Chapter 25
AMAIA
If Syris or Tarkosh noticed my quiet mood at dinner, neither commented on it.
In fact, the entire meal was slightly awkward and stilted, given Ulin and Moak’s presence, neither of whom knowing what to say after yesterday’s events.
Any questioning by Moak, Tarkosh had cut off, eventually sending him away from the table when she’d had enough of his prying.
I didn’t want to talk about it. The hustle of the day had been a bandage, covering up a wound so I didn’t have to look at it directly. But as the quiet stretched at dinner, I knew that the wound had begun to seep.
I was relieved when Myzalla showed up, rapping her knuckles against the kitchen door, alerting us to her presence.
“Ready?” she asked. “I can’t stand out there all night.”
“Thanks for the meal,” I told Syris, who only inclined her head, a worried expression on her face. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Good night, Amaia,” Tarkosh said.
I passed by my quarters, heading inside to grab my travel sack—everything I’d brought with me to Karak, stuffed into a small bag. After I collected the items, I gave a quick look around my temporary room, but I was, truthfully, happy to leave it. I wouldn’t miss the solitude.
I followed Myzalla back to Alaryk’s dwelling. Before I went inside, she told me, “Another guard will be assigned to you tomorrow. I have to make preparations to travel to Elysom.”
I frowned. “Is Alaryk going?”
“No, I’m going in his place,” she said.
Because of the deal we made? I wondered.
“I, for one, wanted you gone, Amaia,” she told me. “I thought it would be safer. I think we should’ve sent you all back, Ryak included, and washed our hands of it.”
I frowned.
“But he wanted you here,” Myzalla said, her voice low, her eyes narrowed. “And he’s willing to risk everything just to keep you here. I hope you’re worth it.”
I couldn’t stop my flinch then. I hoped my guilt didn’t show on my face because my gut was swimming with it.
I didn’t reply. Instead, I watched her walk away, and then I turned up the steps to Alaryk’s dwelling, feeling those perilous emotions begin to press against the cage of my breast.
For a moment, I almost knocked on the door, but then I remembered…this was where I lived now. There was no need to knock.
When I opened the door, I found Alaryk sitting at the table, a spread of parchment scattered around the very place where I’d been face down, this time last night.
I tried to keep my neck from getting too hot, shutting the door behind me.
Alaryk had been eating as he worked. On what, though, I couldn’t be certain. It looked like typography maps.
“Is that Karak?” I asked, nodding to the rolls of parchment.
“It is,” he replied. “Would you like to see?”
I would. Dakkar had no idea the expanse of the Karag’s country.
I was curious, and when I stepped up behind Alaryk, I looked over one of the parchments, seeing two different land masses, separated by two smaller islands, one of which I knew was the Arsadia.
The other must’ve been Elysom. And on the maps of the land, I saw mountain ranges depicted, lakes, valleys, rugged coastline, vast forests.
“Where is Grym?” I asked, leaning down for a better look.
“Here,” he said, running the edge of his thumb, which had strummed between my legs last night, to the northeast. A nearly vertical line had been drawn on the map, following a mountain range and what I thought was a river.
“And is that Harta?” I asked, running my hand over the line.
“Yes,” he replied. “Are you going to report this back to your Dothikkar?”
I stiffened. I shot him a sharp look, realizing that our faces were closer than I’d thought. His tone was serious, making me wonder if he somehow knew about my conversation with Nevin today…
But I didn’t think that was possible. We’d been alone, at the back of the hatchery, our voices low.
“Of course not,” I replied, trying to hide the stab of shame I felt. Because truthfully, when it came to protecting my family, I didn’t know what I would and would not reveal. I thought I might do anything if it meant that my parents and my brother were safe.
Alaryk rolled up the maps, wrapping a leather cord around them and stacking them on the table.
There was a nearly empty tray of food, a sliver of blue fruit with fat black edible seeds remaining, which he popped into his mouth.
He stood, and I backed up a few steps, feeling out of place and thrown off balance, wondering if he did somehow know I’d been sent here to deceive him.
When the silence stretched too long, I said, “I’m feeling well tonight.”
He regarded me with a long look. “Oh?”
“I think we should take advantage and go to Samryn.”
“I think maybe you don’t want to face what happened,” came Alaryk’s words. His fingers came beneath my chin, lifting my face up so I was forced to meet his eyes. “Afraid of what might happen tonight?”
A flash in my mind—Alaryk’s silver hair dipping, a warm tongue, seeking and soft, on my clit.
I sucked in a breath. “I’m recovered. So let’s go.”
Alaryk said nothing, only regarded me carefully.
When the silence stretched and he didn’t make to move, I narrowed my eyes. “This is what you want, isn’t it? This is what I’m here for. I’m offering to work with Samryn tonight. I’m giving you what you want. So why are you hesitating?”
