Chapter 11
Eleven
The smell of roasting meat sends my nostrils twitching before I fully process that I’m not dreaming.
I slit one eye open, my vision blurred with the crumbs of sleep. Falcen crouches by a small fire at the cave entrance, the sunlight filtering through a narrow crevice and piercing his tousled hair like spears of dawn.
Rising on my elbows, I notice the small spit in the middle of the fire that he turns, sparks of fat crackling against the flames.
Falcen glances over, hearing me stir.
“I thought you might want to break your fast before we head out.” His voice is flat, almost mechanical. “Rabbit.”
I rub my eyes, shrugging off the remnants of exhaustion as I sit up fully, then scoot closer to the fire, my muscles protesting after a night on the hard ground.
The rabbit looks delicious, its skin brown and crisp.
“How long until it’s ready?” I ask, my growling stomach punctuating the question.
“A few more minutes.”
I sit back on my hands, moving my head side to side and stretching the kinks out. “I didn’t realize you could cook. I thought souls were the only thing on the menu for you Elite Renders.”
Falcen’s lips thin. “You still have human needs, even if my appetite is unconventional.” He pulls the spit from the flames, the meat sizzling. “This used to be my favorite meal.”
As he carves off a portion, I study the fluid grace of his movements, the contained strength in his frame.
Dangerous, my instincts whisper. But also captivating.
I accept the offered meat with a nod of thanks, sinking my teeth in. The rich, smoky flavor floods my tongue. I must make a sound close to ecstasy because Falcen’s attention snaps to my face, drifting from my eyes, to my lips, where a rivulet of grease drips from the corner of my mouth.
With a hooded gaze, he appears to have discovered a clear purpose: Lick it off with his tongue.
I quickly pull the meat from my mouth and wipe the spot with the back of my hand, my face hot to the point of burning, and not because of the ember. And though it’s difficult and I risk death by choking, I try to swallow the food.
After I finish, I ask, “What were you like before? When you were fully human?”
Falcen blinks, his standard, apathetic mask falling back into place.
“I was different. Naive. Trusting.” He works his jaw. “Weak.”
“You don’t strike me as someone who was ever weak.”
A humorless chuckle escapes him as he slices off another strip of rabbit and passes it over. “The instructors at the academy, the Veil Keepers, have a knack for carving away weakness.”
My heart clenches for him, and for what I have to look forward to.
I wish circumstances were different, Falcen said to me last night. That you had a choice.
“What did they do to you?” I dare to ask.
Falcen is silent for a long time, the crackle of flames loud in the stillness. His hand drifts to his exposed forearm, tracing the skin where his tattoos—no, scars—have since faded. “They taught me to crave souls, both human and Void. And to never question the cost.”
I inch closer, drawn to him, wanting to offer comfort but unsure how. He turns his head, his lashes lowered as he tracks the movement.
My hand hovers over his arm before I lose my nerve and pull back. “You’re so much more than what they made you, you know.”
Falcen’s eyes hook mine, his pupils flaring with a dangerous gold to them.
“Am I? The hunger never leaves, Verily. It gnaws at my very soul, demanding to be sated.” His knuckles whiten over the spit holding the rabbit.
“Even now, with you so close, I can feel your spirit. Because of last night, I know you now. How bright and pure you are, bursting with untapped power. It calls to me, tempting me to just—take.”
Apprehension lances through me, but I hold his stare without flinching. We’ve spent days and nights together, and he’s never touched me. Last night was all my doing.
So I say, “But you won’t. Because that’s not who you are.”
He meets my eyes again, the gold ring in those inhuman eyes expanding. “I am what I am. Neither monster nor man.”
I know I should keep my distance, but the part of me that glimpsed his pain last night, that felt the echoes of his loneliness and self-loathing, refuses to just watch him suffer. “Falcen, I—”
Falcen pushes to his feet, tossing the animal bones aside. He strides out of the cave’s thin mouth, effectively ending our conversation.
“Come,” he says over his shoulder. “It’s time for a test.”
Haltingly, I get to my feet. “Test?”
“You deserve my thanks for risking your life to search for the gold powder and heal me, but I don’t think either of us has enough strength to make the rest of our trip on foot. There’s a lair of nether drakes nearby. We’re going to procure ourselves some mounts.”
My heart actually stops beating.
“You can’t be serious. Nether drakes are just a scarier name for dragons. I’d rather you throw me in a lake again than go near one.”
