Chapter 23
So many things happen at once.
Amriel unleashes a howl so anguished I swear it shakes the world. The Shadow leaps, his claws outstretched. And I instinctively step back. Into nothingness.
My heart rushes up my throat as I tip past the bluff and plummet, wind tearing at me, my loose hair whipping around my face as the sky rushes away.
The Shadow leaps, too, without hesitation. I fall and fall, my hands scrabbling at thin air, no breath to even scream. But somehow, he falls faster, streaking toward me, gaining—
Warm water crashes up from below, jetting into my nose, filling my throat.
I thrash, trying to right myself, but the current grabs hold and whisks me away.
The world spins. A stone slams into my back, bubbles erupting as I scream.
My chest spasms. Burns. Oxygen won’t come.
Somehow, I get my feet beneath me and push toward the surface. Toward air.
My head breaks water, a clean breath piercing my lungs. Errant waves push me down again, but I claw my way back up, water spluttering from my throat and pouring from my nose.
I hurtle along, carried by a roar of blue and green and purple I can barely make sense of. Where is the Shadow? In the water with me, no doubt, but I can’t see him, can’t do anything but try to keep my head above water as the current sweeps me away.
The river yanks at my clothes and bashes my dagger against my hip. Wet strands cling to my face as I strain for shore, a sandbar, anything.
I kick and kick and kick. Cough and splutter and choke.
A rock rushes up from nowhere. The impact slams into my hip, spinning me sideways. I try to grab hold, but my fingernails skid across slick stone as the current tears me loose again.
Somewhere upstream, a savage bellow joins the river’s roar—the Shadow, not far behind me.
All at once, the current dumps me into a wide, slow-moving pool. I strike out for solid ground, driven by a single directive.
Escape my hunter. Get out of the water before he does.
My blood pumps hot. The pool turns shallow, my boots scraping against the bottom as I surge to my feet. Dozens of rivulets course across the sand here, each glowing a different color. I slog through one, then another, making for the distant forest.
Another roar sounds behind me. I glance back to see the Shadow emerging from the river, his yellow eyes brighter than the sunset. Glittering purple water streams from his hair.
A scream fills my throat. I spin away, doing my best to flee, but water sloshes in my boots, dragging at every step.
No time to stop and fix it.
I hit a stretch of soft sand and sprint as best I can, but I’ve slipped into one of those horrible dreams where even my best efforts fall short.
The world narrows, everything too loud, too bright, and oh, goddess, he’s going to catch me.
He’s going to eat me. Heavy splashes erupt behind me, each one louder than the last.
I bolt for the setting sun, willing it to sink faster, but I still have thirty seconds left, maybe a minute.
Adrenaline douses my system. My legs ignite, the balls of my feet driving into the sand. Water squelches from my boots, but I can’t stop, can’t slow, can’t—
Thunk. My foot catches on a rock and I go down hard, splashing face-first into a shallow violet stream. Every nerve screams as I twist around.
The Shadow drops to all fours mid-stride, streaking toward me like an aimed javelin. Razor-sharp claws fling sand aside. Jets of glowing water erupt around his feet. Each gleaming fang seems to elongate as he closes the last few feet—
I fling an arm up, my eyes squeezed shut. I can’t believe this is how I die. With the bite of teeth. The sting of claws.
Something punches into the wet sand beside my head. Then another something, on the other side.
I recoil, my heartbeat an endless scream, so loud it drowns out everything else. But pain doesn’t come.
A second passes. Another. Then three, then four, then five.
I peek through slitted lashes to find the Shadow’s face mere inches from mine. Glowing eyes drill into me, air hissing between his teeth as his chest works like a bellows. But he doesn’t attack. He doesn’t even move.
“Sh-shadow?” I whimper.
He hovers, his arms bracketing my head, his frame taut and thrumming. Only he doesn’t seem to be inside it anymore. There’s a flatness to his look, a…vacancy. Like the monster has gone, but the goblin hasn’t yet taken his place.
