58. Harper
58
HARPER
D imitrius reached a hand to steady Harper as she crumpled anew—feeling struck with despair that she had been so na?ve as to walk into this and dream that there might have been the chance of a single positive outcome. Harper threaded her fingers into his giant palm, her eyes slipping shut as she sank into the poisoned comfort of that touch. His hand was warm and reassuringly firm. Her eyes flickered open. Perhaps he too was nervous for what was to come, because his touch lingered three heartbeats longer than was necessary before he dropped her hand, clenching and unclenching his fist, as if to rid himself of her touch.
They still stood before each other, she a footstep away from his chest, confined by the small hallway. His gaze burned her. He spoke into her mind, making her start and she almost flinched into him from the unexpected sensation of his voice inside her. “ I can help. He must believe that we do not know each other at all. It is something and nothing, but any connection can weaken us. May I protect those memories we share? ”
“I don’t understand.” Saradon had entered at will. Yet Dimitrius… asked? She didn’t understand any of this at all.
“ It means he will not be able to see that which is hidden.” He sent a flood of mental images her way, of their first meeting, their time together in Tournai, and the kiss they had shared. To watch them from his perspective—to see herself through his eyes and to feel so viscerally his kaleidoscope of emotions—made her intensely uncomfortable, as though they stood skinless before each other, their very souls on show.
And yet it was dangerous too, because she felt his emotions like a torrent that wanted to slam her into the wall with the force of them—at how conflicted he was to want her, and the depths of his desire. They stirred something wild within her as she relived those intimate moments, knowing he watched them too and feeling all too bared before him. Never mind his masks, she longed to don one of her own, to hide from the weight of feelings on both their parts that she did not feel able to face.
“You think it will help?” she managed to choke out, staring into the dark fabric of his chest, because she could not meet his violet gaze without becoming entirely lost.
“At the very least, it will not damn us.”
Her throat had closed. She nodded.
Dimitrius shifted just a fraction closer. Heat radiated from him, a fiery contrast against the frozen stone at her back. With the movement, a warming, sighing caress slipped into her mind. It was different than Saradon, who ventured there without her permission, but even so, it was unpleasantly violating and deeply intimate. Somehow, she knew where he looked inside her, and how carefully he trod only the paths he needed to hide what he had promised. Not one memory more. Or less.
“I didn’t realise you disliked me so much,” he murmured as he drew closer. Those eyes captured her, filled with depths in the barely lit tunnel, and captured in their gaze, something pulled in her chest. She was grateful for the dim light to give cover to her scorching cheeks. At his side, his hand flexed. Fingers forming a fist and then opening once more. “I suppose I did not give you any reason to endear me.”
He leaned in, so close that his breath caressed her ear. Her own stilled, overcome by that bittersweet scent of his and the promise of this unspoken weight between them. Unbidden, she arched back, exposing her neck to him. Gods above, how she wished this were all simpler—that the lives of her and her friends did not depend on every moment going in their favour. “But I am glad you think I’m the most handsome male you ever did see.” She heard the smile in his voice.
She gasped and recoiled. “I—I! No!”
As her face heated anew, he laughed. “You cannot deny it, for now I have seen the truth etched upon your soul.”
“That’s not fair!” she protested.
His smile was savagely mischievous as he dropped his gaze to her lips. She wet them, her tongue darting out. “Alright. Since I have seen one secret of your heart, I shall give you one of my own.” And with that, he leaned right in, so that his lips grazed the side of her neck.
Harper froze, her hands upon his chest between them, her senses raw with the proximity of him.
His whisper was barely audible over the drumming of her heart—and his thundered under her palms. “If we had not been disturbed, I would not have stopped kissing you against that tree, Harper. I would have taken that as far as you let me.”
Harper gasped as he pressed his lips to her neck, and his tongue darted out to lick a line up the column of her throat to the base of her ear. She arched into him, and he groaned, the sound muffled in her skin.
“Oh, how I wish we had the time for all the things I would like to do to you.” He sighed and pulled back, his gaze dark and heavy as he dragged it away. Her hands fell from his chest. “Come. We’ve tarried too long. He does not like to be kept waiting.”
“Wait. Just one thing.” She braced herself on the rocky wall behind her, begging her breath to steady, her pulse to slow, and her legs to firm. He turned, silhouetted by the torch behind him. “You said you sent the Dragonheart to me by accident. How did you raise Saradon without one?”
The prophecy had mentioned that a Dragonheart would raise Saradon, and cast him down. As far as she knew, the only other Dragonhearts in existence had been burned in their escape from Pelenor or hidden by the king.
Dimitrius chewed his lip, and she stilled at the shrewd look he shot her. “You were not the only ones in the king’s vaults that night.”
Her lips parted. That, she had not expected. “You were there? That’s impossible.”
“Not all those who wander are seen, Harper. But I saw everything that transpired, from the portcullis lowering, to your fall, to the elf and his dragon magic.”
Her breath caught. No. He could not have been there, and yet, he spoke truths only someone present would know. “What were you doing there?” she whispered, though she had a feeling she already knew. I need to hear him say it.
“I took my own Dragonheart that night.” Dimitrius said. Harper couldn’t breathe. She knew it, but to hear him admit it felt magnitudes more . Quite what she felt—to know that he was there whilst she and her companions had fought for their lives, and that he had done nothing to intervene one way or the other—she was not sure. But those feelings were dark as they rose to a tempest within her. She had nearly died , and he had taken for himself and left.
“And you let us escape.” Her palms pressed to the cool rock behind her, anchoring her from being snatched away into the storm within her. All the desire of moments before cooled to ashes. She was a fool to feel anything for this dangerous elven male—because he would not stop at anything to get what he wanted. He had been willing to let her die.
“With you gone, far from Tournai I presumed I would never run into you again. I did not care that you had a Dragonheart, or that you had destroyed the rest. It was greater cover for me. You would be blamed for all their thefts, and I would escape with my prize. We were never supposed to meet again.” His eyes met hers, his gaze serious and steady, and that weight hanging between them in the air charged with his attention. “But you were there, that night. I saw you about to die. And something inside me snapped.”
Clarity seared through her anger. She had nearly died—but for what she had deemed inexplicable chance. She had not killed those soldiers—someone else had. In the heat of the moment, she had thanked every god and goddess she knew to pray to for her good fortune. But… “It was you.”
“Yes.”
“You killed them.” Without hesitation. She had been instants away from death.
“Yes.”
“To save me.” She couldn’t breathe.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
He huffed, and a rueful smile twisted his lips. “I think we both know why, Harper. Because I cannot bear to think of a world without you in it. Because… more than that… I want you for myself. However selfish that makes me. I would have burned down that mountain for you. I’m not as ruthless as you think, Harper. Not when it comes to you. I will be ruthless for you. I will never be ruthless to you.”
She opened her mouth, but no words came. His were so soft, it stunned her.
“Come. Saradon awaits.” His tone hardened, brooking no argument, and he stalked away down the dark halls, taking the torch and the only source of light with him—and the tenuous thing growing between them was gone, like a spider’s web dashed through by a hand. With the threat of goblin-filled shadows nipping at her heels, Harper chased after him, her pulse dizzyingly fast, as she reeled on his revelations.