Chapter 23
Chapter
Twenty-Three
EVIE
T his time, I was ready.
I rose from my dream altar with the sheer determination of a woman who’d been scorned and hadn’t enacted her revenge yet.
My gaze jumped around the shadows, but there was no sign of him, the bastard.
I slunk off the altar with the grace of a panther, reveling in my painless feet. Curiously, the cavern seemed brighter.
It didn’t actually look much like a cavern anymore. The walls were now visible, and not at all as sharp and menacing as I’d pictured them. Instead, they were filled with columns, carved with flower motifs and vines, so similar to the one back in the Arena.
On the other side of the room, a wall of murmuring shadows shifted and sent cold, seeking tendrils toward me.
That terrible wall was his .
I took a hesitant step forward.
Cold. So very cold, as if the wall whispered ice, trying to suck the warmth right out of me.
The light behind me, blinding and crisp only a moment ago, began to flicker. The tendrils of darkness rippled and hissed .
I couldn’t see anything past the shadows.
Groans and roars echoed from the other side.
Everything about this wall screamed danger.
A nightmare in a dream.
I took another step.
“Why are you hiding over there?” I muttered. And, most importantly, what ?
“Presumptuous of you to think I’m hiding.” His voice resounded from behind me.
I whirled around, fire in my eyes and a scowl on my face, even though my heart leaped.
He stood in full light for once, that damn robe of his hanging regally from his shoulders. But he no longer looked poised and controlled.
He was apprehensive.
Good.
I faced him fully, ignoring the hisses and groans from the wall. The shadows were nothing– nothing –compared to the opponent standing in front of me.
“How many more secrets do you have?”
“I didn’t know,” he said.
“Bullshit.” I gritted my teeth and rushed toward him. He’d been the one to stalk me in the past, now it was my turn. He didn’t move an inch, unrelenting gaze fixed on me.
I fisted my palms.
My left hand was no longer empty.
I flinched as my fingers grasped the handle of a large sword, sharp and curved at the tip. The kind both him and Adara had tried in vain to convince me to use instead of my switchblade. “What in the–?”
“It seems your imagination thinks you want to kill–or at least maim–me, and it’s given you the perfect tool to do it,” he said with such a sarcastic edge that he almost managed to hide the surprise and sadness in his voice.
Almost.
Damn him and this entire mess we were in because of him, but that tugged at whatever empathy I still had for him after the wedding.
Before I had a chance to reply–I did want to kill him, but not kill him, kill him–an equally menacing sword appeared in his own hand.
All my misguided empathy evaporated. “Looks like you think I might actually do it.”
“That’s not what this is for,” he said with a sad smile, but didn’t elaborate. Instead, he twirled the sword between his fingers with expert movement, as if it was a mere feather. “My best guess is that we both need to release some tension.”
“I’m not releasing it by cleaving your head in two, dream or not.”
Because he’d never attack you , some heartbroken part of me whispered.
“Cute of you to think you’d get close enough to do it.” His eyes narrowed on me, a challenging spark in them.
“Fuck you.”
“Best save that for when you’re in a less murderous mood.”
“We’re not doing this,” I spat out, heart and ego officially bruised, because damn him, some stupid part of me still wanted him pressed against me. “We’re not playing games.”
“Why not?” He raised the sword and stared at me down the edge of the blade. “We’ve trained before, remember?”
Back when he’d given me the armor he’d bled for, hunted me in my own house, and then kissed my forehead before disappearing. “Vaguely.”
“I wonder if you’ve sharpened your skills since then.”
“I know what you’re doing.”
“Judging from the way you’re gripping that sword harder, I think it’s working.”
I flexed my tense fingers on the hilt.
“Come on,” he taunted with a grin. “One swipe to make my bones quake.”
I gritted my teeth. My grip tightened.
He tilted his head to the side. “And to think you threatened to burn me on our wedding night–”
I swung hard. A full body, forceful movement.
He smiled in triumph.
My nostrils flared.
Our swords clashed in a painful clang that vibrated straight through me. It rattled the cage in which I’d trapped all those wretched feelings of despair and unfairness.
“How could you not tell me?” I roared so hard, the light around us flickered again.
The smile on his face fell. “Menace, the oath–”
I saw red and reared back.
“I’m not talking about the blasted oath! And don’t call me that.” My sword came down upon his once more. He blocked the blow easily. “I’m talking about you. Here. In my mind.”
My mind still couldn’t quite comprehend the idea, but he was no figment of my imagination.
The bond between us had somehow linked our minds while we slept. As if it couldn’t stand us apart and forced us together through any means necessary.
This.
Was.
Real.
He was real.
“You didn’t know either.” He pressed his blade against mine and pushed me back.
My sword hissed through the air once more, this time aiming for his legs. He jumped out of the way with ease and grace–then came down upon me with all the agility of The Dragon.
I crouched and rolled out of the way, rising behind him.
“It’s not my bloody Clan that has fated mates.” I swung again.
He didn’t even turn. He twisted his blade and blocked my blow without even looking. I huffed a grunt as our blades screeched against each other.
