Chapter 7
“Like there’s ever a time I’m not thinking about her.” ~ Cush
Cush hated pacing. It felt useless, energy burning off with nowhere to go, agitation without a target.
Still, he found himself wearing a shallow trench into the ancient stone floor of the king’s study, boots scraping over centuries-old runes as the Book of the Elves pulsed on the table like a heartbeat gone wrong.
Not dangerous, worse. Wrong.
The air felt thick, unmoving, as if the room itself had decided to hold its breath and wait for something terrible to happen.
Across the space, Trik watched him from near the wall, arms folded, one shoulder braced against the stone. The Book’s flickering glow cut sharp lines across his face, catching the tension in his jaw, deepening the shadows beneath his eyes.
“You’re annoying me,” Trik said flatly.
Cush didn’t break stride. “I’ll try to lose sleep over it later.”
“Sit,” Trik said, pushing off the wall. “Before I kill you and have to find another male to console your distraught Chosen.”
Cush snorted. “I doubt she’d be all that distraught right now.”
Cush dropped into the chair opposite the Book, elbows braced on his knees. He didn’t look at the artifact. He refused to give it that satisfaction. He was sick of old magic and its moods. More than that, he was sick of the quiet.
The bond with Elora, normally a living, breathing thread of heat and fire, felt muffled. Smothered. Wrapped in something foreign and cold. Not gone. Just off. She had never felt like this to him.
Trik’s gaze sharpened. “We can’t both brood.”
“Why not?” Cush snapped.
“Because then neither of us thinks clearly,” Trik replied. “And something important slips past us.” He paused. “Also, I’m the king. I get first claim on brooding.”
Cush let out a humorless laugh. “You sound like a petulant child.”
Trik didn’t smile. “And you sound like a general avoiding the real problem. So talk.”
Cush scrubbed a hand over his face, the leather of his bracer rasping against his jaw. Gods, he was tired. Bone-deep, soul-weary tired, the kind that crept up on you when you’d been holding the line for too long. “She’s . . . quiet,” he said finally.
Trik straightened. “Quiet how?”
“The bond.” Cush tapped his chest. “It’s there, but dulled. Like she’s put distance between us. She’s angry, that’s normal. But this?” His voice roughened. “This isn’t.”
Trik’s expression tightened. “Cassie’s been quiet, too.”
Cush looked up sharply. “You noticed.”
Trik shot him a flat look. “I’m not obtuse.”
“She might disagree,” Cush said, arching a brow.
Trik tensed, and Cush regretted the jab instantly. Silence stretched, tight as an overdrawn bowstring.
Cush exhaled hard. “Elora was sparring with Leeland.”
Trik tilted his head. “Is that your sin, or are you trying to make it hers?”
Cush’s lip curled. “He’s reckless.” And nearly dead, Cush thought grimly. Leeland had known better. Had ignored orders, again. So Cush had dealt with him. Probably not his most shining moment as a leader of an elfin army.
“She’s a warrior,” Trik said evenly. “You trained her. You don’t get to be surprised when she uses what you gave her.”
“She nearly got her arm snapped,” Cush growled. Heat flared along his skin, magic rippling just beneath the surface. “He overextended. She didn’t see it.”
Trik shrugged as if that was nothing. “But she handled it.”
Cush’s eyes narrowed. “She could have been seriously hurt. I don’t want her to experience pain when there’s no reason for it. It’s preventable in this case. Knowing I can’t make her understand, or even listen to me . . .” Cush shook his head as the words died in his throat.
“You can’t fix what that fear does to you,” Trik said quietly.
The words landed square in his chest. Cush sank back in the chair, elbows braced on his knees, staring at the floor. “She thinks I’m smothering her.”
“Are you?” Trik asked, with no judgment in his tone.
“Yes.” The word came out sharp. “Because I almost lost her. Because there are a hundred ways this realm can take her from me.”
Trik’s jaw tightened. “She didn’t survive all of that to be treated like glass.”
Cush flinched. Truth hurt like that.
“I’m not judging you,” Trik said more softly. “I’m standing in the same mess. I keep pushing Cassie away because I’m afraid the darkness in me will touch her. I call it protection. Myrin calls it cowardice.”
Cush blinked. “Do you think you’re a coward?”
“I think fear wears convincing masks,” Trik replied. “Duty. Logic. Strategy. Strip them away and it’s still fear of losing what you love more than trusting what you love to survive beside you.”
Cush looked away, jaw tight. “Sometimes I think she picked the wrong male.”
“Cush,” Trik warned.
