Chapter 16 #3
“You belong to yourself,” he repeats, “but you also belong with me. You are your own, but you are also mine—as I am yours.” My heart stutters and I want to cry from bittersweet joy.
I know he’s saying these things to me, but I still feel as if they’re somehow a lie because he’s not saying them to me.
I want to tell him the truth so badly but I have to wait until we reach Duskthorne.
I have to find out what Dorian’s plans are for me, but I also know that if I reveal the truth now, I’ll be putting Killian in a horrible position, having to choose between me and his king.
It’s clear that he doesn’t have any love for King Dorian, but he is sworn to him for reasons I don’t know yet.
So, no, I’ll keep my secret until I can face the king himself, and then I’ll.
..I don’t know what yet. Tempt him with the power of a bonded Gifted and reveal my true identity, I think.
I can bargain for Cece and Math’s rescue and then give myself over to Dorian to serve at his will in this war.
I don’t let myself think of the fact that he might choose to try to keep me for other reasons, to serve other purposes. ..
“I…” I don’t know what to say, swallowing hard and trying to force words to come, but none do. He smiles and kisses me, a soft touch of lips so tender my heart splinters.
“You don’t need to say anything, not yet.
I know things are…complicated and uncertain.
I don’t expect you to make any declarations until we reach Duskthorne…
until you have all of the information.” He searches my eyes for something, though I’m not sure what, but I hope that he can read what I feel for him there, even if I can’t say the words yet.
I want to ask what kind of information he means, I want to ask about the war, what he meant about the people Lyanna has taken, but I don’t, not now.
He’s riding into battle in the morning. Now is not the time.
When he comes back safely, then I’ll demand answers.
Until then, I’m perfectly content to spend the evening wrapped up in the man that I love. I may not be able to say the words yet, not until he knows the truth, but I can feel it and acknowledge it in my heart. In my bones. In my soul.
Well, perfectly content isn’t exactly accurate.
It takes all of my self-control not to rip his trousers off and beg him to fuck me until I can’t remember my own name, but that’s another thing that must wait.
So, I move my palm up his body, settling it over his heart and letting its reassuring beat calm the worry trying to drown me.
He kisses me then, long and deep, and we lose ourselves in every other pleasure we can conjure save actually having sex. Hours later, sated and exhausted, I lie on his chest as my lids get heavier and heavier, but just before I fall asleep, I murmur the most important words I’ve ever said:
“Come back to me, Killian.”
“Always, Tess. Always.”
I wake the next morning still exhausted.
Terrible dreams plagued me most of the night, the scene from the village visiting me over and over, but in the dreams every body on the pyre belonged to someone I love.
Their faces contorted in pain, screams and pleas echoing in my ears so loudly it felt as if my head might explode.
I’m not surprised to find that Killian is already gone when I pry my eyes open.
I squeeze them shut again and stretch my hand across the bed, imagining I can still feel him beside me.
I give up after a moment, knowing it will do no good to lie here and wallow and worry all day.
So, I hoist myself up, dress in my leathers and an emerald tunic, and plait a braid along the top of my head, leaving the rest of the curls free to cascade down my back.
I walk outside to find Soren prowling back and forth in front of the tent.
“How long have they been gone?” I ask, looking out over the camp.
Seeing it so empty makes my chest clench but I grit my teeth and try to force the unease away.
I remained, of course, along with a small cadre in case Amon didn’t honor the rules of battle, and other non-combative members of the army: the squires, Cookie, Mia—those types.
-Not long.-
I nod and cross my arms over my chest, warding off a cold that has nothing to do with the weather or my own Gift. No, this is the cold of the unknown. The cold of those left behind to wait and wonder. The worst cold I’ve ever known.
I decide to spend the time waiting with Mia, knowing she must be just as worried about Odessa, but just before I make it to her tent, a commotion stops me short. Shouts are coming from some of the soldiers left to guard the camp.
-Something is wrong…again.-
My heart turns to ice and I rush towards them. A soldier I don’t know is yelling, frantic and out of breath.
“We have to get to them. We have to warn them!” he pants, trying to push the others away as they hold on to him.
“Hawk, calm down! Tell us again, slowly,” Tristan demands, sharing a quick glance with me.
Killian claimed that Tristan was being left behind for a purpose other than keeping me safe, but he couldn’t actually come up with a reason when I’d pressed him on it.
I’d only kissed him in answer, and let it slide.
I do feel better having not only someone formidable—Tristan is second only to Killian himself when it comes to swordsmanship—but someone I actually know and care about here to guard me.
Hawk sucks in ragged breaths, and I wonder where the hells he’s run from. The battle? No, that doesn’t seem right, he isn’t in full armor and he said something about…warning them. My heart jumps into my throat and I try to keep it from strangling me.
“The prick that the Commander brought for interrogation, the one who stabbed him—” I flinch, remembering that wound, remembering the scar Killian chose to leave behind as a reminder…
and blush ever so slightly as other memories from the night flash.
They’re not enough to chase away the worry though, and all too soon they’re gone and the gravity of the here and now settles over me once more.
“—he was acting like a madman, laughing and cheering as if they’d won the whole bloody war.
He said…he said that we were all as good as dead. ”
“Oh come off it, Hawk, he’s just talking shite,” another soldier tells him, waving it off. I think his name is Edmund. Tristan tenses, clearly worried about his brothers in arms, but mostly about Odessa.
“No, you don’t understand! They don’t have three hundred men like we thought. They have a thousand.”
I blink and the other soldiers exchange glances. Some skeptical, some worried.
“No, that’s not possible. We’ve been scouting. We would have seen…”
“They have a Gifted who can somehow conceal the others!” Hawk cries, eyes wide and frantic.
