Chapter 4
The grinding of stone against stone pulled me from dreams I didn't want to name—dreams where phantom hands had mapped every inch of my skin with reverent precision, where a voice like distant thunder had called me 'little one' while I writhed against sheets that smelled of mountain and man.
My eyes snapped open to find an elemental in my doorway, and for a moment I couldn't tell if I was still dreaming.
It moved like a living avalanche in slow motion.
Each step was deliberate, its granite body grinding against itself with sounds that made my teeth ache.
Through the gaps where its joints should be, I caught glimpses of its molten core—orange-red and pulsing like a heart made of lava.
The heat rolling off it turned the morning air shimmery, and I pulled my blankets higher despite already burning from the inside out.
The creature—person?—set down a tray on the table near my bed with surprising delicacy, stone fingers releasing silver handles without so much as a clink.
No acknowledgment of my existence, no greeting, just purpose fulfilled and departure.
The floor trembled with each retreating step, tiny earthquakes that sent ripples through the water glass on my nightstand.
When silence finally settled again, I forced myself upright and stared at what it had brought.
The meal was overwhelming. Fresh bread that still steamed when I broke it open, releasing the scent of yeast and comfort that shouldn't exist this far underground.
Butter so golden it seemed to hold trapped sunlight, spreading like silk across the bread's tender crumb.
Three preparations of eggs—scrambled with herbs I didn't recognize, poached in some technique that left them perfectly molten, and baked into a custard that trembled when I touched the spoon to it.
Strips of meat glistened with a glaze that smelled of smoke and sweetness, the fat rendered to crispy perfection.
I didn't recognize the animal—something between venison and beef but richer than both, with an undertone that made my mouth water helplessly.
Beside it, fruits that literally glowed with their own faint light, their skins translucent enough to show the juice beneath.
One looked like a plum but pulsed with soft blue luminescence.
Another resembled a pear if pears were carved from amber and leaked honey when pierced.
The tea was its own revelation. Minerals I couldn't identify made my tongue tingle, like drinking the essence of the mountain itself. Steam rose from the cup carrying scents of deep earth and something green and growing, impossible gardens hidden in stone.
I should have been ravenous. My body needed food—I'd barely eaten yesterday between the escape and the overwhelming everything that followed.
But I could barely manage more than a few bites.
Every nerve ending felt exposed, hypersensitive in ways that had nothing to do with hunger and everything to do with what my dreams had conjured.
The phantom weight of his hands still pressed against my shoulders where he'd washed my hair.
My skin remembered the careful traverse of the cloth down my arms, the way his breathing had hitched when I'd moaned.
That single word—Daddy—hung in the air between us like a confession neither of us could take back.
My thighs pressed together involuntarily, seeking pressure that wouldn't come, and I bit back a whimper at how even that small movement sent sparks through oversensitive flesh.
It had just been a dream . . .
Pebble watched me from his perch on the arm of a chair, massive eyes tracking my fidgeting with what looked distinctly like judgment. When I set down a piece of barely touched bread, he chirped—a sound somewhere between disapproval and concern.
"I'm trying," I told him, though my voice came out rougher than intended. "It's just . . ."
Another chirp, this one decidedly scolding. His head tilted in that way that suggested ancient wisdom wrapped in a perpetually young body, and I wondered not for the first time what he understood. Everything, probably. Centuries of watching Garruk meant he'd seen it all—love, loss, power.
"Easy for you to judge," I muttered, attempting another bite of egg.
It was perfectly cooked, seasoned with something warming that should have made me moan with pleasure.
Instead, all I could think about was the way Garruk's control had nearly shattered when I'd called him that word.
The way want had blazed through our connection like wildfire before he'd yanked himself back.
Through the bond, I felt him. Not clearly—more like awareness through frosted glass—but enough to know his location and state.
He was in his study, three levels up and toward the mountain's heart.
His hands were flat on his desk, the posture of someone trying very hard to ground himself.