“I’m serious,” he said. “She’s half dark-elf. Brilliant. Wild. She should have someone who lets go, not someone who grips tighter the more afraid he gets.”
Trik’s expression sharpened to something lethal. “You are exactly who she needs.”
The ache in Cush’s chest deepened. “Neither of us has done a good job lately.” He looked up. “Cassie needed you. She needed to talk to you.”
Trik’s eyes narrowed. “How would you know that?”
Cush hesitated. “I . . . heard something.”
“Cush.”
“When I was near her,” he said and watched as Trik went rigid.
He quickly continued, “Elora was with her. I wasn’t alone with your Chosen.
” Cush wouldn’t normally feel the need to clarify that, because he knew Trik trusted him.
But, Trik hadn’t been himself for a while, and they were territorial and possessive of their Chosen females on a good day.
He cleared his throat and said, quietly, “I heard a second heartbeat. Her magic is different. Fuller.” He swallowed. “She’s carrying your child.”
The world contracted. Not metaphorically, physically. The edges of the room blurred, sound dulling as if cotton had been shoved into his ears. The Book’s pulse stuttered, its glow flickering once before dimming, but Trik barely registered it. His lungs locked. His chest refused to expand.
“You’re certain?” The words scraped out of him, thin and disbelieving, like they’d been dragged up from somewhere too deep.
“Yes.”
The answer landed hitting like a fist to the sternum, like the sudden drop of a blade where he hadn’t known there was one. Trik’s knees went weak, the floor tilting beneath him, and instinct alone had his hand slamming down on the table to keep himself upright. Cassie. Pregnant.
The bond erupted. Not a single emotion, too small for what tore through him, but a violent collision of them. Awe so sharp it burned. Joy so sudden it hurt. Fear so vast it hollowed him out from the inside. A life they’d created out of love.
Something inside his chest cracked open, and for a heartbeat he swore he could feel it, small, bright, impossibly fragile, nested within the warmth of Cassie’s magic like a second sun.
His breath shuddered free in a sound that might have been a laugh, or a sob, or something dangerously close to breaking.
“She didn’t tell me,” he whispered. The words tasted wrong. Hollow. Accusatory in a way he hadn’t meant, but couldn’t stop.
“And you haven’t made it easy for her to reach you,” Cush said, quiet but unyielding.
Trik’s eyes snapped open, anger flaring hard enough to light the shadows in the room.
Heat rolled off him, magic reacting to the surge of emotion he could no longer contain.
“She should have told me,” he said, sharper now, the edge of panic bleeding through the outrage.
Because if she was carrying his child, if she’d been doing it alone, in silence, while he—
“She will,” Cush said steadily. “When you show her she still belongs beside you.”
Not protected from you. Not kept at a distance. Beside you. The words flashed in his mind.
“Not outside this room,” Cush finished.
The words struck deeper than any accusation. They slid past his defenses and lodged somewhere dangerous, somewhere tender. Trik’s gaze dropped to the Book, to the space between them, to the choices he’d made in the name of protection that suddenly looked a lot like abandonment.
The realization burned. Cassie had been carrying his child, and he had been pushing her away.
Trik drew a breath that shook all the way down to his bones.
The study felt too small suddenly, the walls pressing in, the air thick with unspent magic and regret.
His hand tightened on the edge of the table, fingers digging into ancient stone as if he could anchor himself through sheer force of will.
The bond pulsed again, sharp this time. Not distant.
Not muted. Protect. The instinct roared up from somewhere primal and violent, eclipsing everything else.
He turned toward the Book, vision narrowing, magic coiling tight beneath his skin.
Something answered.
The Book’s light flared, too bright, too sudden. Shadow bled through the glow, threading itself into the runes etched across its surface like ink spilled into water. The temperature in the room dropped, the hairs on Trik’s arms lifting as power surged outward.
Cush swore under his breath. “Trik—”
Too late.
The Book pulsed again, harder, its rhythm syncing with the pounding of Trik’s heart.
The table shuddered beneath his palms. Symbols he hadn’t seen since before the war writhed into place, old magic reasserting itself with brutal insistence.
And then, the whisper slid through the room.
Not sound. Not thought, but something older.
Mine.
Trik sucked in a breath, the word hitting him like a blade between the ribs. His magic reacted instinctively, flaring hot and dark, a crown of shadow licking up his arms as he straightened. “No,” he said, the denial tearing out of him. “They are not yours.”
The Book’s glow deepened, shadows pooling thick and heavy beneath his hands. The air vibrated, pressure building until it pressed behind his eyes, down his spine, into his bones.