Chapter 11 #2
Valen didn’t announce himself. He simply stepped into my space like he belonged there, close enough that his body blocked the open drop and most of the worst of the heat.
His hand closed around my elbow, steadying me before my knees could give out.
Firm. Controlled. Too careful for someone who claimed to hate me.
His eyes met mine.
Not amused. Not distant.
Focused. Immediate.
For one humiliating heartbeat, my body recognized safety from the man who had killed my best friend.
“Breathe,” he said quietly.
I sucked in air like it was a choice I’d forgotten how to make. My lungs burned. My pride burned worse.
The mountain seemed to bend around him, or maybe it only felt that way. His cloak snapped in the furnace wind, black silk flaring like smoke ripped loose from the fire below.
“Are you trying to die up here?” he asked, voice low and raw.
“I didn’t ask you to save me.”
His mouth cut into a hard line. “No,” he said, eyes narrowing. “You just keep presenting opportunities.”
Heat rolled off him in waves. His grip tightened on my arm, bruising in its restraint, like he was holding back something worse than anger. I hated that I could feel his thumb against my pulse. I hated that it made my body remember itself.
“You flinched,” he said, gaze flicking over my face as if searching for damage. “And you know what they do when you show fear.”
“I’m not afraid,” I snapped, even as my heart battered against my ribs like it wanted out.
Valen’s expression tightened, the gold in his eyes bright enough to sting. “You’re terrified,” he said quietly. “You’re just trying to look dangerous anyway.”
My throat worked. “Let go of me.”
He didn’t.
Instead, he leaned in slightly, close enough that his voice turned private, edged with something that felt too intimate to be mercy.
“If you want me to stop saving you,” he said, “start saving yourself.”
Then his gaze snapped past me, locking on Seraphine.
“Watch her,” Valen said, the softness gone, replaced by command. “No games. No lessons that end in blood.”
Seraphine stiffened. “Dominus, she?—”
Valen didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to.
“Keep her alive.”
His hand finally released my elbow, but he didn’t move away. Not fully. Not like he could.
Not like he wanted to.
Seraphine’s knives glinted, her jaw tightening. “I am.”
“Not well enough.” He didn’t raise his tone, but the mountain seemed to quake with it all the same. Each word struck like a hammer, deliberate, designed to bruise. “If I hadn’t been here, she’d already be ash. I want her trained, not dead.”
Only then did his gaze return to me.
My throat went dry under the weight of it. The mountain hummed around us, but in this instant, it might as well have been silent.
His hand lingered on me—thumb pressing against the frantic beat at my wrist, fingers spanning the bones of my arm as though measuring what he owned, or what he intended to break. My body swayed toward him without permission, a traitor to everything I thought I wanted.
“Stay behind me,” he murmured, low enough that only I could hear, the words rough as stone dragged over stone. His breath ghosted over my ear, hot, laced with iron and smoke. “If you can manage that much.”
The firewasps screamed above us again, their wings a chorus of razors as more appeared and raced toward us. But all I could feel was his hand, his heat, the impossible certainty that death had just been delayed because he decided it.
The swarm shrieked and dove as one. Heat split the air, wings flashing ember light.
Valen moved first. His sword carved arcs of fire through the haze, every strike clean, effortless, almost lazy. He could have been cutting roses, not wasps spitting death. Sparks hissed where the bodies fell, searing holes into the stone.
“Keep your feet under you,” he said, not looking back at me. His tone was infuriatingly calm, like this was a lesson in court etiquette, not survival. “Left foot forward, weight in your hips. Pretend you’re dancing.”
“I’m not dancing, I’m dying!” I snapped, ducking as a wasp buzzed too close.
“Not yet.” His blade blurred again, splitting another from the air. He spared me a quick glance. “Though if you keep flailing, you’ll make an excellent corpse.”
I stumbled, my boot slipping on slick black glass. A wasp streaked low, wings burning hot against my thigh. My knee buckled?—
And his hand closed hard around my waist.
He yanked me in tight, our bodies colliding with enough force to knock the breath from my lungs. His chest pressed into my back, the sword swinging wide in his other hand to cleave the wasp before it stung. The strike was so close the heat of it licked across my cheek.
“See?” His mouth brushed the edge of my ear, voice rich with dark amusement. “Footwork’s easier when you don’t do it alone.”
“I hate you,” I gasped.
“You keep saying that.” His grip only tightened, anchoring me. “The repetition is getting old, Frostbite. Come up with something original.”
Seraphine’s voice cut through the swarm. “Less chatter. More killing.” Her blades flashed, twin streaks of silver, slicing wasps from the air with ruthless precision. She didn’t even spare us a look.
Valen laughed, a low, dangerous sound. “I’m teaching,” he said. Then, to me, “Raise your arm. Block the dive, not the sting.”
“I’ll sting you when this is over.”
“Promises, promises.”
Another firewasp darted at my throat. I froze—then his hand shot up, covering mine, forcing my arm into the right angle. The firewasp hit and skittered off leather instead of skin. My heart nearly exploded out of my chest.
“Better,” he murmured. His breath was heat on my temple. “Almost like you want to live.”
“You’re the reason I’m here,” I snapped, twisting against his grip. “If I die, it’s your fault.”
He smiled then—slow, cruel, delighted. “Exactly. Which is why I won’t let you die, Frostbite.”
The words landed heavier than any blade. His eyes locked on mine for one impossible second before the swarm screamed again and dragged us both back into the fight.
The swarm finally broke, scattered by Valen’s blade and Seraphine’s knives. Their carcasses hissed on the obsidian, smoke curling up like incense to some ancient, vicious god.
I was shaking with sweat, adrenaline, and rage all tangling in my veins. Valen’s hand still pressed to my arm, his thumb heavy over my pulse as if he could command it the same way he commanded everything else.
Seraphine dropped to one knee before him, blades reversed in her palms. Her head bowed, braid sweeping forward like a curtain of black wire. “Dominus,” she said, voice steady despite the swarm’s ruin still smoking at her feet. “I had it covered.”
Valen’s gaze cut. “She almost died on your watch.”
“I will run four laps up the mountain as punishment,” she said without hesitation, her posture carved from discipline. “And again until my legs forget what failure feels like.”
He stepped closer, his shadow long over both of us. His mouth curved—not smile, not sneer, but something darker. “Do not waste penance on laps. Stay by her side. Do not blink. Do not breathe without counting her next step. If she falls once more, it will be your last.”
Seraphine’s chin dipped once. “As you command.”
Only then did Valen release me. His hand slid away, slow, deliberate, the heat of his grip lingering on my skin like a chain that had not been removed, only made invisible. His eyes lingered, golden and merciless.
“Train,” he said softly, only to me, “I need you stronger, Frostbite.”
The words sliced deeper than the firewasps ever could.
He turned, cloak snapping in the furnace wind, and walked toward the higher path. The obsidian teeth swallowed his figure in their jagged shadows until he was gone.
The mountain hummed, hungry and patient. The silence he left behind roared louder than the swarm.
And we still had half the climb ahead.