CHAPTER FOUR
ALYSSUM
“Unhand me,” I managed, a careful utterance in the hopes of minimizing my throat’s movement. Each breath drawn felt like a beckoning call to her blade, despite knowing she had no intention of drawing blood.
“And why should I?” Anise’s lips brushed against my ear, prompting the unwelcome pooling of warmth in my stomach. “I’ve caught you fairly.”
The arm wrapped around my waist tightened uncomfortably, and I squeaked out, “You’ve won!”
“No surprise there,” Anise taunted, twisting my body towards the Threshold. “Got a death wish you failed to inform me of?”
I instinctively turned my head away from that barrier of fog, trying to get a look at her to no avail. “I… there were Sentinels… they’d been fitted with metals…”
“And what business is that of yours?” she spat, shoving me from her grasp and into the nearest ironbark. “How could you be so reckless?”
I collapsed against the trunk, chest heaving with each strangled breath.
There was a puckered line where her blade had come dangerously close to breaking the skin, and I winced when my fingertips found it.
I wanted to round on her, to scream in her face for frightening me—but that would only deepen the hole I’d dug myself into.
“I asked you a question,” Anise said, her stony disposition falling into place.
I was proud of my self-control as I turned towards her, setting my jaw and refusing to relinquish hold of my raging emotions.
I locked onto her angular eyes, so dark they appeared black.
Searching for her outrage, or at the very least disappointment, I found none.
Anise’s eyes, nose, and mouth were all proportionally small compared to her oval-shaped face.
Her round cheeks and soft features were deceiving, often lulling others into perceiving her as young and harmless.
If they were fortunate, they’d escape her presence with that misguided belief intact.
Unlike me, she had no reason to hide her identity, so her lowered hood gave way to dark brown, chin-length hair she had cut herself.
A warm, swirling wind sent the strands flying, whipping against her face, yet she stood statue-still, the slightest wrinkle indenting between her brows.
Was that… worry?
“Forgive me,” I said finally, a pang of guilt slicing through my chest.
“That’s not an answer.” Anise’s hand rested on the hilt of her now-sheathed dagger, as it always did when we were beyond the wall. “We weren’t scheduled to train beyond the wall today, and it’s not just your life you risked by taking matters into your own hands.”
“I know—”
“I know you know, and that makes it all the more rage-inducing.” Anise ran both hands through her hair, pulling at the strands and gazing starward. “I mean, what the fuck, Lyssa? I half expected to find your body out here.”
“I was careful,” I managed, palms up in desperation. “I followed them at a distance. They never saw—”
“They are not the only danger lurking in this wood.” Anise cast a glance at the Threshold and my attention followed hers. The gloom, thick and whirling with its other-realm cadence, captivated us both for several moments.
“I deserved to see it,” I whispered, fingernails biting into my palm. “Everything has been kept from me. Everything. There was an opportunity to experience the truth—for once in my life—and I took it. Can you blame me?”
“Feel better? Are you any less afraid than you were before?” Anise said, her voice devoid of sympathy.
“I never said I was afraid.”
“You’d have to be far stupider not to be.”
“Fine. I’m petrified of the damn thing, same as most. Is that what you want to hear?” My attention volleyed between her and the fog, as though I were frightened its tendrils might unfurl towards us at any moment.
“All Lunamorians should fear the Threshold.” She said it as if the words weren’t her own. As if they had left someone else’s mouth and burrowed within hers, ready to be wielded at a moment’s notice.
When I scoffed involuntarily, the curve of Anise’s lips disappeared.
“You are Lunamorian, Lyssa. Same as the rest of us.”
We both knew that wasn’t the whole truth.
“Am I?” I raised my hands to my coif, prepared to rip the fabric from my head, but Anise was on top of me before I could complete the motion.
She pinned me to that same ironbark, her body secure between my legs, a wall of well-trained muscle I had no hope of escaping.
She held both of my wrists, locking them above my head in a vice-like grip I knew better than to thrash against.
“What… is… wrong with you?” she seethed, her face too close to mine.
“Stop acting like you have all the answers,” I snapped back.
I searched her dark eyes, easily spotting the reflection of my own.
