Chapter 17
Seren
Throughout the night, my dreams had been dark, twisted images of death. The glazed, soulless eyes of Giulia as a skinwraith. A yellow glow, deep within. A crack and shattering of bone as I crashed into a tree, over and over.
My damp shirt clung to me as I yanked myself from sleep, nausea roiling my stomach.
I’d been moved to my tent, back on my bedroll. The last thing I remembered was my mother giving me a tonic. Judging by the depth of the darkness outside, though, it was still well before dawn.
Rykr slept on the rug near the stove, bound in irons.
I’d told him he wasn’t a prisoner here, but I’d gone back on my word when it was inconvenient.
And he’d tried to escape.
Except … he’d come back.
We were no closer to trusting each other. No closer to breaking the bond. No better prepared for the Skorn. But dwelling on it wouldn’t change anything, I just had to do better.
Pain shot through me as I rose.
My torso was bound in cloth, but the pain had dulled. Mother’s healing skills were unusual, blending Zhi techniques with Ibarran magic, and she’d learned more since moving to the Dreadwood.
Grabbing a jar of healing honey from my bedside, I tiptoed to Rykr.
The bond might be clouding my judgment but, dammit, so was he. He’d upended everything I thought I knew of Liriens.
The Viori had told me they were vicious. Zealots who cared more about enforcing the Bloodbinding than truth.
But I hadn’t seen that in Rykr. He’d disarmed my claims with thought and logic, but it was more than that. There was something about him—steady, deliberate, infuriatingly calm—that made it impossible to see him as a mindless soldier. And three times now, he’d gone out of his way to protect me.
The bond pulled me toward him, but it couldn’t explain why I was starting to want to trust him, and that terrified me more than anything.
Kneeling beside his feet, I studied him in the warm glow of the stove.
Dammit, I like him.
We hardly knew each other and yet I’d spent enough time to come to that conclusion on my own. He’d also kept his promise not to hurt me. Even last night, he’d slept far from my side, never making me feel unsafe.
Liking him—especially when I still didn’t know who he was or why he was in the forest—was dangerous, but it didn’t make it any less true.
I pulled the pin from my hair. As I unlocked the irons on his ankles, he jerked awake.
He rolled over, blinking at me. “What are you doing?”
“Taking the irons off.” I repeated the process with his wrists, my heart clenching at the welts on his skin.
The sweet scent of honey filled the space as I dipped my fingertips into the jar. “May I?” I gestured toward his ankles.
He gave a gruff nod.
I spread the honey over his wounds, using the barest pressure to avoid causing him pain.
“Thank you.”
“You have to swear not to run again, Rykr, even though you came back and helped me. At this rate, I’m never going to repay you.”
“Believe it or not, I’m not keeping score. But by my count, you saved me from execution and killed the skinwraith. If my friends in the Regulation ever hear about this, they’ll never let me live it down.”
I capped the jar, offering him a wry look. “Don’t get used to it. If you don’t start pulling your weight around here, I’ll have to return you back to where I found you.”
“Promise?” The corners of his mouth tipped up with amusement. He drew a slow breath through his nose, then sat as I finished putting honey on his wrists. “That feels surprisingly good.”
“It’s my mother’s secret recipe. Secret because it’s magic and she doesn’t share all the spells she knows. Which, given my record with you, is probably for the best. How are you feeling this morning?”
He raked his fingers through his hair, then examined his wrists, clearly relieved to be free of the irons. “Exhausted. And cold. My bath outside last night didn’t help.”
I glanced back at the bedroll, which had the only bedding in the tent.
Before I could talk myself out of it, I reached for Rykr’s hand, lifted his pillow, then tugged him back toward the bedroll.
A few sleeping hours remained, and I couldn’t live with myself if I let him shiver in front of the stove.
Rykr hesitated. “What are you doing?”
I threw him a smile. “Don’t worry, Lirien, I have no intention of deflowering you. But you might be warmer on the bedroll beside me, where there’s warmth from my body, sheets, and a pelt. Plus, it’s more comfortable.”
