Chapter 22 #2
A shadow passes over his gaze, and he turns away, heading to his rucksack.
“Stark,” I say. We need to talk about it. That many scars…
He grabs a new shirt out and roughly pulls it on. “Leave it, Meryn.”
“No!” My voice comes out shrill. “Stark—”
He advances on me swiftly, fire in his eyes.
“I said, leave it.” He’s towering over me now, menacing. I forget, sometimes, just how much taller he is than me. I have to crane my neck to keep his gaze.
“Or what?” I say through clenched teeth, unimpressed by his attempt at intimidation. “You’re going to lose control on me? I’d love to see it.”
“I guarantee you, princess, you wouldn’t.” His words hold dark promise that do nothing to cool the inferno raging inside me.
Drawing a ragged breath, he tries to turn away from me.
Fuck. That.
He’s made me face hard things head-on. He doesn’t get to shrug off the same.
I grab a fistful of his black shirt, then yank it up his torso, exposing the scars once again to the firelight.
They’re even more brutal this close. The dark ink does a good job of masking things from a distance, but now I can see that the skin all over his torso is gruesomely puckered.
These weren’t an accident. Every one of these cuts looks intentional.
Anger starts to build, shadows dancing at the edge of my vision.
“Does it scare you?” His voice comes out as a viscous caress, and I shiver. “This reminder of violence carved into my body?”
Underneath his brusque tone, I can hear something else. I don’t know if it’s some wolfish instincts or the ties we have binding us, but I hear the real question he’s asking.
Does it disgust you?
My eyes sting. How could he think that? How could he ever see himself that way?
I place a palm flat on his torso, the heat of him and the bumps from the scars underneath my skin. He hisses. But I don’t move my hand, and he doesn’t flinch.
“Who did this to you?” I demand.
Stark lets out a low laugh, pushing me off him. He turns swiftly, trying to walk away again. But I snare his wrist, yanking him back around.
He thinks he’s some tough, violent avenger.
Well, guess what, buddy? There are two of us.
I draw closer to him until he’s forced to stare down at me, to see how serious I am, to read it in the pain in my eyes. Then I breathe deeply, his amber musk filing my senses and lending me strength.
When I speak, it’s with all the depth of the darkness that thrives in my veins.
“Give me a name, and I’ll erase it from the earth.”
Stark’s nostrils flare with suppressed emotion. I notice every twitch in his jaw, memorize every eyelash as he blinks at my rage.
“I already did, princess,” he says, voice low. “You can stand down.”
“Who?” I demand again.
He lets out an aggravated sigh and shakes my hand off his wrist. I feel the loss of the contact acutely. “My weapons trainer as a child. He found me lacking.”
Horror roils inside me, cold and unrelenting. “Did Siegrid know? Why didn’t she stop it?”
“She hired him for a reason. She wasn’t around, anyway. The Sovereign Alpha was at the front, and I was given over to teachers who could make me, in her words, strong enough to survive the end of the world.”
The words hit me like a punch. She did this to him. His mother—
The shadows are building now, starting to creep like leeches up my arms and legs.
He angles his jaw at me, and I can see it clearly, the scar I’ve always wondered about.
“In fact, she did this one herself when I was twelve. Haven’t you learned this about the Sovereign Alpha yet?
She cares only about her own goals. She needed me to be stronger than I was and did not care what it took to get me there. ”
“I’m going to end her.” A wind kicks up as the shadows start to spiral around the two of us, darkness spreading through the campsite in a maelstrom. It’s inside of me too, coating my veins until all I feel is a pulsing need to tear something apart.
Stark leans his face closer to mine, something hard and frightening in his gaze. “Not everyone gets a loving family, Meryn. Some parents see their child only as a means to an end. This is how you make a monster.”
Then he blinks, taking note of the dark vortex I’ve whipped around us without even commanding it. As usual, it’s out of my control. I don’t know how I started it, and I don’t know how it will end.
Oh goddess, I can’t make it stop.
“Meryn,” he says, stern and commanding. The assertiveness in his voice makes my blood thrum, and the shadows respond in kind. “Stop that.”
I can’t. I can’t. But… maybe he can.
I have the strangest sense that if I just reach for him, he can funnel this feeling away.
If he’s such a monster, well maybe—
Only a monster can lead me out of the dark.
I reach and reach, but nothing.
“It’s not working,” I say in a gasp, tears starting to fall down my face. “I’m furious, Stark. My rage is eating me alive.”
Anassa chooses this moment to finally nudge her consciousness against mine. “Meryn. Breathe. Get the shadows under control. Siegrid is not here to direct your anger at. Even if she was—you need her, for now. When the time is right, we will seek retribution.”
Her words calm me, and the shadows slip back down to the ground, sink into the earth.
Stark reaches up, roughly swipes a tear from my face with his calloused thumb. I want to take the pad of it into my mouth, relish the heat of his palm against my face.
“Don’t waste your tears on me, princess,” he murmurs. “I’m glad she did this to me.”
I startle at the harsh words spoken so plainly. “You are?” How could anyone be glad for something so horrific, so unnatural?
“Yes,” he growls. “I don’t waste time on sentiment now. I act. And it makes people fear me.”
I still don’t understand. “Why would you want that?” It’s the opposite of what I’ve been seeking to provoke in people, with arguable success.
