42. Harper
42
HARPER
T he yawning shadows of the fading day made Dimitrius look drawn and worried. They pooled in the hollows under his eyes and carved gauntness into his cheeks. But it was his eyes that stopped her dead because they burned with such intensity—and the way his attention fixed so singularly upon her that it made the world fall away.
“How did you…” Her voice trailed off as her chest tightened. His citrus and musk scent surrounded her, and with every step that drew him closer, she trembled more. His presence was all-consuming.
“Miss me?” He smirked at her, cocking his head. For a second, the raw need in his eyes vanished as his mask slipped into place. The cocky, arrogant spymaster she had first met.
Her gape turned into an indignant scowl as fury fired inside her. “Never!” Fury was good. Fury was safe. Honed like a blade of fire, it carved and burned away this thing that threatened to engulf her, because to have him so close, to be reminded of the intoxicating power of his presence… oh, what she had thought she had felt towards him had only grown in his absence, and she despised herself for it.
“The lady doth protest too much,” he said, his sharp teeth flashing in the gloom as his grin widened.
Already, her anger had peaked and receded, because damn him, even the masks he wore lured her in. But she had to know—had to rip off that mask. “Why did you come? How did you find me?”
The facade dropped away and that haunted stare of his returned as he crossed the final few steps to her. “Are you alone?” He looked both ways across the bridge, and then the full force of his attention was on her as she backed to the parapet, beyond which was a precipitous drop. She was glad not to be able to see into the void behind her. He was threat enough as he followed her. It knocked the breath from her to have him so close. His shadow crossed her. She could reach forward and touch him—and she wanted to, despite everything. She could not afford this.
“Why do you want to know?” Desperate hostility spiked from every syllable. She sought comfort in her magic, revelling in the feeling of power coursing through her—an anchor to this madness that wanted to sweep her away.
“You needn’t do that, Harper, I mean you no harm. Put your magic away—though I am glad to see how much you have grown, little huntress.”
The nickname sent an unwelcome thrill through her. “Don’t call me that!”
The lazy smirk he sent her threatened to stall her breath. She held onto the magic brimming in her, fighting past the warmth that gathered in her core. His amusement faded. “I came to warn you, Harper.” He swallowed, and his eyes slipped shut for a second.
She watched him warily—watching for any tell of a threat—but he seemed a mess. It was an odd feeling. He was a threat, after all, yet they previously had had to cooperate so intimately that she did not view him as one. She trusted him—he’d saved her, protected her, even sent her away to keep her from danger, when he owed her nothing. It felt strange to fall back into such animosity. And now, when she felt as though she knew him, she felt like she could say with some certainty that the male before her was nothing close to cold and calculating. He was not, if she judged soundly, wearing any of his masks now. So why had he come?
“You need to leave Keldheim—leave Valtivar. Go far from here.”
She did not know what she had expected—but it was not that. “Why?”
“Isn’t it obvious? I saw you in Afnirheim. You know what’s happening.” He gritted his teeth.
She raised an eyebrow. “Do I?”
“You know enough to understand Valtivar is not safe for you.”
“Why? What’s happening that I need to be so worried about?” she challenged, stepping closer and jutting her chin out in defiance as she looked up at him.
“Gods, woman,” he snapped, but a thrill rose in Harper as he glared down at her. He uttered a sound of frustration in the depths of his throat, and his hands fisted at his sides. “You delight and yet incite me with your wilfulness. You will not simply listen, will you? I know you saw him . This isn’t just a goblin uprising. It spreads beyond that.” He leaned closer, his voice dropping. “War is coming, Harper. Do you know what his mark means?”
That he would not utter Saradon’s name sent a prickle of unease down her spine. “The Riven Circle?”
“Yes.”
“It’s a broken wheel.”
