✨bia✨’s Reviews > Starside > Status Update

And the world isn't fair, not at all.
Because Harlan Raker is a monster, but he doesn't look like one.
He is painfully beautiful.
His skin is pale, his cheeks are sharp, his hair is dark and curled around his ears. Just looking at him makes my blood heat. He looks like he was carved by a merciless god, one that wanted a weapon people would run toward.

What. Are. Those?" he asks again.
Instead of shrinking away, I lift my chin.
Fuck shame. Fuck hiding. I've been through too much-this body has survived too much to be ashamed of itself.
I rip my shirt over my head and throw it to the ground. He sees it all now.
Silver. Thin roots of silver, faintly sparkling through the remaining darkness.
The exact color a knight like him has trained to hunt and kill.

The sword trembles even more.
But his grip doesn't loosen. No, massive hand gripping mine, he guides my blade's edge closer to his throat. Together, we dig it into his skin. Harder. Harder. Until blood drips down his neck. There's a line of it, a thin mark on his previously unmarred skin.
My eyes widen, watching the crimson, horrified.
"There," he says. "A memory of my weakness."

"You hate me?" he demands, spitting the words.
"Yes," I reply, falling into my stance. The one he helped me perfect.
"Prove it."
Then his sword is hurling toward my neck.

I stab my finger into his chest and say with every smelted inch of my soul, "1 hate you, Harlan Raker."
He just looks down at me for a moment. His gaze dips to the finger
still in the center of his chest and then back up at me.
"Good," he finally says.

No. I must have misheard him. There's no fucking way a godsword claimed me... a mortal hellbent on slaying the gods themselves.
But as his words sink in, it all starts to make sense.
The bounty. The cavalry.

He gently takes it in his hands, and it's strange to see anyone else holding my metal. But he's careful, turning it slightly. I imagine he's already studied it, when we were first saved.
"No," he finally says.
Oh. I feel a rush of disappointment, for some reason.
"This is a godsword."

She must want you to complete your journey. Helping a human... how curious." She looks at the Elder. He nods gravely.
"What"
"You must leave. If the Astral Queen is helping you, then the gods are against you." She's right.

I part my lips, wanting his hands to slide up and down my body in the darkness, across all the places I'm still aching.
But his voice is a growl. "This was nothing. You are nothing. Don't get close to me again," he snarls.
I open my mouth in shock, not even knowing what to say, but he doesn't give me the chance.

Our lips are so close, separated by just a thin sheet of silver. I need to feel him. My fingers dive into his hood, and he lets me, and they rake through hair and
It's soft. His hair is so soft, and not too long, and he groans as 1 run my hands through it,