“You mean the fated mates which many believe to be a legend?” he drawled. “I don’t know whether to be flattered or insulted that you think I have the power to know everything about our bond. Or that I had other mates.”
“Your parents have a bond like ours.”
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I don’t run to my mother and father with my problems. They would have been as useless at helping me with this as they always are.”
“You could have told me instead of springing The Postman on me,” I said, with less vitriol this time.
Zavoya and Eldryan wouldn’t have been my first choice to find answers about this, either.
“You’re welcome for the scroll, by the way,” he said.
Infuriating, egotistical–
He spun around with unnatural speed, stopping so close to me, his breaths ruffled the soft hairs on my forehead. “You're one of the most intuitive people I’ve known, and you didn’t figure it out. Why are you expecting so much more from me than yourself?”
“You’re The Dragon. I’m the Protectorate brat and outsider, remember ?”
“I wasn’t born The Dragon. I became it,” he said, baring his teeth. “If you’re not happy with who you are, become who you want to be.”
I growled and reared back.
Another swing, another easy block.
We fell into a rhythm that was all effort on my part and ease on his. He was humoring me, using a fraction of his strength, if that. But he didn’t relent.
He’d been right, the bastard. It did feel good to get out all the pent-up frustration.
My little cavern filled with our grunts and clangs. We rounded columns, our quick feet leaving marks in the dirt. Our robes swished and caught the light, filling the space with a silky, decadent sound so at odds with the hiss of our blades.
I held my own. He held back.
Despite being in a dream, beads of sweat pooled at the base of my temples and my lungs struggled to gulp air.
Adara had trained me well–and what she couldn’t instill in me, the mountains had.
I bent backwards as his sword grazed the air above my chest and somersaulted on top of the altar. I stood, the light from above casting an eerie glow around me.
He gazed up at me with a look that could have been mistaken with awe, lips parting.
“I was supposed to become queen ,” I said in a deadly whisper.
He shook his head, the stupor in his eyes vanishing. “Trust me, nobody will stop you.”
With a roar, I leaped through the air. My blade clashed with his in a deafening ring. With the metal vibrating between us, our faces were only a breath away, our relentless stares locked.
“I cried in front of you,” I whispered, voice cracking.
“I fell down on my knees in front of you.”
“It wasn’t the first time you did it,” I said.
“It won’t be the last.”
“I’d rather you cut me down right now than to ever be that vulnerable in front of you again.”
“Enough,” he said in a harsh whisper and grabbed my waist, pulling me into him.
Without breaking eye contact, he threw his sword on the ground. Mine vanished from my hand a moment later.
Our bodies touched, our breaths mingled.
“I’ve dreamt of you before. I now know that is not the real you, but at first I thought you were just another version of that,” he began, voice low, but determined. “Until I saw the symbol. My mind couldn’t have conjured it up on its own. If I was right, then you needed help to decipher it. So I sent The Postman, the fastest delivery in all of Malhaven, even quicker than Ryker.”
“And so you could test me.” I licked my lips, achingly aware of how close his mouth was to mine.
“Test this . If you were just another figment of my imagination or some curse and I asked you if you were real, you would have lied. But The Postman reported a positive delivery, then you came here irate. Whatever this is, it’s real.”
“I could still be lying,” I said.
He huffed a miserable laugh. “Then tell me you love me.”
My heart pounded, but I remained silent and furious.
“There we go.” He inhaled deeply, as if scenting me. “It seems we can’t avoid each other.”
“The gods must be real then,” I said. “Nobody else could have such a mad sense of humor.”
A weird stillness settled between us, brimming with things I could no longer say. This wasn’t the safe place I’d imagined it to be.
“I guess we just have to suffer each other in sleep, then,” I said.
Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.
He could go back beyond the wall of shadows and hisses, but he didn’t seem in a hurry to let me go.
The only good to come out of this was knowing the Blood Brotherhood army was succeeding against the Serpents.
As long as he appeared in my mind, he was alive.
“Seems so.” He leaned his lips closer to mine. Dangerously close. “Feel better now?”
Damn him, I did.
I felt too good, in fact.
I would not make the same mistake I had in the Arena, despite my body molding to his.
I pushed gently on his shoulders, and he let me go instantly.
“I don’t have time for this,” I muttered, aware that my voice had suddenly dropped. “I have a big day tomorrow and we both need to rest.”
And not do whatever this pressure between my thighs wanted me to.
Without waiting for a reply, I turned my back to him and crawled on top of the altar, the only place I could lie down in this cavern.
“Planning on incinerating Phoenix Peak?” he asked, as if loathe to end our jousting, even the verbal one.
“Burning it down would be easier than what I have to do.” I laid down on the altar, grabbing the red silk and draping it over me until I swaddled myself in a cocoon, with only the tip of my nose peeking through. Then I turned my back to him.
“Finally conquering all of Malhaven, are you?” he said, a final invitation I couldn’t allow myself to accept.
“Worse. I’m having tea with your mother.”