Chapter 17 #2
My body arches instinctively, mouth parting on a soft gasp that he swallows like a secret.
I braid my fingers into his wet hair, and his hands tighten at my hips, pulling me impossibly closer.
The hardness of him presses between my legs, hot and insistent. My breath stutters. My pulse punches. It’s all heat and promise, straining against the confines of linen, and God, I want it. I want him. All of him.
My hips shift, a slow grind against him, and he groans low in his throat. The sound pours through me like gasoline.
“I’ve wanted this since that first message.” His fingers dig into my ass, his grip possessive. His hips rock, and the friction is enough to drag a moan out of me. It slips between our mouths, and I feel him smile against my lips. “All the things we said we’d do to each other…”
It should melt me. Instead, the line throws me back to the version of myself I used to sell—the filtered, edited woman who hid behind her phone and never had to face consequences.
I go cold.
I’m not that woman. I can’t be that woman.
“Wait.” The word is small and raw. “This isn’t right. I can’t.”
Confusion flickers across his features. “What happened? Did I—”
“No.” I scramble out of his arms, water sloshing over the rocky edge as I clamber up, fingers fumbling for my wrap and my purse. “I’m sorry.”
Barefoot, I bolt out of the Everspring. Each footstep kicks up a spray of sand around my calves as I run from the warmth of being wanted, from the way his mouth felt on mine. I run from the persona I sold and from the messy, real woman who’s trying to breaking free.
When his guard is down—when he’s drunk on heat and sex and whatever spell this place has spun—I can’t help but wonder who he really wants. The idea that it might not be me, the real me, rushes through me like cold water.
I don’t know who I am right now—only that whoever she is, she’s too messy, too broken, too real to be anyone’s fantasy.
Especially his.
Wind whips my hair into my mouth and flings my wrap behind me like a warning flag. The sunset smears the sky in blood as the faint beat of the drums, the call of the nightly performance, drifts across the dunes from the kingdom’s caravan.
“Amanda!” he calls.
I keep running. I need space from Declan’s hands, from the fear he stirs in me. He catches up just as I crest the top of a dune, his hand closing gently around my arm.
“Please, talk to me.”
I stop. My chest heaves, and I lick my dry lips. Salt stings my tongue from the tears I didn’t realize had escaped.
He turns me to face him. His jaw is tight, chest rising and falling just as fast as mine. “You can’t keep running, keep pushing me away. We have to talk about whatever’s going on. We have to fix it.”
Grains of sand scrape my cheeks as I wipe away tears. “I am nothing like the woman I was on the app. I’m messy. I break things.” Tears burn as they fall, hot and humiliating. “I don’t know how you can see past all the ridiculous shit I’ve done, because I can’t.”
“It’s okay—”
“No, it’s not. This isn’t like it was before.” I throw up my free hand. “All this—it isn’t sexting and flirting. This is real. I don’t know how to be real.”
“Neither of us do. That’s why I’m not walking away.”
“Maybe you should.” I shake my head. “I’m not doing the passive aggressive thing. I just need to fix myself before I drag another person down with me.”
Declan’s grip tightens on my arm. “You think we’re both supposed to come into this perfectly put together? That’s not a relationship, Amanda. We’re supposed to be able to lean on each other, be there for each other.”
“How would you know? This started as a hookup.”
He scoffs and takes a breath, ready to say more, but I don’t let him.
“Don’t pretend otherwise. We were practically fucking each other in DMs. If we hadn’t ended up here, we probably would’ve had sex, I’d have left before morning, and we would’ve never seen each other again.
I haven’t been honest—about why I perform, about what I’m afraid of.
And you—” I swallow. “You were raised on a to-do list. We’re both…
frauds. I can’t be your soft place to land, and you could never be mine. ”
His expression falls then twists like I reached into his chest and crushed something vital. Like I confirmed whatever worst thing he already believes about himself.
“Declan, I’m sorry. That was—” My voice catches on the knot swelling in my throat, which is a good thing since I have no idea what to say. Maybe I’m being a coward. Maybe I’m finally telling the truth.
His jaw sets, and he shakes his head.
Silence folds in around us.
I step back, this time needing distance from myself. From the sharp, cruel things I continue to let out just to keep from feeling vulnerable.
My heel clips something hard, half-buried in the sand. I stumble and look down.
Stone, blackened and weatherworn, juts from the dune. Faded sigils, carved deep, catch the last light like wet teeth.
I kneel, brushing the sand away with my fingers. More stone is revealed as a hum slides under my skin in a low electric pulse. My fingertips tingle, and that feeling swells, fierce and alive, beating beneath my ribs like a second heartbeat. I press my palm to the stone, and it answers.
The sand around the spire trembles with a long, low groan. Cracks spider out from under my knees, thin as lace at first, then widening until the ground at our feet sighs and the dune cascades in a great, roaring slide.
“Hold on!” Declan shouts.
I seize his hand. Maybe he grabs mine. It hardly matters. The world tilts. The dunes fall away in columns, pouring like waterfalls of sand.
We tumble down, down, down, the air full of grit.
Stone slams into my back, knocking the breath from my lungs. My palms scrape the ground as I push myself upright, coughing until my lungs burn. I blink through the dust. Declan’s a few feet away, rubbing the back of his head as he stares up. I follow his gaze, my head tilted all the way back.
We stand in a chamber carved deep into the desert’s belly.
It’s vast and open to the sky now. Evenly spaced columns thick as sequoias shoot up from the stone floor.
Flame-shaped spires crown each, their tops black and sharp against the sky.
We’re within a ring of ancient stones, the desert exhaling around us. Above, the first stars prick the dusk.
We’ve fallen into a memory long forgotten, a secret swallowed by the earth itself.
Declan groans, brushing sand from his clothes. “Fuck being dropped into things.”
I smell smoke and ash, fire and ozone. The air thrums with heat and something that feels ancient. Something that vibrates against my bones and whispers beneath my skin.
Magick is on fire behind my heart as Fortune’s words echo through my thoughts:
…the Tower chose you… The Tower brought you to this realm. And when you are ready, you will heal it.
I blink up at the circle of dusk, wide and gleaming like a god’s eye. At the columns and their stone flames. At the sand that is held at bay around us by some otherworldly force.
“I think…” I swallow, throat raw. “We found the Tower.”
Or maybe it found us.