Too bright—almost reflective—and the same pale blue shade of the Xanine River when winter transformed its currents into sheets of ice.
Only half of me, though it may as well have been all; one drop of Soran blood was enough to seal my fate.
Anise hesitated there, her heavy breaths drawing down my neck.
When she shifted her weight, inadvertently pressing against my core, it was all I could do to close my throat, sealing away the involuntary gasp that flared my nostrils.
Something in her expression gave way, a flash of emotion narrowing those dark eyes.
But I couldn’t let my mind wander there.
I wasn’t safely tucked beneath my sheets, edging my body closer to the point of becoming undone.
Even there, I resisted the image of Anise’s lips and their taunting pout—indulging in the impossible, I had learned from a young age, only furthered the discontent that persistently hovered on the edge of my consciousness.
But our proximity was not helping matters.
I repositioned my hips in an attempt to distance our bodies, which only caused Anise to lock hers, further solidifying that I wasn’t to move until she allowed it.
“I think you’ve made your point,” I said evenly, drawing her eyes to my mouth.
Was I imagining it, or had Anise’s breathing quickened?
Her slightly parted lips were mere inches from my own.
I could smell the mint tea she drank every morning and weakly wondered what it might taste like on those full lips.
I had a distinctly growing impression that tonight, my fantasies would try to get the better of me once more.
But I had little interest in succumbing; it wasn’t worth the guilt that followed shortly thereafter.
“Please,” I managed, desperate to be rid of her scent. “I won’t do anything stupid.” I hoped my sincerity overshadowed the breathy cadence of my voice, but I wouldn’t have bet on it.
Finally, and without warning, Anise released me. She took several steps away before turning her back, short hair bobbing with the movement.
“I never should have brought you out here,” she said, words laced with self-reproach.
“You clearly can’t be trusted with the responsibilities of a Sentinel.
So few are ever allowed beyond the wall, and I mistakenly thought you would appreciate the exposure, given your eventual fate. But it ends here.”
“No,” I challenged unthinkingly. I never wanted to lay eyes on the Threshold again.
In fact, I couldn’t be rid of it fast enough.
But the forest had awakened something within me.
Training amongst the trees I hadn’t been allowed to so much as see…
it was freedom unlike anything I had ever experienced, and I would not let her take that away.
“You can’t stop me without endangering yourself.
If anyone were to find out we’d been here… ”
Before the words finished leaving my mouth, I regretted them.
Anise stilled, and I could all but feel the rage emanating from her in waves. “I have been too lenient,” she said, her voice deepening, “and indulged you for too long. All because…” She scoffed, her shoulders pinching with the sharp noise. “This ends now, Princess.”
Anise returned to me, her darkened demeanor prompting an instinctive recoil.
I pressed my lips together, only able to take half a step back before bark pushed into my spine.
She lingered there, half-lidded eyes narrowed into slits, embodying a version of herself that had never been directed at me.
If I were any other recruit, I doubted I’d escape training unmarked.
I swallowed the lump forming in my throat before forcing my chin to rise in defiance.
“I’m bringing you back to the castle. You will not, under any circumstances, return to the wood without my express permission.” Her lips dropped to my ear, cadence slowing due to long, torturous pauses between each syllable: “Is that understood?”
I had no control over the sudden inhalation that tightened my chest. I stared past Anise, into the Threshold, my watering eyes unblinking as a blanket of fear hovered over my body. But this was a breed of fear I would not allow for anyone other than my father.
I was barely audible as I forced myself to meet her eyes. “You sound like him.” I could see the pain flash over her features, though it disappeared as quickly as it arrived. “Is that what you’re threatening me with, Anise? Are you going to hurt me? Or will you have him do it for you?”
It seemed my blow had melted some of her ire, for she mumbled, “Don’t be stupid.
If I were willing to turn you over to your father, I’d have done it your first week of training.
” She hesitated knowingly as my memory reached into the past. “Do you remember when you nearly maimed that child watching over the Sentinel’s logs?
Honestly, balancing an armful of weaponry to disguise your identity… as if no one would notice.”
I wanted to argue that the girl hadn’t been hurt, just startled. And who lets a child guard something as important as the Sentinel’s logs? But I thought better of it, instead raising my eyebrows in denial.