Chapter 22
TARIAN
T arian swam off his extra energy in the cold dark sea, letting the water pull all the heat from him, going deeper and deeper until he was dangerously exhausted, because he needed to feel something other than the gnawing ache of solitude inside him.
The cold bit into his skin, numbing him to everything but the relentless push and pull of the waters, and he welcomed it, letting it strip him down to nothing but muscle, bone, and breath.
And when he emerged again, with a fish large enough for the three of them to share, he’d regained his senses.
He couldn’t keep foisting emotions on her that she didn’t want. She wasn’t scared of him anymore, but that could change, if he kept pressing.
He needed to see her for what she was—a young human woman, doing the best she could under trying circumstances.
Like being with him, even though she did not want to be.
It was time for him to give up and take her back to his brother’s. He’d wanted to avoid relying on Rax, but he didn’t know enough about the ways of this world to protect her, whereas if she were being guarded by not one but two dragons, no one would ever be able to hurt her again.
Not like she’d already been injured the once, without him.
The sight of her scars on her soft brown skin had sent him reeling. The past was immutable. He knew that. But that knowledge didn’t make it easier to swallow.
He had to do the right thing—he knew it—when he saw her, looking small, huddled up beside the fire he’d created for her.
There was a strong enough breeze outside to hide the smoke—they’d eat, rest, and then wait till the next morning to fly home, because if he tried to fly her back at night, she’d freeze for sure.
Rocky ran at out at him, barking. “I’m starving!”
“I know,” he answered, but kept looking at Kenna with concern. “Is she...all right?”
Kenna looked over at him, at the sound of her name. “Are you seriously asking the dog? Instead of me?”
“He’s a good judge of character,” Tarian said, defending himself.
“I’m not so sure about that,” she said, standing. “I mean, he hangs out with you, soooo...”
Was she . . . teasing . . . him? Or mocking him?
Before he could figure things out, she stood up, started pacing and went on. “Okay, so, I’ve been thinking,” she began, and Tarian braced.
He could not take her back. Surely she knew that, and would not ask again.
“Two things, mostly,” she said, turning toward him, holding two fingers out. “The first is—why now?”
As it was clear he was not in trouble, he came closer to the fire, kneeling down to clean the fish for them, while speaking. “How do you mean?”
“Cliff—the guy in the hotel room with me,” she began, and Tarian felt his hackles rise, remembering. “He played me online for months. Why would he bother doing that, if he didn’t have to? If grabbing me was the endgame, why now? There were plenty of easier times to take me.”
He rocked back on his heels, watching her walk. This Kenna, like his Seris, was smart. “I do not know—but you are wise.”
“Is dinner coming up?” Rocky said, leaning in to butt his hand. “I can eat fish guts, if I’ve got to,” the dog went on.
“Is something coming up in your life? Something portentous?” he asked aloud.
Kenna paused in thought. “Yeah. It’s my birthday on Sunday.”
Tarian grabbed a nearby stone, let the flames bake it clean, then flipped it over and placed the fish on top. “How old will you be?” he asked her, looking up, and was surprised to find her gawking down.
“Didn’t that...hurt?” she asked—and he realized his hand had been in the flames.
He shook his head quickly. “No. Of course not—or I wouldn’t have done it.”
“You’re . . . fireproof?”
“Yes.”
“Well,” she said, crossing her arms. “That’s unfair.”
He regretted reminding her of her past—a past he felt accountable for. “And how old will you be?”
“Twenty-three.”
So young. He hadn’t met his Seris until she was forty, which was another reason why he wanted to keep her with him so urgently—he couldn’t bear the thought of how little time she had left.
“And you’re,” she went on, drawing out the words, before announcing, “eight hundred.”
“Indeed.” He reached into the fire, and turned the pieces of the fish he’d put there over.
“That’s, like, really freakin’ old.”
“I didn’t get to live all of it peacefully. Or, much of it all, for that matter.”
The vast majority of his life had been spent behind the Gate, in a hellish landscape that was nothing like his home, continually hunted by Sirens, the lying, many-winged, many-beaked, many-clawed monstrosities that had been trapped there originally.
That he’d been driven to meet in a mad—yes, mad, his brother and all the others had been right about him—attempt to find her.
Because for the Sirens to weave such perfect lies, they first had to know the truth. He hoped he could make one of them tell him what had happened to her, where she had gone, with her piece of his soul.
And he would’ve spent another eight hundred years behind the Gate with them, if it’d meant that he could save her.
“Tarian?” Kenna asked, and he realized she must’ve said his name more than once.
“I am here,” he murmured, pulling the fish out on his makeshift stone plate to offer it to her. She sat down on the ground beside him, and delicately picked up a piece to eat, while Rocky waited his turn, wagging his tail so strongly it rocked his entire hindquarters. “What is your second point?”
She finished her bite, licking her fingers as she thought. “How did they find me?”
He considered this. “It is a worthy question.”
He knew how his own magic between them worked, but he had no idea what powers anyone else could possess in this Realm—all the more reason to rush back to Rax’s.
“Well, how did they find us? Back at that lodge?”
He made a thoughtful sound. “Lack of other options on our path? Perhaps the smoke from the chimney?”
“Okay, but how did they find me before that?” she asked, squinting. “Back when I didn’t know you, and it was just Cliff’s people?”
