Chapter 41 #2
I find a seat at the small rickety table as he works, the wood creaking as my weight sinks into it. I try not to think of Hazel as flames flare in the hearth, but I can’t help it. The memory of the mortified look in her eyes as the flames licked at her feet plagues me.
I can’t stop thinking of her, wondering if she found peace somewhere—if that is even possible. If the last person she looked at was Mayor Hawthorne, or if she found someone else to focus on, just like she said she would all those weeks ago.
I keep hoping that I will wake up, that I’ll find that all of this was a sick nightmare. But each morning I wake up, and I know it’s true, because my gut sinks every time I sit up, the memory of what happened seared into my mind.
“Hey,” I blink and find Rylan crouched before me, his hand resting on my knee. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” I whisper.
“For not telling you about all of this sooner, for lying when we first met…for Hazel.” I close my eyes, and he threads his fingers through mine.
“I never meant for any of this to happen. I never meant to deceive you. I only wished to know if you and I were made of the same fabric—if our souls were connected through a thread of gold.”
My tongue feels heavy in my mouth with the weight of the truth.
I’ve always felt a certain way about Rylan since the day I met him.
No matter how hard I tried to fight it, some part of me trusted him even when I had no reason to.
I have always felt safe with him. Maybe it is only that common power that runs in both of our veins, the thing that we both share that has me coming back to him. Maybe.
But it also feels like my heart. Something within me aches to be near him, to feel his touch and to hear his voice. But how am I to truly know?
He pulls his hand from my leg, instead lifting it to my face. His fingers trail delicate lines over the freckles that dance across my cheeks. His touch immediately settles my mind, comfort seeping into my bones.
“What is it about you?” he whispers, and I close my eyes.
It’s the same question I have asked myself countless times about him, because it doesn’t feel like the magic that has me longing for his presence—it feels like my soul.
I let out a shuddering breath. I ache to feel his body on mine, it is almost painful.
That awareness inside of me heightens, as if my power recognises his.
I try to swallow the feeling down, to rid it from my body, but it’s no use.
The memory of what it feels like to be entirely consumed by him has me leaning into his touch.
I feel my hair being pushed behind my ear, but it isn’t his skin that slides over mine. It feels like a whisper.
When I open my eyes, I see his shining up at me. One of his hands rests on my thigh, and the other grips the chair. He used his magic. A shiver slides up my spine, even as heat builds within me.
Flames flare in the hearth, and I flinch. Rylan just tightens his grip on my leg ever so slightly, as if reminding me that he’s right here. Not that I could forget.
I let him distract me, let him ground me in this moment as his eyes stay locked on mine. “Rylan,” I breathe. I don’t think I even mean to.
“Rosie?” I shake my head as a smile overwhelms my face. Rylan stands, his touch falling away, but his boyish smirk stays. He walks over to the hearth, holding his hands out to capture the heat, and I feel my stomach sink. I thought—
I find myself standing and mindlessly walking towards where he stands with a frown pulling at my brows. I’m not even certain why.
He spins around just as I reach him, stepping into me. His chest a hairbreadth from where mine is heaving. My mind is a labyrinth, a flurry of thoughts and emotions interlacing with one another as I look up into deep green eyes.
“You’re vulnerable,” he says, as if in answer to my unspoken question. “A lot has happened in the last few days.”
“It has,” I breathe. “So help me take my mind off of it.”
“You want me to distract you, Everleigh?” His finger trails along the skin between my neck and shoulder.
Gods yes. But then I remember myself. Rylan is right, so much has happened in so little time. Hazel’s execution, my flourishing, and finding out about Rylan’s lies. All of it is woven together with a thread of gold, I need to untangle it. I have to go, no matter just how badly I want to stay.
“No, uh…” I shake my head, stepping out of his grasp. “I should go.”
Rylan’s fingers wrap around my wrist before I can take another step, pulling me back to him. My heart jumps up my throat. “Don’t even think about walking out that door.”