“But Blackheart can block—”
“He wasn’t there,” I whisper. They all turn to me.
I clear my throat and force the words from numb lips.
“Commander Blackheart wasn’t with the scouts.
He couldn’t have blocked the Gifted. The scouts would only see what Amon wanted them to.
” I swallow hard. “But he’ll be able to block them now…
” And right now, he’ll be seeing the truth of the situation.
He’ll be seeing a thousand enemies across the frozen plain.
He’ll be seeing the end of his army—the end of his life.
I share a brief, horrified look with Tristan before whipping my head to Soren, unable to say the words but my familiar doesn’t need me to. He knows my heart.
-Get on,- the cat demands.
I leap onto his back and dig my fingers into his thick fur. He streaks away from the soldiers as they yell protests. After all, I’m still a prisoner and now I’m escaping. But I don’t give a fuck. Let them try to stop me.
-Stop us,- Soren corrects. -Hold on tight, daska.-
He runs ever faster, bounding through the drifts of snow with ease, and I settle down low on his back as the wind whips at us like a tempest. Please, please, please. Please let us get there in time. I can’t lose him. I can’t lose Odessa.
I don’t understand it all yet, but something tells me that we can’t lose this army. We can’t lose this war. Dorian may be a monster and Duskthorne hells on earth for Gifteds, but Amon is worse, and if Barony is allied with him, then it means I know where the true evil must lie.
But I don’t care about any of that right now. I don’t give a fuck about the Alliance or Barony or anything else in this entire world. All I care about is getting to Killian and the others.
I don’t know how long we run but it feels like no time at all when Soren reaches the crest of the hill overlooking the tundra. My breath catches when I see the sea of scarlet across the expanse of the tundra, flags with the crossed scythes of Nocadia flying high.
Holy. Fucking. Makers.
The captured soldier said a thousand, but it looks like tens of thousands to me, the line stretching all the way across the width of the plain and extending so far backwards that it disappears into the distance.
-Fuck,- Soren growls.
-Go!-
Soren leaps from the hillside and I brace myself as we hit the frozen ground, sliding towards the army waiting patiently to die.
Mutters and cries of alarm ring out as we streak through the ranks, a few swords even whipping out towards us in their shock and surprise.
Soren snarls when a blade grazes his side.
“Soren!” I scream, feeling as if I was the one who was cut.
-I’m fine,- he assures me. -Barely a scratch.-
I can feel the truth in his words and know that he’ll be ok, so I put it to the back of my mind and focus on the utter terror in front of me as we weave in and out of the soldiers, desperate to get to the front lines.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I grit out, and urge Soren on, desperate to do…
I don’t know what, exactly, but my Gift rises in my chest, ready and waiting…
but Killian is blocking me. I can feel it, thicker than ever before.
Fuck! Of course he’d be blocking anything and everything here, using the full power of his Gift in case anyone on the enemy side has powers to use against them.
I grit my teeth, knowing I’ll have to push past him somehow, hoping that I can.
I don’t know what aid I can truly render, but surely I can at least knock out the first line or two of their men with my ice?
I don’t know if it will be enough to truly help with numbers this large, but I have to try, I have to do something.
Everything inside of me is screaming to, telling me that this is where I’m meant to be, that I will somehow make a difference here.
We speed forward, somehow moving so fast that the world around us is just a blur of black armor and white snow, but so slowly that I think we’re running in place, not moving an inch.
We’re almost to the front line when I hear the sound, a strange shift in the air that I can’t immediately place…until I look up and see the sky above Amon’s forces filled with arrows. Thousands of them, maybe more, some on fire, all deadly.
“No!” I scream just as I hear Killian yell for his men to hold.
His voice cuts to the heart of me and nothing else in the world matters.
I slide from Soren’s back and roll, the way Tobias taught me should I ever be thrown from a horse or the wagon, wincing as I tumble over the ice.
The big cat roars his denial and protest inside my head, a snarl breaking free from his mouth for all to hear.
Confusion ripples through the men closest to us, but most of them are distracted, staring at the incoming assault.
I push myself up and run through the last line of men, breaking into the open space in front of them.
I see Killian then out of the corner of my eye whipping his head from the sea of arrows flying towards him and his men to me.
His eyes go wide and a roar tears from his throat.
“TESS!!”
The arrows reach their tipping point and begin their descent downward, the wind whistling as they fall, closer…closer…
I hit my knees and slide forward across the icy ground, unleashing my Gift like never before with a scream that feels as if it’s ripping my throat apart.
I feel Killian’s wall blocking me for a fraction of a heartbeat before I crash right through it, crumbling it to dust. I hear him shout my name again, but I grit my teeth and push with all my might, sending ice out across the tundra, a great, roiling wave of it.
I can see the edge of the Brink on the horizon.
-Thea!- Soren roars inside my mind and I feel him dig his claws into my soul, a wave of his strength crashing through me, refusing to let me go.
I cling to him and the Brink fades away like the setting sun disappearing beneath the waves in Helios.
Even so, my heart feels as if it’s going to explode, my every vein on fire and feeling as if it’s trying to rip free from my body.
Is this what it feels like? To be torn apart by your Gift?
But in this moment, I understand that woman from the story the man told us at the tavern. I understand seeing my own end and choosing to meet it in order to save those that I love.
It all happens in a matter of seconds, but it feels like ages to me, time crawling like a snail along a window ledge. I can barely breathe, but I realize that I’ve done it.
The arrows don’t fall. The army doesn’t advance. Killian is safe.
My vision tunnels, darkness closing in from all sides. I feel something wet and hot above my upper lip and when I wipe my hand across it, my fingers come away red. I turn to see Killian rushing towards me as the darkness takes over completely, and then I’m gone.