Chapter 4 #2
I try to pull back, but I’m too slow. His fingers slide higher, closing around my forearm, his grip biting to the bone. He brings my arm up between us, sending more pain shooting through my damaged shoulder.
My palm hits the iron around his neck.
The metal is cold and rough, pitted with age, full of dents and hard edges that press into the cut he made. I whimper. His eyes fix on a point past my shoulder, his jaw set, and every line of his body tense.
For a long moment, nothing happens. My palm stays pressed against the cold iron, my pulse hammers in my ears, and the fae stands over me with his fingers locked around my arm.
I can feel where the collar meets his skin beneath my fingertips—the raw weeping flesh under the band, slick with blood that isn’t mine.
The iron sits so tight against his throat that his pulse beats visibly in the swollen tissue around it.
Then the iron begins to warm.
It’s subtle at first, enough to think I’m imagining it. But the cold leaches out of the metal degree by degree, replaced by heat. I try to pull away. His grip clamps down in a silent warning to stay still.
The heat builds. My palm stings where the cut is pressed too hard against the iron. It feels like it’s being pulled open, the edges separating, blood flowing faster than it should. Every pulse pushes more out of me.
A faint sound reaches my ears. The band shifts against my skin, and a crack spreads through the metal, starting beneath my palm and racing around his neck. Then another. With each fine line that appears, a wave of nausea rolls through me.
“I’m going to be sick.”
He doesn’t even look at me.
The cracks in the collar deepen. The heat turns unbearable. My palm feels like it’s being held against a pot left too long over the fire. The blood between my skin and the iron has turned hot and sticky.
The cracks carve through the places where the collar has worn his throat raw.
Iron rubs against flesh as the band shifts.
I can feel the movement under my hand, the metal splitting, skin tearing anew, and his blood welling up to mix with mine.
The heat pushes through my palm and into my wrist, climbing my arm in slow waves.
A rough sound slips through his lips.
His shoulders curl inward, tendons standing out along his neck. His jaw clenches so hard that the muscles jump beneath his skin.
The collar groans again. Louder this time.
The cracks meet, becoming a web of breaks held together by rust. My blood has worked into every seam. The heat coming off the collar makes the air around it shimmer. Then something gives, and the sound is like bone snapping.
Another sound escapes him, low and guttural.
The collar collapses.
Segments fall away from his throat, clattering against my fingers, his chest, and the ground at our feet. One edge catches my thumb and splits the skin. Another chunk drops onto my wrist, hot enough to burn. I jerk back, but his grip holds me in place until the last piece has fallen away.
My hand slides over bare skin. His throat is slick with sweat and blood—his and mine, mingled together. The flesh beneath is a mess. Raw and weeping where the iron sat, torn open where the breaking collar ripped it again. Dark bruising disappears down the collar of his tunic.
His pulse beats beneath my fingertips, hard and fast.
He pulls in a breath, chest lifting. His throat works under my hand as he swallows. He holds the air in his lungs, eyes closed, every muscle in his body still.
Then he releases it and takes in another. Then another.
His eyes open, and he holds my stare for a beat. My hand is still pressed against his throat. My blood is still wet on his skin.
My blood broke his collar.
His fingers loosen on my forearm, and I stumble back, gasping as feeling floods back into my arm. Pins and needles race from my shoulder to my fingertips.
I get one step away. Two—
His hand snaps out and closes around my upper arm.
I don’t get any further.
He glances down at the broken pieces of iron scattered around his feet.
His lips curve into a savage and triumphant smile, and everything inside me turns cold.
He turns toward the nearest gap in the trees, and the pull on my arm jerks me forward.
My boots skid in the dirt. I stumble, catch myself, stumble again.
It doesn’t slow him. His stride stays long, towing me behind him.
The opening in the ring of trees rushes toward us. My body braces for impact, remembering the sick stop of slamming into the barrier when I tried to reach the stream. My shoulders bunch. My free hand flies up to cover my face.
Coolness brushes over my skin, slides across my shoulders and down my spine, there and gone. My next step lands on the earth beyond the hollow.
We’re out.
I twist to look back.
The hollow sits behind us. From here it looks like any other clearing in the forest. His fingers dig harder into my arm, and I stumble after him because there’s nothing else I can do.
Every step sends pain through my ribs. My palm burns where the cut remains. The places where he kicked me ache with every jolt.
Questions pile up in my head.
What did you just do? How far can you go now? Where are you taking me?
But asking is pointless. His attention is on the forest ahead. Mine has to stay on my feet if I don’t want to fall, because I know he won’t bother waiting for me to stand up and will drag me across the ground.
The hollow disappears behind us, swallowed by tree trunks and shadows. It looks the same as it did when this started, when I arrived full of excitement.
But everything has changed, and I don’t know what that means for me. All I know is that I’m still his prisoner, and eventually he’s going to kill me.