Chapter 15 #2
He hadn’t finished his words as her anger flared, fueling her movements. With light feet, she turned, jumping onto Falcrest’s chair to gain the advantage of height for her attack while he merely stood there, waiting as if she wasn’t a real threat.
“Are you planning on coming at me at some point, or will you be staying up there for the rest of the day?”
Oh, the challenge in his eyes was real—as were the flames of anger licking at Lory’s chest as she leaped at him with a battle cry.
Falcrest didn’t even bother lifting his sword; instead, sidestepping her and kicking her legs out from under her with a lazy sweep of his foot. “I’d hate to repeat my story and say you threw yourself at me again.”
Scrambling to her feet, Lory fought for breath, ignoring the throb in her hip where a bruise would bloom by tomorrow.
Dagger at the ready, she brought some distance between them, assessing Falcrest’s casual stance, his broad shoulders, and muscled arms. He didn’t need a blade to stop her, and he knew it.
If she didn’t adjust her tactics, he’d have her on her back again in a heartbeat.
“What’s wrong, Gutter Gem? Are you afraid of me?” With his gaze, he dared her to attack while the rest of his body said he was bored.
“I’m not afraid of anyone.” Circling him, she weighed her options: a quick stab under his arm or a punch to his stomach.
His face was too high up, and he was expecting her to use her dagger, judging by the way he kept the shiny silver blade within view by adjusting his stance with every other step she moved around him.
“Those are a fool’s words.” Tension rippled along his back as she made two quick strides to complete the circle, and he turned to face her once more.
“Are you saying I am a fool?” Was it stupid to provoke him like this? Definitely. Did it feel better than anything she’d done since she’d almost lost her head on the butcher’s block? Absolutely. Would she regret it?
Lory was still debating when Falcrest pounced, so fast she barely saw him move, his arm trapping her against his chest as he spun her back to his front.
“I’m saying you’re playing with fire, Lory, and not the good kind. It’s smart to fear people who are out for your blood.” His breath hit her ear in a hot gust as she held still, calculating her options, but the sensation of his muscles pressed against her back made the heat return to her skin.
“What if I’m out for your blood? You’d be dead in a heartbeat because you don’t fear me—because you underestimate me.”
“You said you didn’t want anyone to kill me because you wanted to be the one to do it.” The words sounded like from a different time, when she hadn’t burned in a stone chamber and Khayrivven Falcrest hadn’t carried her through a pyramid to save her.
“Something tells me my blood isn’t what you’re out for.”
“Are you talking about your body?” His smirk was obvious in his tone. “Because you’re not trying to fight your way out of this.” His arm tightened around her chest firm enough to make it clear there was no escape, yet gentle enough to show her he wouldn’t hurt her. “Are you angry yet, Lory?”
Guardians, his scent… Why did he have to smell so good, the sage and embers dominating today, a new, unfamiliar note joining the intoxicating blend.
Lory wasn’t proud of how greedily she inhaled when all she should have done was stab him in the thigh, but something kept the smoldering anger at bay.
Something potent and searing hot, dancing along her skin in all the places Falcrest’s body was pressed against hers.
“Not angry enough, I suppose.” His mouth was at her ear now, breath tickling her skin. “Maybe we should step it up a little.”
Without a warning, he dropped his arm, but he didn’t step away, and Lory didn’t move.
“Do you want me to make you angry, Lory?”
Guardians, that voice… Like molten honey, it trickled over her skin, making her ache for a single touch of those lips on her neck. Just one tiny touch.
“Or do you want me to do something else?”
Lory’s breath hitched as he shifted his weight behind her, and she only realized she was fully leaning into him when his chuckle danced over the shell of her ear, tickling and taunting.
Angry. She should be angry with him, but the heat was spreading from where her body was pressed up against his, so strong, so powerful, and everything she should run from—yet there she was, unable to peel herself away.
She had to do something, not just lean there like an idiot.