Whatever was going on behind those eyes, I couldn’t be certain. But I had a feeling that Alaryk knew exactly what I was doing. Masking. Again. Bandaging something so tight, hoping I wouldn’t bleed out.
Hiding.
“Very well,” he said, eyes sharp. “I’ll summon Samryn.”
Out on the landing field, it was so dark and quiet, the slivering moon barely enough light to navigate the stone road weaving through the village. But Samryn was waiting for us, and for once, he didn’t huff at the mere sight of me.
“We can do it here,” I told Alaryk quietly. “There’s no reason to hide it anymore.”
“Amaia,” he said, grabbing my arm when I stepped past him, right over where Nevin had. I couldn’t hide my surprised wince, and he looked down, confused at first. At least until he spied the bruise, then his expression went eerily cold. “What happened? Did someone do this to you?”
His voice had taken on a quiet tone, and I looked at him in surprise. He was…furious? At the mere thought that someone might’ve harmed me?
“No, it happened at the hatchery,” I quickly said, tugging my arm back, placing my hand over the budding bruise. “Kyr is getting bigger. It’s harder to keep him contained.”
How easily the lie fell from my lips shamed me. But what else could I do? What else could I say?
Alaryk’s jaw was clenched, making his scar flash, and he was glaring at me. But I didn’t know if it was actually directed at me or not.
“You’re a terrible liar, Amaia,” he murmured. “And if there is someone who’s threatening you, who’s hurting you because of what happened…I’ll find them. They’ll answer to me for it. That’s why I have a guard with you. So something like this—”
“I told you—it was Kyr,” I repeated. “How would anything else have happened? Myzalla was out front of the hatchery all day.”
“Moak?” Alaryk rasped. “Ulin?”
“Please,” I scoffed. And at least that was convincing. “You think Tarkosh wouldn’t have sniffed them out if one of them had done this?”
His lips pressed. I turned my attention back to Samryn, stepping up to the bloodred Elthika. I reached out a hand to touch him, my fingertips meeting the cool resistance of his hardened scales, smooth like glass but unyielding like Dakkari steel.
“Are you ready?” I asked, wanting to end this conversation, wanting the distraction of Samryn’s curse. The punishment of it.
“So eager for pain,” Alaryk rasped knowingly, still pissed…because he knew I was lying? “Fine, mariss. But if you think I’ll let this go, you’ll find out how wrong you are soon enough.”
Then he surprised me. He stepped up to me, dragging me toward him.
When his lips met mine, I gasped into his kiss.
He took advantage, sweeping into my mouth with his tongue, a tangle of dominance and heat between us…
before he won the battle. Before I was forced to melt into him, momentarily forgetting everything but his kiss, a brief reprieve. I closed my eyes, simply letting go.
I wanted it to last forever. To prolong the inevitable.
Alaryk cursed softly—a Hartan one, I was certain—before he pulled away, though he kept his palm firmly around the back of my neck, where it had drifted during our kiss.
“Why’d you do that?” I breathed, my gaze unfocused, staring up at his lips. “Because you were angry?”
He glared. “Because I wanted to.”
“Oh,” I murmured, uncertain how to reply to that. All I knew was that I liked it. I tilted my head up, meeting his eyes, asking for something unspoken.
His lips met mine again. Softer this time. Deeper. The back of my throat tingled with its sweetness.
A sharp exhale drifted from his lips when we finally pulled away. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he looked…lost. Like he didn’t know what to do with me. I probably looked a little dazed myself, licking his taste from my lips, wanting more.
Then I watched him pull himself together, until his expression was neutral, until the grip on the back of my neck loosened and then drifted away.
I could still feel the warmth pooling in my belly from his kiss, even though it was an inconvenient time to feel the urgency and merciless press of desire.
“Let’s begin,” he said gruffly, stepping back before rounding toward Samryn’s head.
It was a whiplash of sensation. Hot and then cold.
Once I regained control of my breath, however, I knew it was for the best. “I’m ready.”
When I felt Alaryk’s familiar touch of magic rising in the staticky air between us, my own responded. How easily I could summon it now, as if I was feeding off Alaryk’s power. Unlike last night, it felt like a tight ball in my chest—firm, with no soft edges—which threatened to leak out.
I reached out my hand, pressing it against Samryn’s flesh, and envisioned the rivulets of magic tracing the edges of his tipped scales, seeking, searching. Looking for a way inside.
And when it found one, that ball inside me loosened, becoming thousands of little threads that went searching inside the cursed creature, though they were all connected to me.
It was easier this time. I could delve further into him, but I knew that was because I’d already cleared a pathway. I picked up where I’d started, dragging in a deep breath, readying myself, preparing for a long night.
And then I began.
“Lean on me when you need to,” came Alaryk’s voice. “Use me. I’m here.”
I trusted that he would be as I slowly sank into the tangle of decay, bracing myself for what I might find.