My chin trembles as I chance a glance behind me. The sun has vanished, leaving a smear of yellow light across the horizon.
A seed of hope plants itself in my chest. “Shadow? Can you hear me?”
No answer. I peek at my bracelet, which has gotten spun in the shuffle, shutting Amriel out. But those gleaming golden eyes must contain him, too, so I peer up into them, beseeching. “Please. Say something.”
A sharp breath rushes into his lungs, then returns to me as a faint growl, hardly more than a low vibration on the air. His eyes move back and forth, something surfacing there with every pass.
It’s like watching someone emerge from a dream. Like seeing a glittering ocean creature materialize from the deep.
“P…” He blinks. “P-Princess?”
His voice sounds rusty and guttural, like he hasn’t used it in hours. Which he hasn’t, of course. But it’s him, now. My Shadow. My mate.
Relief slams into me, and I fall back, sand squelching beneath me as violet wavelets lap at my thighs. Adrenaline still bathes my insides, my limbs shaking as I plaster my hands over my face.
Oh, goddess. I almost died. I almost died in a way that would have destroyed us both.
I breathe deep until the pressure in my skull eases.
Until the grip of terror fades. When I look up again, horror crowds the Shadow’s expression.
Glowing beads of water drip from his hair and slide down his cheeks, but now that my fear has dissipated, my hands itch with the need to reach up, to wipe them away.
I do.
He flinches at my touch but doesn’t pull away. The bond flickers, granting me a glimpse of the war inside him—overwhelming protectiveness fills him, only it’s tainted. Sullied by the mindless hunger still curdling in his blood.
“Princess, I…” Nausea pulls the words back down his throat. But he tries again, forces them out on a hoarse breath. “I almost hurt you. I almost tore you apart.”
“It’s all right.” My fingertips trace the violet swirls that decorate his cheeks. “It wasn’t you.”
Self-loathing drenches me through the bond. “It was, though. I…I could’ve killed you.” He yanks one fist from the sand with a sucking sound, then finds my dagger and slides it free with a metallic hiss.
Too late, I see the intention in his mind, the desperation driving him to reverse the blade, to point it toward his chest.
“No!” I shriek, but it doesn’t deter him. He brings the blade down in a swift, savage arc. Straight toward his heart.
I don’t think. I just act, my hand darting between our bodies. Here, my mind supplies, remembering the day he told me where to stab. My palm lands against warm skin, and he jerks the blade to a stop, the tip a cold kiss against the back of my hand.
“Move,” he growls.
“No.” I raise my chin, our mouths so close that the heat of his breath ghosts across my lips. “I won’t let you hurt yourself. It wasn’t even you chasing me just now. It was the curse.”
His breath speeds, its harsh scrape cutting apart the silence.
His ribs expand and contract, and under that, his heartbeat throbs, tattooing an apology across my palm.
But none of it lessens the dark emotions spilling into me.
The bitter knowledge staining his blood, his skin, the very air he breathes.
He almost killed me. He’s a danger to the one person he can’t bear to hurt, a threat. A liability.
The dagger pricks at me, denting my skin. “Move. Your. Hand. This is the only way I can be sure.”
I set my jaw and stare into his face. His beautiful face, the one that somehow holds the power to render me defenseless. But in this, I’ll fight him. I’ll lie here all night, his heart in my hand, if I have to. If that’s what it takes to keep him from hurting himself. “Absolutely not.”
“Sariah.” My name is a growled warning.
“No.”
His desperation ratchets upward, the need to save me pouring through every molecule. It doesn’t matter that the thing he needs to save me from is himself.
“Please,” he murmurs, his voice breaking. “Please.”
I don’t even bother to answer this time. Not with words.
I just cup my other hand around his cheek and let everything in me ride down the bond. The warmth that blooms in my chest every time I look at him. The unbearable lightness that suffuses me when he comes close. The way his scent courses over me, centers me.
The way I trust him not to hurt me. The way I need him to trust it, too.
His brow creases as I inundate him with every soaring feeling that lives inside me.