He presses his mouth to the shell of my ear. The warmth of his breath causes a buzzing so electric I’m sure I’ve never felt alive like this before. “Their fear is a balm. I’ll be everyone’s villain to scare them away from you.”
He pulls back, catching my eyes with his dark, burning gaze, and there’s an avalanche from my head to my toes.
His face is so near mine. I can see all his stubble in the firelight, all the colors of his irises. They’re not a solid brown, I realize for the first time. They’re ringed in black, and flecked with gold toward the center, so subtly that it’s easy to miss. My stomach swoops.
It would be easy to close the distance between us.
Two inches at most.
Does he kiss like he fights, with lethal force and incredible skill? Or would he be gentle with me, take his time and explore?
Saela coughs. We both startle from the sound, and he steps away. The loss of his heat is instantaneous and keen, like something precious has been ripped from my greedy hands.
What might have happened if I’d pushed Stark over the edge? Finally found out what it means for him to truly lose control?
I’m not sure I’d ever recover from it.
And what about Noemi, whom Stark claims to love? Maybe I imagined the spark between us. Maybe he has no interest in me like that.
Even if he did, I would never act until I knew for sure there’s nothing going on there. If they’re together… I couldn’t cross that line. I’d never do that to another person.
“We should get some sleep,” Stark says quietly. “We have a long journey tomorrow.”
We ready the sleeping pallets in silence. Get into them next to each other in silence. Close our eyes, pretending to sleep in silence. At least, I’m pretending.
Because all night long I burn and I burn and I burn.
Morning takes forever to arrive.
The fire has turned to coals, and the sky is barely lightening when I hear approaching footsteps. Anassa’s ears swivel. She lifts her head to inhale. But I don’t need her nose to tell me the heavy footfalls are direwolves. I stand at the sound.
Taking a deep breath, I let the rift mask ease away, revealing the rest of the camp to a tired-looking Venna and an annoyingly beautiful Noemi. The woman looks like she didn’t miss a wink. I try not to watch as she and Stark embrace.
Venna moves toward me, saying nothing. When her arms go around me, painful emotions riot in my chest. It’s guilt for not telling her the truth. But it’s also sweet relief tinted with grief.
We don’t have Iz any longer, but we have each other. Thank the goddess, we have each other.
When we pull apart, her hands linger on my arms. “Are we okay?” I ask, letting hope and fear show on my face.
Her expression is solemn.
“I know that you’re the queen now, Meryn, and I’m not always going to be privy to your decision-making. But your choices here hurt me. Can you promise you’ll let me in on anything you can, especially if it might concern my safety?”
“I swear,” I say instantly. “I’ll do better.”
Venna nods once. “Then we’ll be okay,” she says with certainty I probably don’t deserve.
I think she understands that it was fear that drove me, but I still resent myself for it. I was once so furious at Anassa for withholding the truth. To turn around and do the same thing to a close friend? It makes me hate myself a little bit, even if I had a good reason.
When Venna steps away, Noemi takes her place. “We’re good?” she asks gently.
“Uh… yeah,” I say. “I mean… are we?”
There’s still so much I don’t understand about Noemi—particularly Stark’s relationship with her. What are they to each other? Does she love him, too?
And can I stop fucking obsessing about it every time my mind has a quiet moment?
Noemi shrugs an elegant shoulder and brushes her long red hair over it. “Don’t let her bite me, and we’ll be fine.”
That seems about as positive a reaction as I can possibly hope for to a “hey, by the way, my sister’s a Siphon” reveal, so I shoot her a tight smile and start to break down camp.
Eventually, I wake Saela up from where she still sleeps against Anassa’s side. She looks down at her bloodstained clothes and then up at Venna and Noemi and starts to cry.
“It’s okay,” I tell her as I lead her into the woods to change.
It takes some coaxing to get her to come back out to the campsite. Saela is mortified and ashamed of what she is. But when we emerge from the trees, Venna holds an arm out and Saela goes to her. They cling to each other silently for a long moment.
Then it’s time to get back on the road. We ride hard, but Saela seems stronger. Or at least more alert and less withdrawn than she’s been since her transformation.
She still keeps close to Anassa’s side when we take breaks for her to stretch her legs, but a little flicker of secret hope catches in my chest.
Shadows lengthen across the cold ground as we ride toward Weisenstat. Dawn turns to noon turns to evening. The landscape begins to change. Forest gives way to open terrain, large segments of it divided into farms.
The first sign that we’re nearing the front is the smoke. We see it from leagues away. I don’t remember the choking haze the last time I came to the active war zone with Stark.
It’s not a good sign.
I tap into the sea of communication in my mind, as lightly as possible. The force of anxiety running through everyone stationed here almost knocks me off Anassa. It strengthens as we draw closer and closer.
We crest a hill, and take in the full extent of the disarray.
In the distance, the plumes of smoke rise from beyond the defensive line, marking successful Astreonan incursions into our precious farmland, territory that was previously secure. It’s an omen that swallows up the sky.
A wave of horror in the air that’s only going to creep closer and closer.
Slowly but surely, the Siphons are overtaking us.
A shiver runs down my spine, and I turn my head. Stark is already looking at me. I know he’s thinking it, too.
The situation is worse than we anticipated. Whatever awaits us inside that camp, we’re riding into a crisis that might already be beyond salvaging.
“What are we in for?” I ask Anassa over our bond.
She has no answer. She just moves forward, descending toward the chaos of the front lines.