In the dim light of the stove, his lips twitched. “Thank goodness. If there’s one thing I’ve tried to do in life, it’s guard my innocence.”
I laughed softly. “I’m sure you’re a paragon of chastity.”
“Obviously.” He stretched out beside me, his voice turning lower. “Though if you change your mind about deflowering me, just let me know.”
The casual banter shouldn’t have made my stomach twist with heat, but it did. He made a joke feel like a dare.
Despite my intentions, a familiar feeling of anticipation crept through me at his nearness as I crawled into bed. Facing away, as though he could see the hint of desire igniting within me, I covered us both with the bedsheets, then the blanket. I backed up closer to him.
His clothes were wet and ice cold.
“You’re never going to warm up like that.” I groped in the darkness for my trunk. I’d washed his bloodstained clothes earlier, leaving them to dry.
I handed the clean ones to him. “Change. And take the shirt off—leave it by the stove. It’ll dry better there.”
A soft chuckle left him. “How did you know I love it when a woman tells me what to do in bed?”
“Lucky guess.” I crossed my arms, biting back a smile. “Hurry up before you freeze. I don’t want a half-dead man sharing my bedroll.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll be alive enough to be annoying.”
“I noticed.” I turned away, giving him privacy. “Maybe I should leave the irons on next time, just to keep things quieter.” Asshole. I smiled to myself as he stood. “Why’d you take a bath with your clothes on?”
He cleared his throat, the sound of his trousers falling. I tried not to picture him, mostly failing. “At first, it was to use the stream to throw them off my scent.”
Right. Because his plan had been to escape. “And after you decided not to run?”
He chuckled. “Hard to strip when you’re chained up like a criminal.”
His voice was light, teasing, but the reminder stung.
Oh no.
“I didn’t think of that,” I admitted, voice quieter. “I shouldn’t have—”
“You didn’t know I was going to try to betray you, or bathe. Next time, you’ll think before chaining up a perfectly innocent man.” He flashed me a grin as he reclined beside me, one that was impossible to be angry at, even if I wanted to be.
“Why did you come back?”
One arm stretched then bent, his hand settling behind his head. “Because I realized it wasn’t worth risking both our lives without a halfway decent plan. Even if your people murdered my … king.”
His answer wasn’t wrapped in any romantic trappings. He’d weighed the odds and wanted to live another day. Simple as that. Maybe he’d been slightly motivated not to risk my death, but I doubted I’d been much of a factor in his decision.
I swallowed hard. The depth of his grief simmered through the bond, raw and unfiltered. I wanted to be angry with him. To condemn his actions tonight and scream at the risk he had taken. Neither of us would have been in the woods when Giulia had attacked if not for him.
And yet … I understood his desperation to do something, even when he was powerless. That was what had led me to the border when I’d met him. My failure with Esme and my inability to help rescue her had driven me to act foolishly—and my problems had only been compounded since then.
“If you had escaped,” I said softly, “they would have hunted you down. And it wouldn’t matter if they caught you, Rykr, because they’d also hold me responsible for your escape. They’d hang me for it and then you’d be dead anyway.”
He faced me. “I’m not used to thinking about living for two people’s survival. I didn’t ask for this bond, Seren.”
“You think I wanted this?” I raised a brow.
“I’ve gone over what I did to save you a hundred times in my head—both before and after I did it.
Each way ended with one or both of us dead.
I considered dragging you to someplace secret, attempting to heal you there.
But the chance of us being found—either by a creature or a Vangar scout—was huge.
You were bleeding everywhere and needed healing. ”
He cleared his throat, tearing his gaze away. “You sure there aren’t any more skinwraiths waiting out there for us?”
I shivered then told him what had been plaguing my nightmares.
“She wasn’t just any skinwraith. Giulia …
” I shook my head, the guilt rising like acid.
“She gave me the books I brought back. Darya—Seth’s wife—had borrowed every other book I needed before I got there, on Seth’s orders.
I can’t help feeling like someone found out and punished her. ”
“Seth? Or his wife?”