And…something shifts, the air between us heating a degree. Every line of his body quivers as I skim my hand down his cheek and over his collarbone, my fingernails trailing along his side.
It’s a statement. A claiming. Because this goblin is mine. Death can’t have him.
Not tonight. Hopefully not ever.
He shivers. “Sariah. What’re you doing?”
I let my mouth curve, because he knows what I’m doing. He can feel how my fear alchemizes to something else, how hunger opens a hollow pit inside me. How I tip toward it willingly. How, after last night, I realize exactly what he can do to me, what he wants. How much I want it, too.
“Stop,” he says, his voice rough.
“No.”
“Yes. You’re…” A swallow. “…Distracting me.”
“Good. I don’t want you thinking about hurting yourself. Just think about this.” I punctuate the command with a rake of my fingernails along his bare side. “Think about me.”
The dagger wavers, slips. He surges close, his hips finding mine and pressing, something hard and unyielding prodding against my belly.
Heat spirals to life inside me. Desire, yes, but different than last night’s. This is bolder, sharper, a little twisted. Edged with the same wildness etched in every line of his body. It’s a glittering, pulsating force that has me arching my neck and tilting my pelvis.
And at its center lies something unfamiliar—a thrill that zips down my arms and gathers in my fingertips.
Power, I think. The thing I craved in Aethrolia, only now I finally have it, if in a far different form than I expected.
Because yes, this goblin could tear me apart.
Overpower me with one hand, maybe even a single finger.
But he belongs to me, regardless. He agreed to that when I branded him with my initials, and now I say whether he lives or dies.
“Drop the knife,” I croon, my hips surging.
He groans, his breath hot against my lips. “Stop,” he bites out, the word laced with desperation.
Our eyes lock as we battle with one another, but I refuse to back down.
I can hardly tell what’s happening, how blatant desire can fold me into its grip when I was running for my life just moments ago, but I don’t care.
I welcome it, sinking into heat and want and the way my core clenches every time his firmness prods at me.
“Sariah.”
“Yes?” Tilting my face, I drag a long lick up his chin, across the seam of his lips, relishing the salty tang of the river. Of him.
A growl rips out of him, barely held back by clenched fangs. His breathing turns violent, the raw need inside him breaking containment. It saturates his limbs, his body, until he burns with the need to touch me.
“Stop,” he growl-shouts. “I’m trying to help you. I’m trying to save my mate.”
Another roll of my hips. Another lick across his mouth. “Mmm. And what do you think I’m doing?”
A fiery warning flashes in his eyes. He holds himself back, but it requires all two hundred and twenty-six years of discipline, every drop of obedience he’s cultivated over centuries.
Even then, he teeters, clinging to the cliff by the tips of his claws.
He’s a pile of kindling waiting to explode.
An ocean of boiling water, trapped beneath half an inch of ice.
“Stop. It,” he growls. “Just let me save you.”
“No,” I breathe. I can scarcely tell where all this is coming from, who this person is inside my skin, who’s rubbing herself against this goblin while his hold on control slips and slips and slips.
I only know I need him not to die, that I need something very different from him right now. An exchange. An agreement. A promise that he won’t leave me unless I say so.
The same promise Amriel gave me last night.
“Claim me,” I say. “Do everything you want to me.”
“No,” he says, half-gasp, half-snarl. “I’ll hurt you.”
“You won’t. You can’t. Amriel didn’t.”
He breathes and breathes and breathes. He’s trembling now, nothing but a raging battle locked within a prison of blood and bone. He wants to. So badly his need nearly blinds him, but he can’t hurt me, has to protect me, would do anything to keep me safe, even from himself, and…
His thoughts fly like bits of torn paper, spinning out of control.
I spend another moment trying to break his rapidly thinning hold on himself. Then I realize—I know exactly how to tip the balance. He told me how himself.
A slow smile bleeds across my face. His brows lower, maybe catching the intent in my mind as I wriggle out from underneath him.
I don’t give him time to think, or sink in the blade. I just surge to my feet and turn my back on him.
And then I take off running.