Chapter 13 #2
“Used to call these shopping malls,” Egan said from where he was setting up a fire in one of the empty fountains, laying out some wooden chair legs as fuel. “Could buy just about anything you wanted here. Food. Clothing.”
“Weapons?”
Maybe more like the spear that sucked magic away from witches? I wouldn’t mind adding another to my stash. Call me paranoid, but if I had to face the blue cloaked witch at any point, having two of the spears would make me feel a hell of a lot better.
As it was, the one strapped to my pack was better than none at all.
He shrugged. “Maybe if there was a hunting store attached. I was just ten when the world ripped up. But I remember more than most. You know…” he kept talking but I was already moving.
I didn’t have to ask him where Veyyr was—if there was a potential for more weapons, however remote, that’s where he’d have gone. The shopping mall had very few windows, and it wasn’t long before I had my flashlight out.
Stepping lightly, I avoided anything that would alert others to my presence—bits of glass, twigs, scattered boxes, and items I didn’t recognize.
As I took a corner, a huge crossroads loomed, the space above it open to the sky, metal struts twisted inward.
Moss and bird shit littered the central tiles, but it was the large sign across the way that drew me.
A hunting store indeed. Camouflage exterior with painted images of animals with hunters standing over them…
and then there was the obvious addition of housewares, and kid’s toys.
Seemed a strange combination with weapons, but what did I know about the old world?
I hopped over the turnstile and landed lightly, listening…but it was the waft of Veyyr’s scent that drew me forward. Ice and snow, sharp mountain air. There was none of Isla’s scent, nor anyone else that I could pick up.
He was alone, and I let my feet take me to him on the upper level, past an enormous, dry tank that had a smattering of bones still in it. The skylights were mostly blown out above and more than one bird fluttered through the space to nests they’d made within the building.
Veyyr’s back was to me, and I took the opportunity to watch him.
He’d slung his black cloak off over the edge of a display rack.
His shirt was rolled up, his forearms bare, the tattoos running from elbow to wrist on the left arm drawing my eyes.
I couldn’t see what they were though, and I found myself itching to see just what images he’d mark his body with…
“What do you want, Mallory?” He didn’t turn around. He’d know I was there without seeing me.
Just like his scent drew me to him?
There was no point in delaying the question, and yet I did just that.
I drifted over to the aisle next to him, my eyes scanning the shelves for anything that might feel useful.
Every time I glanced up at him, I remembered how easily he took Isla’s side, how quickly his temper flared at everyone but Isla, even though the witch was the one bullying his little brother.
It wasn’t fair, and it burned in me that he never seemed to see it.
I clenched my fists for a moment, the frustration knotting my stomach. “You think I hit her just because she upset me?” I asked, letting the edge in my voice carry.
He paused, then continued his hunt through the shelves, pulling at items here and there, and tucking them into a burlap sack.
“I think Isla feels threatened by you, and you know it.” Veyyr picked up something made of canvas and buckles.
“Because her magic doesn’t threaten me.” I nodded. “I know—”
“That is not why, and you know it.”
I deliberately didn’t look over at him right away, though I knew I’d see those storm lit eyes staring me down, daring me to ignore him. Daring me to reach into the darkness of who he truly was and see what I found. Would the ice-cold burn kill me, or cure me?
But I was no coward, even if I knew there were things that terrified me. I arched a brow and leaned against the metal shelf, locking eyes with him.
“You want to tell me how you know me?” I lifted my hand with the ring on it. “Did you give this to me?”
His eyes dipped to my hand and he snorted. “I wouldn’t bind you to me if my life depended on it. Never mind of my own volition.”
I think my laughter was not what he expected and he frowned. “Why is that funny?”
We were at the end of the two aisles, nothing between us.
“Because you said it like I would bind myself to you. Fuck me,” I muttered the last two words under my breath.
Veyyr stared hard at me, sparks seeming to flicker in his eyes as they dipped from my face, down my body and back up. “Is that a request?”
What, no pithy comeback? Maybe because it was a request, huh?
The pulse in my body flared, need for something I should not want roaring to the surface, heating my face. Flushed, I could feel my face flush and I couldn’t stop it. I shook my head as if that would help shake away this stupid fixation with this fool of a man.
I wasn’t here for Veyyr, I was here to find whatever it was that I’d lost. I was here to find my past—to find myself. He was at best a distraction, at worst a danger.
He lifted his hand and cupped the side of my face, his thumb stroking across my lower lip, incredibly soft and I could not believe that the word applied…gentle. And I didn’t know if he was being serious or not.
Gentle was not a word I ever would have put in a mix with Veyyr and me.
“Did I hurt you when I threw you into the tree?” His voice softened, as if begging me to lean closer and my body reacted, breath hitching in my chest.
I struggled to find something to say that would derail this from happening, but my mind and my body had disconnected. My body wanted something my mind had repeatedly pointed out was a terrible idea.
“A little bruised.”
