The Ultimate Series Book 3: Savage
Author
A. K. Glandt
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33.5K
Chapters
56
With the Western Axis conquered, Sarakiel turns his ambition north and drags Daylin with him. The last place she wants to return is the city she fled, especially not under the watchful eyes of the High Priest, Ramiel. Armed with only a loyal friend and an unwanted ally, Daylin is forced back into a temple full of scheming zealots who want nothing more than her submission.
To claim her power, she must survive the Trial of High Priesthood—a brutal gauntlet designed to break those who dare challenge fate. Will Daylin prevail or will she finally succumb to the rules of a world that wants her tamed?
Chapter 1: He’s So Sweet, He Wants to Kill Me Himself
BOOK 3: SAVAGE
The roof of Sarakiel’s estate sloped just enough that sitting on it required a little balance, but not enough to be dangerous unless you were an idiot about it. The slate tiles were still warm from the afternoon sun, though the heat was bleeding out of them now that the evening wind had picked up. Two hours ago, the air had been pleasant.
Now the breeze came sharper, tugging at my hair and slipping cold fingers beneath my clothes. It carried the smell of the gardens somewhere behind the estate and the faint, distant grit of the gravel walkway far below.
From up here, the world felt quieter. Detached.
Behind me, the window I’d crawled through looked like a spiderweb someone had tried to make out of glass. Jagged shards still clung stubbornly to the edges of the frame, catching the light like dull little knives. The center of it had been obliterated when I’d hurled the chair through it earlier.
Said chair now rested five stories down on the gravel path that curved along the side of the estate toward the back gardens. It had only just missed the cook. Apparently, he’d been enjoying a break when a piece of furniture had tried to assassinate him from the heavens.
No one had bothered to move it since. I imagined the staff had simply stepped around it and continued on with their lives, same as they had with the shattered glass upstairs.
The remaining glass around the window frame had crusted over with streaks of silver where my blood had smeared across it earlier. It looked like a twisted version of stained glass. Pretty, in a macabre sort of way.
The cuts on my hands and arms from climbing through it had started to heal. The silver caked across my knuckles, though? Not the window’s fault.
I’d split those open on the sandbags. Two of them were no longer anything useful, shredded to ribbons when I’d lost my temper. Ezra had finally decided if I was going to be destructive, I might as well do it productively, so he’d shoved me into the sparring ring with some of his agents.
I’d shredded a few of them too.
The smell of blood wafted over to me, half from a memory, half from my consort stepping onto the roof. He must’ve cut his hand climbing through the narrow window. My eyes rolled upward as my head tipped back against the tiles, watching him upside down as he hauled himself through the jagged frame.
“What is it with you and sulking on my roof?” he grumbled.
He cast a scowl at his palm and wiped the crimson across his tailored ash-gray slacks. Well. Those were ruined.
Sarakiel flexed his hand once after wiping the blood on his pants, watching the cut knit itself closed. The breeze tugged lightly at the dark strands of his hair, but he barely noticed the cold.
He straightened and undid the top button of his shirt, revealing a delicious-looking swath of skin. My gaze fixated on the column of his throat, specifically the dip between his clavicles. My mouth watered at the sight of his Adam’s apple bobbing.
It took monumental effort to pull my gaze upward. Sarakiel was looking at me.
Really looking. The way a strategist studied a board before moving a piece.
Then, with the same maddening calm he applied to everything, he walked over and sat down beside me on the sloped roof. The sky above was still bright, the sun a few hours away from sinking. Plenty of daylight left to ruin.
“You’re angry with me.”
My eyelids fluttered closed for less than a second, the low timbre of his voice activating the hot ache between my thighs before I could help it. I didn’t look at him when I said, “You broke your promise.”
“I adjusted it,” he said at last.
“You said you’d go to Brightfall with me.”
“And I intended to, but circumstances—”
“Don’t,” I cut in, finally pushing myself up onto my elbows to glare at him. “Don’t give me one of your circumstances speeches.”
His eyes met mine, that annoyingly patient expression written across his face. The kind of patience someone had when they knew they were going to win the argument eventually.
I snapped. “Seriously, Sarakiel. If you want to be rid of me, you can just tell me to get lost. You don’t have to serve me on a fucking platter to those religious psychos. Or just give me a quick death by your hand and save me from the misery. Don’t I deserve at least that much for my two years of service?”
I was only half joking. Which was the worst part, because the other half of me wasn’t joking at all.
For a long moment after my accusation, Sarakiel said nothing.
Silence never bothered him. In fact, he thrived in it. Where most people rushed to fill quiet with excuses or explanations, Sarakiel let it stretch and settle, knowing full well that most people eventually grew uncomfortable enough to start speaking just to break it.
However, I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction.
Somewhere below, far enough away that it sounded distant and unimportant, a servant’s voice drifted faintly through the gardens.
Subtly, Sarakiel shifted his weight on the tiles, his shoulder angling a fraction more toward mine, one long leg bent while the other stretched along the slope of the roof. But I noticed it anyway.
I always noticed him. That was the fucking problem.
“Going to Brightfall is not what you’re angry about. You’re angry,” he continued before I could sling any attitude at him, “because you think I’m sending you away.”
The words landed too close to the knot of resentment festering in my heart.
Sarakiel leaned back on one hand, his other resting loosely over his knee. Wind stirred the dark strands of his hair across his forehead, but it did nothing to disrupt the composed, almost regal stillness that was permanently woven into his bearing. Power sat on him like an invisible crown, and he wore it without apology.
“You’re afraid,” he said.
I barked out a laugh. “Try again.”
“Not of Brightfall.” Sarakiel cut a sideways glance my way. “You’re afraid that if you leave, you won’t be here when I decide I no longer need you.”