Falcen looks back at me, Lux’s light caressing one side of his arresting face. “You can hardly make it up a small hill before losing your breath. And hiking on foot provides you too much time to discover rescue situations you’re determined to launch yourself into, life or death be damned.”
I frown. To think I was just admiring his pretty face. But Falcen doesn’t have to say it. I know his injuries last night were my fault. I’m the one who demanded we save those poor kids.
And I do not regret it.
I squint at him. “So your solution is to put me on the back of a creature that can rip my head off with a single bite?”
“Nether drakes are intelligent, powerful, and can cover vast distances quickly. With the proper training, they would make ideal mounts for Soulren, though so far they are immensely against it.” His sharp eyes drill into me.
“They kill, but sometimes they let you stay on their back long enough to feel limitless before they remember you’re prey.
” Falcen angles his head. “You want to survive with Soulren your age at the academy, right? Then you must be able to approach your classmates who will be vastly ahead of you with the skill of mounting a drake. Unless you’d like to start your training with the five-summer-olds. ”
I ignore his dig. “If riding a drake was so important, why were we hiking on foot all this time?”
“Because you have the endurance of a sloth. I’d hoped to build up some stamina on you before leaving you to the Veil Keepers.”
He may be correct, but I refuse to admit it. Crop picking gifted me with a toned body, but not one meant for surviving the wilds. “I’m surprised you cared enough to want to prepare your captive for the horrors you’re about to dump her in.”
“And I’m surprised you wanted to fuck me as much as heal me last night.”
Silence.
A severe heat wave hits my face, and I can’t tell if it’s mortification or straight fury. Possibly both.
“Would you stop saying that word,” I demand, my voice soft and strained.
“Why?” His mouth quirks. “What does it do to you when you hear me say fuck?”
I ignore the surge of electricity building much lower in my belly than I’m comfortable with and march up to Falcen, so close our chests nearly touch. His eyes flash with lazy heat.
“It makes me want to slap that infuriating smirk right off your face.”
His gaze drops to my mouth. “Careful, Veilbreaker. I might like it.”
My breath stalls.
Damn him for getting under my skin, for making me feel things I shouldn’t. I recoil and jab a finger near his chest.
“You’re right. Last night was a mistake. A moment of weakness brought on by extreme circumstances. You told me not to touch you. It won’t happen again.”
He holds firm. The hard planes of his armorless body are much too close.
Dammit all to Nox.
“Liar,” he murmurs.
We stay at war through our eyes, neither willing to break first. As biting as his last words were, the sheer heat of his stare doesn’t just contradict the coolness, it melts it away. Whatever he fed on last night has made him feisty again.
Or was it me? What did I do to heal him?
Falcen’s attention returns to my mouth, hovering there for a beat too long before he curls his lips and spins on his heel.
I cross my arms over my chest, pretending I didn’t notice that perilous second when I thought he might pin me to the wall and slide his hand into my breeches, showing me exactly who was in charge while my screams of rapture brought down the cave around us.
“I’d rather take my chances hunting Void hounds,” I toss at his back, barely able to recover from that image.
“It wasn’t a request.” Falcen doesn’t turn while he says it, and disappears through the gap.
Grumbling under my breath, I follow, cursing his name with each step. The uneven terrain does nothing to improve my mood as we hike up a steep incline, loose rocks skittering underfoot.
Lux’s sun beats down mercilessly as we navigate the treacherous mountain paths. I focus on putting one foot in front of the other, trying to ignore the burn in my thighs and the rasp of my breath so I don’t prove Falcen right.
Falcen moves with effortless grace ahead of me, his long legs eating up the distance. He hasn’t said a word since we left the cave.
We crest a ridge, and Falcen holds up a hand, signaling me to stop. I bend over, bracing my hands on my knees as I suck in lungfuls of air, my stained cloak falling like a blanket over my bowed form. When I straighten, Falcen points down into the valley below.
Nestled against the craggy rock face is the yawning mouth of a massive cavern. Jagged stones ring the entrance like teeth, and tendrils of smoky mist curl out from the depths.
I bite down on the side of my cheek so I don’t scream.
Shading my eyes against the glare of the sun, I try to make out details, like massive, lumbering shadows or angry snorts of fire. “How can you tell if they’re home?”
“I can sense them. Feel the current of their souls, even from here.”