Chapter 18 #3
I waver, balanced in mid-air, breath held as I wait to see which way I’ll fall. My fingers press into his shoulder, and I can’t help but wonder how deeply they’d dig in if I just let go. If I lost myself. Let lust consume me. Let him consume me.
But in the pause, my hand finds my pendant and squeezes. A flicker of warmth emanates from the metal, so faint I might have imagined it.
And yet my blood surges, answering to old habits. Hope roars up from nowhere, sweeping all else from view. Maybe my goddess hasn’t forgotten me, after all.
Maybe she’s still watching.
“I can’t,” I whisper against the Shadow’s skin, anchoring myself to the crescent moon in my hand. Taming the wild flood inside me. “I’m sorry.”
Disappointment courses through him, but he nestles me closer anyway, a wordless acceptance. He carries me onward, driving back a many-eyed shadow creature that dares to test his sphere of light.
“Could you tell me the rest of the story?” I venture.
A minute passes before he answers. Two. When he does, his words emerge as a rasp. “What else do you want to know?”
“What happened with Alanna, when Amriel told her no.”
Another minute slips by in silence. Then, “She got angry. She lashed out, told him he was making a mistake, that he’d regret refusing her.
Then he got angry, and said he’d never marry a human, and it all spiraled from there.
She said she’d make it so he’d want to, someday.
That his fated mate would be descended from Aethrolia’s royal line.
Then she cursed him, split him into two and said she hoped he’d someday watch his mate die in the Wildwood. And you know the rest.”
I try to digest that. I knew Alanna’s magic involved laying curses. I’ve seen it in the Registry of Graces—the gigantic, leatherbound book that chronicles the magical ability of every Vandenore in the royal line, for as far back as our history stretches.
But I didn’t know the extent of her power. And I want to understand whether Aethrolia intentionally hid the truth about Amriel’s curse. About the true cause of the war. “Did Alanna’s advisors know? What she’d done? Or did she keep that to herself, too?”
The Shadow mulls that over. “I don’t know. I’ve always assumed they did, but I can’t say for sure. There weren’t many efforts at diplomacy, after that. Mostly just blood and war and death.”
I chew at the inside of my cheek. “Because Amriel was furious.”
“He was in agony, and didn’t know how to manage it yet. And he was only twenty-eight, then. Young and spiteful and reckless.”
Twenty-eight. The same age I am now. I tally the math in my head—this means Amriel and his Shadow are two-hundred and fifty-four. “And now? What is he now?”
A dark, humorless chuckle coils in his throat. “Now he’s just spiteful and reckless.”
I laugh at how ridiculously true that is. And relax against the Shadow, my body molding to his. “Yes. He really is.”
“You should sleep, Princess.”
I stifle a yawn. Between today’s adrenaline, the relentless spikes of emotion, and my head injury, I’d like nothing more than to rest for a while. But… “I don’t expect you to carry me all night.”
“I will, though. I want to.”
I turn that over. I’ll need all my faculties once the sun comes up and I have to navigate this maze on my own again. And he offered. So I snuggle close, lulled by the cadence of his steps.
Eventually, I dream. Not in pictures, but in sensation.
I dream of a place I’ve never touched before—an ocean of bliss, so welcoming that my arrival completes a circle that has always needed closing.
It’s a place of belonging, one that cradles me close, and when the dream ends and I surface toward consciousness again, the loss of that paradise leaves an empty, painful throb behind.
I try to delve back into slumber, to return to that place of completion, but the dream breaks into wisps, my fingers groping at nothing.
My eyes flutter open. A mournful sound creeps from my lips.
I roll over and survey my surroundings. We must have passed through another door at some point, because the Shadow has set me down atop a lush bank beside a glowing cerulean stream.
He sits in the grass a few feet away, cross-legged.
Willow branches spill around us, encasing us with gleaming violet blossoms, while beyond the dome of flowers, a yellow flush warms the horizon.