He rocked back from the fire, tossing Rocky a portion of fish, and taking the last piece for himself. “Probably something celestial. In my Realm, we have men whose only job is to trace the path of the stars and make predictions.”
“So I was born under a bad sign, is what you’re saying?” she asked, her lips quirking up.
He laughed. “Something like that. Perhaps. But it fits in, especially with your birthday coming up.”
Her lips twisted to the side, then she shook her head.
“But that’s not good enough. There are hundreds of thousands of people who share my birthday, probably right down to the very second I was born.
” She stood up to pace again, and the firelight cast her shadow on the cave wall.
“What if whatever they did to me was like you?”
He frowned. “How so?”
“You tagged me. What if they did, too?”
Tarian sank into himself. It made a horrifying amount of sense—that someone powerful had, somehow, braided a piece of magic in with his, and had been using his connection for their own malevolent purposes.
He stood and walked over to where she was waiting for his answer, and he put his hands out. “May I?” he asked, and while she seemed uncertain, she still nodded.
He started with his hands cupped above her head, not touching her directly except for the stray hairs of hers that their journey here had spiked up, summoning the piece of his soul he’d woven into hers to answer.
He felt it just as she gasped, like a tingling in his hands, before parting them to run his magic—inside and out—over her body, hovering a few millimeters over the boundary of her skin as she closely watched him.
“Don’t move,” he whispered, and started swirling his hands.
He could feel the biological processes inside her, keeping her alive, bolstered by his magic, but he was searching for something different—something that shouldn’t be there.
Like a rock plunked into a still pond—or a sharp bank his magic shouldn’t have had to splash off of, and slowly, via sensation and deduction, he found one part above her right hip that felt wrong.
“May I see here?” he asked, pointing at it, without touching her.
When she didn’t respond, he looked up, and found her blinking. “Uh.” Then she bit her lip, and lifted her skirt up high, while looking away.
Her underwear was a black lacy thing—worn to show that other man no doubt—but Tarian had more important concerns now than his pride.
“May I touch here?” he asked, while Kenna studiously watched the fire behind him.
“Sure,” she said—not sounding sure at all.
He tucked a finger into the topmost band of lace and pulled it down, revealing more ripples of scarred skin—and he was certain what he was looking for was hidden underneath.
He just had to get to it, was all.
“I’ve found it. But this may hurt you,” he said, glancing up—and this time he found her staring at him, straight down.
She took a deep and steadying breath. “Trust me. I’ve been through worse,” she said and nodded.
He let just the tip of one of his fingers transition into his dragon’s claw, and set it on her skin.
The knowledge that he was about to hurt her— again —after everything she’d already endured, wrecked him.
But when she said, “Just do it. I’m tough,” he realized she thought his hesitation was doubt. Not guilt, but an underestimation of her.
No. He’d only done that once, when he’d bound her to him without telling her—thinking she wouldn’t agree or understand.
He would never make that precise mistake again.
He flicked the claw across her skin, making her gasp as it tore her, and then he put his hand to it, not to stop the blood, but so that his magic could flood the area and pull the tracker out.
Kenna gasped above him, jaw slack, pain flashing across her face. His stomach twisted—until she put a hand on his shoulder for balance.
She trusted him.
Not Seris—but this girl, here with him now.
Kenna.
He felt a tugging inside of her as his magic found the tracker’s margins and made sure he had all of its boundaries clipped off—then with a final pull, he yanked it from her hip. Her hand clawed against him, but she didn’t say a thing.
“Is it over?” she asked, as he withdrew his hand. Blood was pouring out of the wound he’d given her, and they both saw it. “Fuck,” she muttered, and moved to push her skirt down to cover it.
“No, no, no,” he said, biting the thumb of his free hand quickly. Green blood welled up. He smeared it across her cut, and they both watched it close.
“Imagine my surprise,” she murmured, “to discover that you are full of aloe vera.”
He looked up at her, utterly confused. “I do not know what that is.”
“It’s okay,” she said, with a small laugh. “Did that...work? Did you get it?”
Tarian opened his other hand, so that they could both see what’d landed inside. Separated from her body, the tracker had taken on a hideous physical shape, looking like angry white spheres of flesh—and it had a particularly foul scent to it that made his lips curl.
Kenna seemed unaffected by it though. “Shit,” she whispered. “And all this time, I just figured I had some endometriosis.”
Tarian shook his head again. “I do not know what that is, either.”
“Of course not. You’re a man.” She bent down, grabbed a stone, and—because she was who she was —poked it. “It looks cancerous.”
“You would know better than I,” he said, rather than acknowledge that he was uncertain of that word, too.
“What are you going to do with it?” she asked before dropping her skirt and suddenly stepping back, letting go of his shoulder, and breaking their connection.
“My inclination is to burn it,” he said, picking up his arm to do just that—he would like nothing better than to watch the thing that’d endangered his mate die in the fire.
“But if they’re following it—what if instead, you take it far away from here? And send them on a goose chase?”
He did not know what a goose chase was, either...but the idea had merit.
“I will be back,” he said, standing immediately. “Rocky, guard her.”
He pointed between the two of them, and ran outside of the cave, only pausing long enough to take his pants off as human before flying up.