What little space was left between us disappeared and his other hand pressed against my ribs, sliding down to my hip, his thumb making the same sweep under my shirt across bare skin, the same sweep as he’d done to my lip. “Here?”
Abort! Abort!
“Higher.” I didn’t look away from him. I couldn’t. It felt like if I blinked, he would vanish the way my memories had—slip through my fingers like smoke.
His hand slid up from my waist, cool against my skin, tracing scars even I had yet to discover, stopping only once his knuckles brushed the lower curve of my breast.
I had my hands on his forearms, tracing the tattoos blindly, feeling the raised lines and old scars in the muscle beneath. Proof he had lived. Proof he had endured.
I did not know who I had been.
But I knew this—this heat, this pull, this terrifying need to lean into something solid.
Find your voice, girl. Or you’re going to end up lost again.
“Veyyr—” His name caught, half warning, half plea.
He rubbed his cheek against mine, slow, deliberate, dragging across my skin before brushing his mouth over my lips like he was testing whether I would flinch.
“Here?” he murmured again.
My throat went tight. Not from fear.
From the realization that if I let him in—if I let him be the thing I anchored to—what would happen if he cast me away then?
Adrenaline flooded my veins, but it wasn’t the kind that came before a fight. It was the kind that came before surrender.
I couldn’t have shouted if my life had depended on it.
“Higher.” Was the only word I had in me.
His eyes flashed as he slid his palm up and over my breast, a deep growl in the back of his throat as he cupped me, dragging my nipple taut between two fingers, streaks of that razor’s edge of pleasure and pain firing through my body, destroying what was left of my thoughts.
My breath hitched and I locked my knees to keep from dragging us both to the ground. Fuck me, he would if I let him and damn my body for wanting him, but there was no thought of anything but need in me.
“Damn you,” his words rumbled across my skin as he yanked my shirt up and dropped his mouth to my breast, scooping me up with his other arm so that I straddled him, his obvious arousal hard against my throbbing center.
He held me there as a cool wind slid down around us, the skin along my bare belly pebbling and I knew that we were seconds away from fucking. Seconds.
No matter how much I wanted him, no matter how much chemistry there was between us…he was keeping secrets from me.
His teeth raked my breast as he slid his hand between us, down my pants across my throbbing clit, slicked with my own want. My hips bucked, begging.
He lifted his head, eyes locking with mine, as glazed as I knew my own would be.
Desire yes, but confusion too. As if he knew neither of us should want this. Because he knew me.
Someone who knew me. I didn’t pull away, but I found my voice, fought to speak through this raging firestorm of desire.
“I had an encounter last night with someone that knew me.”
His body stilled and if not for the fact that I’d seen him moving only a moment before I would have said he was a statue. “Who was he?”
He?
I shook my head and pulled away from him, tried not to see the way his fingers glistened as I shifted away from him and put myself back together, grabbed my shirt and yanked it back on. “That’s the problem, I don’t know. But she knew me.”
Veyyr turned and put his hands on his hips, his back flexing as he fought to get a hold of himself. “Did she have a name?”
“I was hoping you might know who she was.”
He grunted and strode toward his dropped bag, scooping it up, then grabbing his cloak putting space between us even though the air reeked of what almost happened.
So fucking close.
“Maybe don’t kill people so quick, Mal. Then you’ll be able to ask their names themselves.” He slung his cloak over his shoulders but didn’t look back at me.
“I didn’t kill her.”
“Then why not ask—”
“Because she scared me, Veyyr! I hid from her until she was gone, because…” I could tell him that I remembered her from my past, but I swallowed those words…
“she was a powerhouse witch, Veyyr. Blue cloak with stars on it, blonde hair, but I couldn’t see her face.
She…she’s hunting me, Veyyr. And whatever immunity I have against magic,” I shook my head, “I don’t think it would hold up to a spell cast by her. Do you know who she is?”
Veyyr dropped his bag and strode back to me, cupping my face in both hands.
Not in desire but something far more frightening…
because it looked a lot like fear. “You did the right thing, Mal. If you see her again you hide or run. Do not try to fight her, do you understand me?” He swallowed hard and said something that I never thought I’d hear from his lips. A plea.
“Please. Promise me you’ll not try to fight her.”
Like swallowing bits of glass, because normally the idea of running or hiding made me ill, but with her…I felt nothing but relief.
“I won’t fight her, Veyyr.”
“Promise me.” It was the fear in his eyes that sealed it for me. Fear for me. Fear of that witch I’d stumbled on. I hadn’t seen fear in him when we’d faced the bleeders. When we’d fought the sagryl or run from Bone town. But that witch did what all those things couldn’t.
She scared him too.
“I promise.”
He pressed his lips to mine, sealing the words between us in a gesture that had no true heat behind it. Just…concern. Then he was gone, leaving me in the warehouse of rundown weapons and gear with a true sense of whiplash, wondering what the fuck had just happened?