Reaching deep into the annoyance Falcrest so expertly built in her when he wanted to, Lory spun on her heels, but he didn’t step back the way she expected, didn’t raise his sword or hold her at arm’s length.
Instead, he let her stumble into him, and as she caught herself against his chest with her free hand, his eyes flared like torches above her, wandering to her mouth and lingering as emotions warred on his features.
His hand flipped up to her face, halting an inch from her cheek in that familiar motion, and Lory couldn’t stop herself from acknowledging how perfectly kissable his lips seemed from up close, even more so than from a distance.
“I’m tired of being angry.” Lory’s words dissipated on a gust of heat as Falcrest lowered his face an inch before freezing, gaze finding hers.
“Good.” His fingers twitched an inch from her cheek, but he didn’t touch her.
“I think fear isn’t the way for me to go either.”
A shuddering breath left Falcrest as he shut his eyes for a second as if to put whatever emotions were stirring inside of him back into a box. “Careful what you’re asking for, Gutter Gem.”
“I’m not asking anything.” Lory’s fingers curled into his shirt as she rose to her toes, licking across his lower lip the way she’d done in her dream, and where she’d found smart words to push him away then, her mind went blank at the taste of salt and sweet spices. So familiar…
Falcrest’s groan reverberated through her body, his hand flipping to the back of her neck, pulling her closer as his mouth molded over hers in a greedy kiss.
Whatever she’d dreamed it would be like to kiss him, this was better.
Dangerously addictive, with the way his tongue slid against hers, stroking and teasing, and his touch—
“What are you doing to me, Lory?”
Like fire. His hand was like fire as it brushed the side of her neck, so delicately, she couldn’t tell if it was intentional or if his subconscious was making it.
What she could tell was that his body reacted, hips rolling against hers, and she almost choked on a breath when his muscles weren’t the only part of him hard enough to cleave stone.
“You weren’t joking about what you can do with your mouth,” he gasped between kisses, dropping his sword and lifting her from the ground.
Lory’s legs wrapped around his waist, fingers digging into his shoulders as she glued herself to his lips, savoring the explosion of sensations inside her stomach.
Smoldering embers, her skin igniting at every breath they shared until she could no longer think and her dagger lay forgotten beside Falcrest’s sword.
“Lory—”
His voice was a touch of fire, while his mouth seemed to feed the flames building inside of her.
She wanted him. Guardians, she’d never wanted anyone as much as she wanted Khayrivven Falcrest. And he was the worst possible choice, and not only because he was above her in Ashthorn hierarchy.
She hated him—or at least she remembered hating him a minute ago, but the way her body reacted to him told a different story.
“You’re on fire, Lory.”
She barely heard him until his gentle shove brought some distance between them, and he eyed her with unmasked hunger and defeat, waiting for her to catch her breath.
“You’re on fire.”
It took her a moment to understand he was talking about literal fire.
At first, a glow of orange at her palms was the only thing she could see, but when Falcrest took her by the wrists, holding up her hands between them, clusters of flames were racing in her palms.
“Fuck—”
Fire magic. This wasn’t light or an illusion. It was fire—as gold and orange as the one from the torches on the walls, and just as hot. Only, not a hint of pain followed the fire in her hands.
“You could say so.”
Lory’s ragged breathing didn’t return to normal for a long time after Falcrest turned on his heels and left the room, leaving her to calm down until the fire in her palms winked out—the fire in her chest, however, didn’t.
When Lory entered the mess hall for dinner that night, Falcrest’s chair was empty, and from the table on the platform, General Ycken and Nefetari Brunn were eyeing her like she was an insect to be squashed.
Perhaps she was imagining it, but even Dunveil seemed to be paying her attention as she picked up a tray and loaded it with a bowl of soup and the same fig-nut salad Aiden was picking from the counter in front of her.
“Did anything happen during training?” He paused long enough to scan her face for injuries or those little lines of frustration appearing between her brows at times.