I drew a slow breath. “Much as I want to blame Seth, I don’t think forbidden, dark magic is something he knows.
I may have broken Viori code, but that didn’t suddenly turn him into a dark sorcerer.
And Darya was the one who encouraged Giulia to give me the books in secret, I think.
It’s more likely Giulia encountered a skinwraith, but the coincidence bothers me. ”
“Are skinwraiths common around here?”
“I haven’t ever heard of one or seen another.
” My fingertips drifted over my ribs and I gritted my teeth at the pain.
I was lucky Giulia hadn’t broken my spine.
Healing from that might not have been possible.
“I’m worried that the vuk might have been a skinwraith too,” I breathed.
“Its eyes were glowing, deep yellow, inside the pupil.”
“I saw that, too,” Rykr admitted quietly. “What do you think is turning them?”
“I don’t know what to make of it. I don’t know how you were able to kill the vuk if it was a skinwraith, either—didn’t you say you have to decapitate them?”
He averted his gaze. “I told you … my sword might have had something to do with that.”
Something else he clearly didn’t want to talk about. Fine.
I turned my back to him, abruptly ending the conversation. “Go back to sleep, Rykr. Tomorrow we need to start training for the Skorn, and hopefully, break this bond before it.”
He said nothing, tension hanging between us as he released a slow breath, then rolled to his side, facing me.
Even though I couldn’t see him, I felt his nearness—the warmth of him against me. I took a strained breath, closing my eyes and trying to relax. At least I wasn’t thinking of the awfulness of the skinwraith’s clammy touch now.
Instead, all I could think of was Rykr’s touch. What would it be like, feel like, to have him run his hands over me?
Dammit. I shifted, pretending to adjust the blanket, trying to will the thoughts away. Beside me, Rykr’s breathing was steady, oblivious—or so I hoped.
It had been almost three years since I’d had sex, but this wasn’t just about that. It was him. His presence, his strength. The bond didn’t help, either.
Way too long since I’d had a man this close, especially one half naked and with a body like Rykr’s.
If I was honest, I’d never been with a man as attractive as Rykr, and that was increasingly problematic.
My core turned to liquid at the thought.
He was all rigid muscle, skin tanned golden from days of training in the sun, tattooed and callused hands. He’s probably good with those hands.
With Seth, sex had often been slow and languid, a respite from days out in the field. Silent, too, because I hadn’t wanted to get caught sneaking into a senior Vangar officer’s tent.
But I couldn’t imagine anything like that with Rykr.
I could picture him shoving me up against a tree and taking me there. Hard. Fast. Unyielding.
My breath went shallow.
Dammit, I’m wet.
Allowing him into my bed had been a colossal mistake—not that he was even doing anything to indicate he was interested. But my body was on fire, my need growing.
If this was the bond, it was winning. But was it only the bond?
Mother had warned me my body would yearn, that the magic binding us would twist desire into something nearly unbearable. But this … this felt different. More real. Which made it even more dangerous.
Gods, this was much, much worse than yearning, as I was damn near burning alive. My heartbeat quickened and I shifted one knee back.
The thought of his naked back when Seth had demanded he remove his shirt was enough to nearly undo me now.
“Seren?” Rykr’s voice was a low rumble behind me. “Are you holding your breath?”
I startled. “Um—”
He doesn’t know. There’s no way he possibly knows what I was thinking.
… except he was the one person who could hear my thoughts and feel my emotions.
Fuck.
He was silent, then shifted, just slightly. “I—”
“Don’t. Don’t say a word,” I snapped, mortification flooding through me.
Rykr rolled onto his back.
A full minute passed, then in the most insufferably smug tone, he said, “I’m much warmer now, thank you.”
Damn him, damn him, damn him.
Furious with myself, I gritted my teeth. I didn’t need daylight to see the self-satisfied smirk on his handsome face. I could sense it, practically feel it vibrating in the soft chuckle that came from deep in his throat.
He didn’t need a sword to disarm me.
Worse, he didn’t even know he’d done it.
I’m in so much trouble.