“Yes, but it’s so much more than that,” he said impatiently, stepping back and running a hand across his hair. “He’s returned, Harper. I won’t lie. I played my part in it—” she stilled at his words, “—but you know the rotten depths of the sinful court I seek to topple. Surely you can imagine the better Pelenor I desire more than anything to build. The time fast approaches, Harper, when there will be little choice in the matter. Soon, he will be the master of Pelenor, and a new age of peace and prosperity will dawn?—”
The blood drained from her. “Are you insane ?” she shouted. “This is your doing?”
“Well, I?—”
She jabbed her finger at the mountain beside her. “My friend is in there. He suffered unimaginably at the hands of those… those… monsters . People died ! I saw inside the mountain, Dimitrius. I saw what they did to all those dwarves.” Now she felt nauseated. She swallowed, and her tongue darted out to moisten her lip. “Please tell me you didn’t take part in that. That is no better than Toroth. In fact, that is worse. Please .”
It was a plea for so much more than she could voice. He could not be complicit, willingly a part of that, surely. If so, she had misjudged him entirely and she was a fool. For all she had disliked discovering Aedon’s hidden depths, she had known quite how vile Dimitrius was. Or at least, she thought she had. Thought she had at least appreciated the honesty with which he presented his callous shards.
“It’s not like that,” he said desperately, stepping forward again. “There are always casualties of wa?—”
“No! I won’t hear it. I thought… I thought you might be different. Decent. You were so kind to me. You protected me.” She looked at him as though he were a stranger. “But you’re just like the rest of them. Greedy and self-serving. Willing to do whatever it takes, hurt whomever you need to, in your race to the top.” She shoved him away, wanting and despising the solid bulk of his muscled torso, but he yielded, perhaps in surprise, and she stormed past him, back to the mountain—knowing full well he would not give up.
“I’m not like that!” he snarled, and his steps chased hers. He grabbed her arm as she entered the hollow of the tunnel and spun her against the wall. Rough rocks bit into her back. “For heaven’s sake, Harper, listen .”
This close, she saw the raging passion in his eyes, the desperation with which he implored her. Even though the cold wind stole every shred of real warmth it could from her body, the heat of his magic burned her right to her core. With his hand on her body, pinning her upper arm into place, a conflict of an entirely different kind raged within her. She hadn’t realised that in the heat of the moment, she had grabbed a fistful of his shirt in her hands, and she released the luxuriantly soft fabric, clutching her hand to her chest as though it had stung.
His next words came more softly but no less filled with fervour. “I promise you, it’s not like that. That’s not who I am. That’s not what I want.” He closed his eyes for a moment, then sighed. At his slumped shoulders, the stiff resistance in her limbs melted away. This was no threat—he was in agony. This, whatever it was, gutted him. She did not understand him at all. His hands slipped from her shoulder, and he braced on the stone to either side of her. When he opened his eyes, he flinched at her hard expression, but she was listening.
He shook his head. “I’m not sure I can stop him now. It’s like a river tumbling over a waterfall, picking up speed. I’m trying to steer it away from disaster with what power I have. I just—I had to warn you. If you stay, you’ll all be caught in the middle. I cannot protect you from what is coming. And…” His voice dropped so quiet that she could barely hear him over the rumble of the river in the canyon below. “…I want to.” He hung his head, so close his forehead almost touched hers.
She wondered at his choice of words. A dangerous feeling took a hold deep within her as she stood, cradled in the cocoon his body created around her. “Why do you care?” she asked quietly, the stinging vehemence gone from her voice. The warmth of his breath caressed her cheek.
He opened his mouth. Shut it again. Swallowed. “I shouldn’t,” he admitted. “I shouldn’t care at all. But I do. Just as I suspect you do, because you are brimming with magic and you have not yet attacked me as you ought to, if you knew what was good for you, even if the chance of you besting me is utterly futile. Somehow, you make me lose all reason, Harper. You offer me a sliver of brightness in this hell of an existence that I want to seize and not let go of, even though I have no damned right to deserve it.”