“What if I wanted to leave?” I breathe. It is an absurd thing to say.
“You don’t.”
My eyelids flutter. “Don’t I?”
We both know the answer to that—it is painfully obvious. No matter what I try to convince myself. “No.”
I barely get another breath in before his lips are on mine. I clutch onto his shirt, pulling him even closer as he walks me backwards until my backside hits the wooden table. I gasp into his mouth, and he devours it, one hand in my hair as the other grips my waist.
It feels so familiar, our positions bearing an uncanny similarity to the first time we did this.
I open my mouth, letting his tongue sweep between my lips as heat spears through me. I slide my hand up his chest, my fingers finding his hair and pulling, leaving him groaning into my mouth.
It feels like little sparks are exploding inside of me, like my cells are all moving to where Rylan’s body presses against mine. Every single part of me wanting to be closer to him.
I push up to sit on the table, wrapping my legs around him to pull him even closer. He leans over me, one hand planted on the table and the other caught in my hair.
He kisses me like he’s been aching to do it ever since the last time we found ourselves like this. Like my mouth is the only thing giving him air to breathe, like he might die without it. The feeling is intoxicating. More overwhelming than anything I’ve ever felt.
“You taste of sour berries.”
My eyes fly open as his lips stay devouring mine. He didn’t say that out loud.
“No, I didn’t.”
I push on his chest as my breath fights against the cage of my lungs. “What…”
He just grins, stepping back into me before he takes my locket between his fingers. “I’ve been waiting for the day you discovered it. I have been speaking to you for weeks, hoping one day you would hear me.”
My brows knit together. “How…what are you talking about?”
He taps the gold of the locket. “The moss.”
“The moss?”
“It is connected to the underground network, the one that the plants use to communicate with each other. Now we are connected to that network too. As long as you carry the moss with you, you can speak to anyone with the ability, so long as you think about them,” he says.
“And if they are thinking about you too, they’ll hear you.
” He says into my mind, his mouth closed.
I think of all the times I have heard his voice in my mind. I always thought I had imagined it.
“I keep mine in here,” he says, slipping his ring off of his finger and holding it between us. Huh.
I focus as hard as I can as I mentally reach for him.
“Like this?” I say inside my head, hoping it reaches Rylan. There’s nothing else I’m thinking about in this moment but him.
“Just like that, Rosie.”
A shudder escapes on a breath as his low voice echoes through my mind, his presence enveloping me more than it already did.
I feel my skirts being pulled up my legs by the invisible force of his magic. The fabric slides higher and higher as my breath escapes me, like I’ve given too much of it to him.
He leans in close to me once more, his mouth finding my skin as he delicately kisses up the column of my neck, his hand slipping under my skirts, my skin hot where his palm slides along my thigh.
A moan slips from my lips, and I hear him laugh through this new connection of ours. It sends gooseflesh crawling up my spine.
“We should stop,” he says without taking his lips from my skin.
“Why?” I ask aloud as my fingers pull at the surprisingly soft strands of his sandy hair.
Rylan does the exact opposite of what I want him to do—he pulls away, but he doesn’t go far. He pulls my skirts back over my legs.
“When we are…together, truly, I want it to be more than just a distraction for you.”
My heart stutters at his admission. “I know I said that.” I stand from my position on the table. “But this is more than a distraction for me, Rylan. You know that.”
“I know,” he nods. “But I want it to happen when it is only about you and me.” He tucks my hair behind my ear. “I want to spend hours exploring exactly which parts of you flush just like this.” He brushes a finger over the apple of my cheek. “But not tonight.”
He walks over to the hearth, tossing another piece of wood into the flames and leaving me to my imagination. I become even hotter than I was before.
“You need rest,” he says. “Today was the easy part. You need some sleep before we start again tomorrow.” He finally turns to face me once more, his gaze dark. “And the last thing we will do if I get another taste of you is sleep.”
My teeth find my bottom lip, anticipation coursing through my veins, even as I nod. “Tomorrow.”