Awkwardly, Lory ran her empty hand over her hair, almost getting stuck in her braid. In her palm, she’d held fire—real, actual fire—mere hours ago, while Falcrest had paced the stone chamber on level two of the basement with an expression on his face like someone had hit him in the face.
“It was an interesting session for sure.” If only she’d sound as casual as she was trying to.
Aiden requited her words with a raised brow. “Judging by the way your hands are trembling, I’d say you found out what sort of magic you truly have?”
Clutching the tray tightly, Lory shot him a forbidding glance.
“You can’t tell anyone,” she hissed, not that anyone was paying attention—except half of leadership, of course.
Whatever Falcrest had told them, they were watching her suspiciously closely, even from up there.
But then, Aiden had seen her burst into flames the first time, and he’d kept his mouth shut, just as Falcrest ordered.
“Wasn’t planning to.” He shrugged, piling bread and cheese onto a plate before he advanced to the tea station. Lory followed closely. “I was merely considering whether my own magic could be of any use when practicing yours.”
Sometimes, Lory forgot that he was no longer Frost, the man who would freeze her over with his glacial eyes or his icy magic, but Aiden Bellmont, the boy who lost a sister, and to him, she’d become the girl who lost a brother.
“Maybe…” Together they made their way to the table, sitting next to each other at the very edge, so the others couldn’t hear them. “No idea what Falcrest is planning to do about it. He can’t keep it a secret forever.”
“Until the Knowledge test.”
Of course. But she needed at least some modicum of control before then. Maybe they could still mask it as light magic in front of Dunveil.
The way the Knowledge Hand tilted his head up there, at his table, told Lory they couldn’t hide anything from him, and the reason Falcrest wasn’t there made her stomach clench with worry.
Worry—
Worrying about Khayrivven was new, as was the flush of heat rising in her chest at the thought of how he’d coaxed out her magic.
Lust, a powerful emotion, but she hadn’t been the only one falling prey to it. The captain had been just as swept up in the moment.
And that was all it was. A moment. A means to get her magic to unfold without setting the entire building on fire.
Like a phantom touch, the memory of his hand ghosted over her cheek, and her mouth tasted of salt and sweet spices.
Lory pressed her knees together at the thought of how his body had responded to hers.
Just a moment.
“Where is Falcrest, by the way? Running errands?” Aiden’s gaze had followed hers to the empty spot at the leadership table.
“As if he’d tell me that.”
Thal and Jarek were sitting down across from them with Tabi next to Lory, her tray uncharacteristically empty.
“Where were you at Veiled training today?” Thal prompted, pulling strings of water from the jar at the center of the table into his glass before doing the same for Tabi and Jarek.
“Private session with the captain,” Aiden answered for her with a roll of his eyes, and Lory wanted to squeeze him in a hug for not making it awkward. “She’s behind on magic training, and Captain Falcrest is the best.”
“Is that a hint of true admiration there, or are you suffering from hostage syndrome?” Jarek threw across the table, picking at his salad with a fork.
“Definitely hostage syndrome.” Lory didn’t imagine the twitch of his lips. “Perhaps next time, I’ll throw myself at him. I’ve heard he’s superior in bed.”
“Just as he’s superior at basically everything.” Eira slid into her seat next to Jarek, Brycon, and a few other blues at her side.
“Like killing,” Lory grumbled under her breath.
One moment of intimacy didn’t change that, no matter how her heart ached at the memory of his unguarded moment.
There was more to Falcrest than the unfeeling, ruthless captain she’d suspected since he’d carried her back to the infirmary, but what did that change?
He was still the one who delivered stragglers for killing at breakfast. Still the one who told them they’d regret their life choices.
As a criminal at Ashthorn Ward, Captain Khayrivven Falcrest was still her handler.
Now, he knew her deadly secret, and all she could do was hope he wouldn’t deliver her to the Triad or worse, Lord Ycken or King Ulder himself.