It was so honest, so free of his confusing masks, that it felt too raw for her, speaking to the deep, piercing ache building inside her chest and closing off the breath from her chest. However much he meant well, however much she felt the bitter truth to the agony of his words, his actions spoke of a different story. One in which he was complicit in horrific acts. What did it make her if she wanted a monster? If she pitied him for the consequences of his ill-intended actions? If that made her feel only more conflicted, not less, by his shades of grey?
“He may kill me if he finds that I am here with you. Warning you.” Dimitri groaned. “And yet, I still cannot stop myself. This is how much you affect me, Harper, and believe me, I despise myself for it. I despise that you make me so weak. I do not beg anyone—but I will beg you if I must, to see you safe. Do not make me.”
He would beg ? Did it thrill her to see him this utterly broken at her expense? Or horrify her? She would not yield to it, for that way, madness lay. “I cannot go. I will not go. There is too much at stake, and I am no coward,” she said, raising her chin to look him directly in the eye, the tip of her nose threatening to brush his. The shock of his violet gaze searing into her so close clutched at her chest, and now her legs threatened to buckle at the not at all unpleasant swoop in the pit of her stomach.
“Of course, you can’t. Of course, you won’t,” he murmured, the words dropping from his lips to hers. “I would not be so consumed by you if you fled.”
Consumed . The shock of that confession stopped any retort.
He let out a bitter laugh. “Oh, Harper. You will be my downfall.” He hovered there, and the only sound was the sawing of their heavy breathing. His eyes flicked to her lips and back again, and his neck corded, his jaw clenching as though he restrained himself at great cost.
Harper felt as though she were aflame and utterly lost to common sense and reason now. What hung between them, intense and charged, lured her in. If he stooped to kiss her now, she did not think she wanted to push him away, much as she knew she ought to. This was the forbidden fruit she had thought of, after all. A taste lay right before her, ripe for taking. The moral conflict of that lay heavily over the desire coursing through her. The energy thickened between them until she could have carved the tension with a knife, like a bolt of lightning needing the release of discharge to clear.
“Dimitrius…”
He groaned. “Damn it. Do not utter my name. I shall lose all semblance of control.”
Harper took in a shuddering breath as he leaned closer still, just one fraction, showing his slipping leash. And she did not resist as she should have.
“Oi!” The wind lulled, revealing clattering footsteps heading their way. Dimitrius pushed away from the wall at once, snarling at the intrusion.
“Harper?” Aedon’s voice carried across the bridge. “Is that you?” He emerged into the light, stopping suddenly at the sight of them. “Get away from her!” Aedon surged forward, magic lighting his palms.
Dimitrius looked at Harper and stepped back.
Harper’s pulse thundered with something more primal that cut through the haze of desire. She sprang away from the wall and from Dimitrius as though they had burned her. To her surprise, she found herself moving in front of Dimitrius, holding up her hands.
“Stop!” she ordered Aedon. “It’s all right.”
Aedon halted, but the magic in his palms kept flickering. Suspicion darkened his face. Harper turned to Dimitri. What had brewed between them was shattered with Aedon’s arrival, the spell broken. Yet he still gazed upon her with such intensity it stalled her breath anew.
“Heed my words, Harper. Please ,” he murmured to her, too soft for Aedon to hear. He raised a hand to her arm, but Harper stepped from his reach. That was far too dangerous. She narrowed her eyes, stared at him for a few seconds more, then turned on her heel and strode away, steeling herself against his intoxicating presence.
“You shouldn’t have come here alone,” Aedon hissed at her as she strode past him.
“I don’t take orders from you , Aedon,” she spat, throwing the wrath she felt at her own shortcomings in his face.
His face fell and he flinched at the savagery in her tone before his expression hardened. “Why is he here?”
She did not answer Aedon. She whirled around, searching for one last look at him before they disappeared into the tunnels —and stumbled to a halt. The bridge was empty. Dimitri was gone. Something bigger than her punched the air from her lungs. Before it could overpower her, Harper ran into the bowels of the mountain—but she could not escape what had just happened.