Chapter 11
AMAIA
When I woke, it was to dim golden lighting and the scent of light, earthy smoke. My vision was blurry when I peered around the unfamiliar room.
No—a home.
The bed I was lying on was in one corner of a much larger room. A simple kitchen—a warm stone hearth and a small table—was on the opposite wall. The floor was peppered with a plethora of soft multicolored rugs of different patterns and types of threads, to soften against the stone.
I saw a door, a small window beside it, which showed a starry night, clear and bright. Next to the door was a riding tether, a sheathed sword, a pair of thick, muddy boots.
My body ached fiercely. It felt like I’d been pulled apart, my muscles and tendons and bones stretched to the extreme, only now I was shrinking back into myself.
I remembered Samryn falling, a clear vision in my mind’s eye, and the racing panic as I’d sprinted toward him in the dark woods. I remembered the pain—the rot—and then I remembered…Alaryk.
Struggling to sit up in the comfortable bed, I saw that a thick quilt had been laid over me, the material soft as silk, keeping the chill away.
I thought at first there might’ve been a fire going in the hearth I’d spied beside the kitchen, in the middle of a lounging area, but no.
The smokiness I smelled was coming from a little glass pot on a round wooden table with spindled legs beside the bed.
It looked like a pot of blue ash on first inspection, but in the middle there was a tiny ember that was smoking, a wisp of smoke rising into the air.
My head was pounding as I pushed my body up, but even that winded me. I’d woken up in this state only a few times in my life, but I recognized the lingerings of my heartstone magic. A gift and a curse, perhaps.
For a moment, I thought I might be alone in this strange dwelling. But then I froze when I heard the telltale splash of water, coming from a room off the lounging area, which I couldn’t see.
A skipped heartbeat later, a thin, gossamer curtain was spread and I saw Alaryk stepping through it.
Naked.
Well, nearly. He had a drying cloth wrapped around his hips, tied in a neat knot like a sarong, as water droplets from what I assumed was his bath rolled down his bare chest.
My swallow was loud. The ends of his long silver-white hair were damp, turning nearly translucent. His blue eyes, gleaming in the low light, tracked to me as my own dipped down the surprisingly stunning line of his body in disbelief. The scar trailing over his jaw shone silver in the light.
A warrior’s body, I couldn’t help but recognize. Only Alaryk was much larger. Rippling muscle led to a tightly packed abdomen. His shoulders were impossibly wide—if anything, his riding clothes made him look smaller than he truly was.
And he was halfway across the room.
When he walked toward the table in the small kitchen, I saw a carafe of what might’ve been water or wine.
He poured it into a goblet—wine—and took a sip as he regarded me over the rim.
My tongue was still stuck to the roof of my mouth, tracking him like I would a dangerous, wild pyroki I was trying to tame.
When he drained the contents of the goblet, his hair fell back from his chest, and I saw a flash of metal. His dark nipples were pierced through. Suddenly my face flamed, remembering the conversation I’d had at the feast last night.
Had that been last night? How long had I been recovering?
Another clink came. He filled another goblet from a metal spigot in the wall, the hinge squeaking when he turned it off. Then he finally approached me, and I straightened in the bed.
I was still wearing the dress I’d worn to the feast. One of my only dresses I’d stuffed into my travel pack when I’d left home. The hem was covered in mud and forest grime, stained, but thankfully not off.
I thought of what Ethrisha had told me with twinkling eyes during the night of the feast. That Alaryk had many lovers…and here I was in his bed, even though I knew nothing had happened.
But it still begged the question…
“Why am I here?” I asked when my tongue finally unstuck itself from the roof of my mouth.
Alaryk peered down at me, close enough that I could feel the heat of his naked body, radiating off him like a crackling fire. His gaze tracked to the little pot of blue ash, as if ensuring it was still lit. The blue nearly matched his eyes.
“You’ve been sleeping for two days,” he informed me.
My belly twinged in alarm. Had I missed the hatching?
“That didn’t answer my question.”
I saw his shoulders rise with his deep breath, the metal through his nipples flashing with the movement. I forced myself not to look at the small, distracting, intriguing things.
I rose from the bed, feeling that my being in it was too strange, too intimate. But my legs were wobbly when I stood, and Alaryk caught me against him when I stumbled, water sloshing over the goblet.