For a moment, the wind seemed to stop. The accusation struck deeper than I expected, sliding neatly past the layers of sarcasm and irritation I’d built around myself.
I pushed upright fully, glaring at him. Before I could snap a biting reply, Sarakiel reached toward me.
His fingers brushed lightly against my temple, gathering a loose strand of my hair the wind had dragged across my face. The backs of his knuckles grazed my cheek, cool from the evening air, as he tucked the strand neatly behind my ear.
I could have pulled away, but I was shocked by the unexpected gesture.
Sarakiel wasn’t a gentle male. His hands had orchestrated wars, dismantled alliances, and ruined people far more powerful. Yet the touch lingered there for a moment, his fingertips resting lightly against my hair as if he had all the time in the world.
“You know I would kill you myself if that was my intention.”
The words were delivered with the quiet intimacy of a confession. My heart skipped a beat. Which was ridiculous, considering what he had just said.
But Sarakiel had always had a talent for twisting things like that, taking something cold and brutal and wrapping it in just enough warmth that it landed somewhere dangerously close to tenderness.
I stared at him. Up close like this, his expression was as composed as ever, but there was a depth to his blue gaze that made it impossible to pretend the moment meant nothing. His fingers were still near my ear, resting just barely against the curve of my head, like he had forgotten to move them away.
Or like he knew exactly what he was doing.
“You’re insane,” I breathed.
He finally let his hand fall, though his eyes didn’t leave mine.
The wind stirred again, pushing my hair loose almost immediately after he’d tucked it back. A corner of his mouth twitched faintly at that, though the expression never quite became a smile.
“You prefer honesty,” he stated. “I am being honest.”
“Most people don’t consider I’d kill you myself romantic.”
“I’m not most people.”
No. He definitely wasn’t.
Sarakiel moved closer again, his leg brushing mine now as he settled more comfortably against the slope of the roof. “You assume I’m discarding you,” he said. “But if I truly wanted you gone, I would not send you somewhere that still requires you to come back.”
That sentence felt like one of his puzzles, but instead of trying to figure it out, I grumbled, “And Brightfall requires me to come back?”
His gaze flicked briefly toward the horizon, where the sky was beginning its slow shift toward evening gold.
“Yes.”
I let out a slow breath and leaned back on my hands again, staring out across the distant hills surrounding the estate.
Sarakiel’s knee pressed against my thigh more insistently. For a moment, he simply looked at me, as though measuring the distance between thought and action.
Then his hand found my arm. His fingers closed around it and guided me to him. The slope of the roof did the rest; my balance shifted, and I slid a few inches toward him.
Sarakiel’s touch rarely carried urgency. It was always patient, always certain of its place. This time was no different as his hand disappeared beneath the hem of my shirt.
The warmth of his palm against the bare skin of my back traced the familiar shape of my spine.
My hand drifted up to his shoulder without thinking. It slid from there into his hair, fingers threading through the dark strands with an ease that came from long familiarity.
When I leaned forward, he met me halfway.
Our heads tilted toward each other, instinctively finding the perfect angle, and our breaths mingled in that fragile space before the first touch. His lips brushed mine in a closed kiss for a heartbeat before the seam parted and our tongues met. Sarakiel’s tongue curled around mine, inviting me farther in.
Kissing Sarakiel never felt like enough. It was as if invisible hands of my soul were clawing at the cage of my body, desperate to latch onto him. Even with him here, so close I could feel the warmth of his chest under my hand, it felt as though I could lose him in the next second, as though the world were holding him just out of reach.
Sarakiel’s hand traveled higher beneath my shirt, following the curve of my back until his fingers splayed between my shoulder blades. Our kiss deepened. My fingers tightened in his hair while his mouth moved against mine.
Once, not so long ago, I had believed that whatever existed between Sarakiel and me would end when the war did.
I had imagined the quiet life that might follow. Some distant corner of the world where politics and religion and ambition couldn’t reach. Somewhere I could disappear into obscurity and let the rest of the world devour itself without my involvement.
That future had once felt inevitable. Now it felt impossible. Because somewhere along the way, without ceremony or confession, I had become part of something much larger than that imagined solitude.
I was part of him. Not just his consort.
Something more complicated than that. His legacy.
Then the words slipped out of me before I could decide whether they should. “Not that you have a particularly good track record,” I whispered, “but promise me you’ll still need me when I come back.”
There was no mockery in Sarakiel’s silence, only the measuring attention that had shaped so many of his decisions.
My hands tightened on his shoulders. “Promise me.” The demand carried more weight than I intended.
“I promise,” he vowed. “As long as you do not betray me, you will always be welcome at my side.”
I wanted to believe him, but my heart squeezed with a cold, crawling dread. The thought of our parting made my hands shake and my stomach knot. I didn’t even realize I was crying until the first wet trails slipped along the underside of my chin.
Panic and longing coiled together, and I couldn’t stop myself from trembling at the thought of being left behind, clutching pieces of us that might shatter if he let go.
Sarakiel’s hand moved then, sliding from my back to the side of my neck. His fingers rested there, thumb brushing once along the edge of my jaw as he held my gaze. “Daylin,” he said.
The way he spoke my name stilled whatever response had been forming on my tongue.
“Your glory,” he continued, “can only ever be my glory. And in turn,” he added, “mine shall be yours.”
No matter what words of comfort he gave, no matter how tenderly he touched me, how intently he kissed me, nothing could soothe the terror in my heart that whatever happened in Brightfall would have him letting go of our ill-fitting pieces, and I would be left alone, fighting to keep them together. And I wasn’t sure my will alone would be enough.
