a raid by Aragon’s people.
“Your brother told me, right before he ended up in chains.”
“You have him!” I growled.
“I don’t, but he is being held somewhere to prevent him from succumbing to the moon madness. Or, more to the point, he’s someplace that he can’t hurt anyone else as he suffers from the sickness. I’m certain he’s past the beginning stages by now. You already knew that, though,” he stated impassively. “If you hadn’t known he was sick, you wouldn’t have broken protocol and come out searching for him without the backing of your Order.”
“They sent me to find him,” I hissed.
“No, Alexandria. They sent you to find the library because they had already written him off as dead. Landon and his entire team were infected, and yet the Order still sent them. Why?” he asked, smiling coldly as I narrowed my eyes to angry slits. “Because the Order didn’t want them to expire where the others would see it happening and lose faith in the Order of the Moon,” he said softly, turning onto his side, which bunched the muscles of his abdomen. “Now I have your attention, don’t I?”
I swallowed, closing my eyes before turning back to the crackling fire. If Torrin knew where Landon was, he knew that I’d come for him. The thing was, if the king got inside the Sacred Library, he could destroy the entire world. It held the first spells of our race and the history of the world. What would he possibly want from within it?
If I helped him to locate the library, would I be damning everyone to something worse than the plague of darkness? It was said that someone in Aragon’s line had read from one of the books, unleashing the frozen darkness onto the world. What if I helped him, and I lost myself to save Landon and the others in doing so? I’d seen my death once in a soothsayer’s dream, bathed in shadows that made it near impossible to know who it was that had murdered me, yet I’d felt the truth of it to my core.
“Sleep, because we leave at dawn.”
“There is no dawn anymore. Only darkness resides within these mountains,” I whispered icily, not bothering to tear my eyes from the fire. “Your king wants one of the books, the Book of Life or Death? Which one is it that Aragon craves to read?”
“If I told you, would you shut up and go to sleep?” he asked, and I turned to see Torrin close his eyes.
“Yes,” I whispered before sucking my bottom lip between my teeth.
“Liar. You suck your bottom lip when you lie, Alexa. Go to sleep, or I’ll gag you so I can.”
“Right…” He slipped off the bed and grabbed the curtain to rip a large section of it off before moving toward me. He smiled coldly as he lowered to a crouch in front of me.