I sit up, wiping the sleep from my eyes. “Where are we?”
The Shadow’s expression is solemn. “The safest place I could find. I only have a few more minutes.”
I peer up through the willow branches. To the west, the castle rises against the sky, already lit by the rays of dawn. It looks closer than before, though I still have some way to go.
“You should use your gyre,” he says. “Go back to the castle. Keep yourself safe while I hunt.”
I turn back. “I…can’t.” And then, because his honesty deserves more of the same, “I’m scared of what might happen. Of what I’ll let Amriel do. I’m scared I’ll never leave again.”
Such naked longing moves across his face that I drop my gaze, fiddling with the long grass that sprouts up around me.
“You could just stay, you know,” he says. “Even if you never came back to the labyrinth, never broke the curse, we would take care of you. You could have either of us, or both. Whatever you wanted.”
My eyes prickle inexplicably. “I know. I know that. But I have to keep going. On my own. I have to go home.”
He absorbs that in silence. Then, “Will you promise me something, at least?”
I brave a glance and find his mouth flat, his brows drawn. “What?”
“That you’ll use your gyre if you get in trouble. If I find you today, if anything threatens you, just go back to the castle. Please.”
I swallow the barb in my throat and nod. “Yes. All right.”
His posture eases a fraction. He looks like he wants to say more, but I wait and wait and wait, and nothing comes.
“Was there something else?” I prompt.
He glances away. “It’s nothing.”
A dry laugh falls from my lips. “Obviously it’s not nothing.”
His mouth pulls into a grimace. “I just want so badly to touch you. With this body, I mean. To know what you feel like. Even if it’s only once. Even if I can never fully have you. Even if it’s just a kiss.”
The plaintive tenor of his voice cracks my heart wide open, all the blood in my body coursing toward him like a river seeking the sea. “You want to kiss me? Right now?”
His throat bobs soundlessly. “If you’d let me. I don’t think I could stop, but the sun will rise in a few seconds and take me away, and I just… A kiss, Princess. It would mean everything to me.”
My teeth dig into my bottom lip. He’s saved me so many times over. Proven himself safe, and loyal, and most of all, worthy. And really, I’ve kissed him already. Twice. Just not in this form.
And goddess help me, he’s so beautiful that looking at him nearly blinds me.
“All right,” I say huskily.
He blinks a few times, as if certain he misheard. “Really?”
“Yes. Just…let me come to you, all right?”
A swift nod. “Of course. Anything.”
I push up out of the grass and cross toward him, my eyes tracking every flex of his forearms. His shoulders tremble, his tongue sweeping across his bottom lip, the glow of his eyes burning like an invitation.
And even though I haven’t touched him yet, I swear he’s somehow pulling me back to that dream place, the one I touched so briefly and still feel as though I’ll miss forever.
The morning brightens around us. I hover over him for a moment, my stomach collapsing to an achy flutter, every molecule in my body bending toward him. Then I lower myself, straddling his lap like I did earlier, only this time for a very different reason.
A purring moan escapes him, but he keeps his arms at his sides, even while the rest of his body strains toward me.
I take his face in my hands, the tips of my fingers grazing his cheekbones. My chest spasms at the contact, breath stuttering in my lungs as the bond tattoos his feelings across my heart.
Good goddess, he needs. So much that I pause, my forehead tilted against his, the tips of our noses brushing. His breath fans across my lips, sweet and warm and pleading, his inhales so rapid they drown out the burble of the stream.
“Sariah,” he whispers, just an inch from my mouth. “I l—”
“Shhh,” I say, and lower my lips.
But light spills over the horizon, gilding the willows around us, and my mouth never makes it to his. The Shadow dissolves, leaving nothing between my hands but empty air. My knees sink into the cold, dewy grass as I pitch forward against unforgiving ground.
A roar rises in the distance, coming from the castle, different than any I’ve heard before.
Not sharp with rage, this time, but hollow with loss.