“I’m fine,” I said, pushing him away, trying to forget the shocking heat of his skin. “Just…just tell me why I’m here. What happened?”
“At least sit down,” he said, nodding his chin toward the lounge. Deep cushions were sprawled across the floor. It reminded me of illustrations I’d once seen of voliki layouts in the old hordes. Sitting close to the earth, to feel more of a rooted connection with Kakkari, our goddess.
Dakkari kept our beds on the floor. Our tables were low to the ground so we could sit while eating. The only thing high in Dothik, for my family, had been our home. We lived on the top floor, only reachable by a winding staircase, and that was because we’d been too poor to afford a lower unit.
But from my week in Grymia, I’d discovered that the Karag didn’t sit on the earth as the Dakkari did.
They had tall chairs, tall beds, high tables.
Even their stone homes were raised from the earth on a stone foundation, a small set of stairs leading up to the front doors.
As if they wanted to be closer to the sky, closer to their Elthika.
It might’ve been more comfortable, but it was certainly less…grounding. Stabilizing.
So I stumbled over to the lounge area in something like relief.
And when I sank down onto the floor, I nearly sighed in contentment, my free hand spreading across the soft rug beneath me, pressing my palm into it wide.
A cushion was at my back, and I finally took a sip of the cool water from the goblet, letting it quench my dry throat.
I drained the contents in three swift chugs.
If I’d been asleep for two days, I certainly felt like it. Dehydrated, hungry, and dazed.
Alaryk refilled my goblet without a word, taking me by surprise.
Only after my third did I shake my head, and he finally dropped down across from me, the long cloth around his hips lifting dangerously high.
As he settled back into the cushions, he looked perfectly at ease.
Like a hedonistic god of pleasure and flesh.
Arrogant and patient, because he knew he would eventually get exactly what he wanted.
“You’re here because I don’t trust anyone but myself,” he said quietly.
I frowned, licking my lips. “I don’t understand.”
“If you can do what you claim,” he said, “then you just became very important to me, Amaia of Rath Savenal.”
My shoulders hitched up at the sound of my name falling from his lips, like a mere caressing whisper but edged like a blade.
“You mean Samryn,” I clarified.
“You were right,” he told me. “He is dying. But you claim you can heal him. Perhaps I’m desperate enough to hope you might.”
My brow furrowed. I remembered whatever was plaguing the poor creature.
Heavy and poisonous. I’d never felt anything like it before.
The deeper I’d tried to root out the seed of it, the more intense the pain had become.
I thought I might have siphoned some of it away, giving some relief to the Elthika…
at cost to myself. But there was always a price to pay.
“I said I could try, not that I could,” I told him. Perhaps I was afraid at what I’d felt within him. But I couldn’t stand that he suffered when I could help him.
“Tell me what your ability is exactly,” he ordered.
My spine stiffened. “So you can use it, you mean.”
He didn’t even flinch. “You would be rewarded. Whatever you desire.”
I glared, though it made my head throb even harder. “A simple thank-you would be nice.”
Alaryk scoffed, a dry humorous sound. His arms spread over the backs of the cushions beside him. “Endrassa,” came the velvety purr of a Karag word I didn’t understand. “Thank you.”
But his voice was dripping in what I thought was sarcasm.
“I don’t need this,” I said, beginning to rise to my feet.
But Alaryk moved like a serpent, so quick he was like a blur. I felt the warm strength of his hand on my throat, making me gasp and still. He was on his knees before me as I stood over him…but there was no mistaking who held the power.
His thumb smoothed down the side of my neck.
Back and forth. I was certain he could feel the wild thumping of my pulse.
His grip wasn’t hard, but it was firm, meant to catch my attention.
We regarded one another with mistrust, bordering on glares.
When I moved to jerk my neck from his grip, he tugged me down so I stumbled to the cushions.
“Why, you bastard—”
“If Samryn dies, my soul dies with him,” came his gentle hiss, hovering over me.
The words made me freeze. He was close, pressing me back into the cushions, his long forearm pressed between my breasts, his hand still on my neck, though it was to keep me still more than anything.
He was heavy. Hot. Water from his bath dripped against my dress.
His thigh was pressed between mine, keeping me still.