Struggling with something that felt like fear and want twisted together so tightly they'd become the same emotion.
He knew I was awake. I felt that knowledge pass between us, his attention sharpening on me for a moment before forcibly turning away.
My skin prickled with awareness, knowing he could feel echoes of my arousal through the bond just as I felt hints of his. This strange feedback loop of desire that built on itself, each of us stoking the other's fire without even being in the same room.
When footsteps finally echoed in the corridor—his particular rhythm of controlled power—my heart hammered against my ribs like a caged thing. I set down my barely touched plate and tried to look composed, though we both knew it was a lie. The bond told too much truth for pretense.
He appeared in my doorway looking like he hadn't slept either.
The crystalline veins beneath his skin pulsed erratically, not their usual steady rhythm but something closer to agitation.
Shadows carved themselves beneath those copper eyes, and his jaw held the kind of tension that spoke of teeth clenched through long hours of darkness.
His control was fraying at the edges. I could see it in the way his fingers flexed and released, in the careful distance he maintained from the doorframe, in how his gaze caught on my throat before forcibly moving to somewhere over my shoulder.
"Have you considered my offer?" The words came out formal as a legal contract, each one precisely placed.
But through the bond, I felt the real question underneath, raw and desperate: Will you leave me? Will you choose mortality over this? Will you make me watch another human age and die while I remain stone?
I set down my barely touched plate with deliberate care, the soft clink of porcelain against wood somehow louder than the elemental's earth-shaking steps had been. When I finally met his copper eyes directly, I saw him brace for impact like I was about to deliver a killing blow.
"I have a different proposal."
His whole body went rigid. Through the bond, his fear spiked like ice water in my veins, sharp enough to steal my breath. The crystalline veins under his skin flared brighter, pulsing with his accelerated heartbeat.
"A proposal," he repeated, voice flat as dressed stone. Testing the word like he might test unstable ground before trusting his weight to it.
I pulled my knees up, wrapping my arms around them—a child's posture for comfort, but I needed something to hold onto while I said this. "I don't want to be kept like a pet in a cage, even a beautiful one."
His flinch was subtle but I caught it, felt the sting of those words through our connection. He thought I was rejecting everything, preparing to walk away. I pushed forward before he could retreat behind those walls I felt him building.
"But I also don't want to go back to the warrens, to stealing and starving and sleeping with one eye open, waiting for someone to decide I'm worth more dead than alive." The words came faster now, tumbling over each other in my rush to make him understand. "I can't go back to that. Not after . . ."
Not after feeling safe for the first time in my memory. Not after sleeping without fear. Not after being touched with reverence instead of violence or transaction. But I couldn't say those things out loud, not yet.
"I propose a trial arrangement." I forced my voice steady, channeling every negotiation I'd ever witnessed in Hammerdeep's markets. "Three days where we explore what this could be—the Daddy/Little dynamic you described."
The word Daddy made us both tense, arousal spiking through the bond like a shared electric shock. His hands clenched at his sides, and I watched the muscles in his forearms cord with the effort of staying still.
"With rules," I continued, fighting through the heat flooding my face. "Structure, clear boundaries. But also with honesty about what this life would mean."
I saw him about to refuse—the subtle intake of breath, the way his jaw set. I pushed forward, words spilling out before he could voice the rejection.
"I need to know if I can exist here, in this empty place with just stone and memories that aren't mine. I need to know if what I felt in that dream—"
I stopped, heat flooding from my face down to my chest, painting me in shades of mortification. But I'd come this far. I forced myself to continue, voice barely above a whisper.
"If that's real or just the bond's magic making me want things I wouldn't normally want. Making me feel things that aren't really mine."
His expression shifted, something raw flickering across those ancient features. Through the bond came a tangle of emotion—hurt that I'd question the authenticity of what was between us, understanding of why I needed to, and underneath it all, a hope so desperate it made my chest ache.
"And you need to know if you can actually do this again," I said, the hardest words of all. "Be with someone who isn't her."