Chapter 31 Hector
HECTOR
Thick, powerful arms replaced the fire’s embrace.
Warm, hard arms. Iron-clad. They wrapped around me, pulling me close to the press of a body I was ever so familiar with. I refused to open my eyes, convincing myself that the longer I pretended whatever this was was real, I’d be happy.
“Give yourself a moment.” Arwyn’s honey-smooth voice came from beyond my closed eyes. “Don’t rush yourself. Take your time.”
I no longer cared if this was death. My instincts told me to open my eyes, take in my surroundings, and see what had changed since I’d burned alive. I simply couldn’t find it in me to care if my soul had become a meal for Bahmet, not as long as Arwyn was with me.
Every inch of my skin tingled. My hands were numb as I blindly reached around Arwyn’s broad shoulders and held on to him. I inhaled deeply, drinking in his scent, trying not to notice how his clothes stunk of ash and charred flesh.
It had been so real, the burning. And yet, when I finally opened my eyes, I found out it wasn’t.
Arwyn laid both hands on either side of my face, and spoke words that soothed the turmoil inside of me. “You’re alive.”
“No,” I said, unable to shake my head in refusal from his grasp. “I can’t be. I—”
“Alive,” Arwyn repeated.
Surely the burning hadn’t just been some twisted form of solid illusion that made me think I really was dying? And yet here I was… back in the arms of the man I thought I’d killed for a moment.
“Are we safe?” I asked, needing constant reassurance.
There were so many things I wanted to say, but this felt like the only thing of importance.
“No,” Arwyn replied, his tone contradicting his answer. “Unfortunately not.”
I drew my gaze from his to find us stood in the middle of a field of flowers. A wall of poppies rose up around us, shielding the view from beyond. The crushed flowers acted as a bed beneath us, red juice smeared over my ash-covered knees.
“Surely we’re no longer in the trials.” I breathed in, enjoying the sweet but almost sickly scent that engulfed me. “Because this is far too beautiful to be created by any demon.”
Arwyn refused to take his attention from me. The world didn’t matter to him. I felt small beneath his stare, but not weak. His dark brows creased with worry, his full mouth turned downwards at the edges.
“We passed The Burning trial,” Arwyn said. “We made it through.”
“But there are two more to survive,” I added, a lump forming in my throat.
“Correct.”
“Romy and Kai?” I gasped, feeling the wind driven from my lungs as they finally came to mind.
“Safe-ish. Alive, yes.”
“Where?” My questions came out breathless; I only managed one word at a time.
“Back at our… base? Is that what we’re calling it?”
“And Verena?”
“My aunt is… elsewhere.”
My aunt. Verena. The witch who had worked for Father Tomin. The witch who’d protected us after the first trial. The witch who looked so much like Romy that it had made me sick…
“Where is she, Arwyn?”
He shrugged, clearly not as affected as I was. “Wherever she was before The Burning began, I assume.”
“How?”
Arwyn gathered me close, as if those moments without touching me had driven him mad. “The trial spat us back out close to where we started. I sent Romy back with Kai not but a few minutes ago to make sure our base is still intact.”
Worry, mixed with relief, shot through me.
Worry, because of the state Verena was in when The Burning began.
If that meant she was back with Tomin, and the single Hunter who made it through the last trial, that wasn’t a good thing.
But relief, yes. Selfish relief that I could push that one conversation out of my mind.
“This doesn’t look like where I started…” I couldn’t see over the tall stems of flowers that surrounded us. Even if I stood up, not that my legs would allow it right then, I hardly imagined I’d see many other details either.
“We’re… close as I said. Close enough that, with a little help, I found you.” The clasp Arwyn had on my arms grew tighter. Desperate tears filled his wide, beautiful eyes. “Hector, you shouldn’t have…”
“Passed,” I answered for him after it seemed the word was too hard for him to speak aloud. “I shouldn’t have passed the trial because every pyre was accounted for, and I was left.”
Arwyn’s brief silence was confirmation. “I thought I lost you.”
Those five simple words cut me deep.
I forced a smirk on my lips, trying to feign that everything was normal. “It’s going to take a lot more than that to get rid of me.”
Arwyn leaned close, resting his forehead on mine. The exhale he released brimmed with his relief. “It’s all my fault.”
My mouth dried, the taste of scorch and ash still poisoning my tongue. “What is?”
A shifting made the poppies to our left move. I turned in time to find a little black serpent wind its way through the brush. “Emon?”
My familiar coiled up, lifted his slender neck and bared his sharp teeth at me. “If you ever put me in fire unwillingly again, I swear I will tear out your throat, drink your blood and make a nest in your empty corpse.”
I rolled my eyes, aware that his threat was serious, and yet I couldn’t help but laugh a little.
“This is not funny, witchling.”
“You’re right,” I replied aloud to my familiar. “It’s not. Nothing about this is funny. And yet, we are all alive…”
“Only just,” Arwyn added, side-eyeing my familiar. “Didn’t I ask you to wait back at the base, and protect those inside of it?”
“Tell that witch that I do not take orders from him, or anyone.”
This normalcy after being burned alive was exactly what the doctor ordered. “Emon says that he thinks you are really handsome.”
“No I did not!” Emon snapped his jaws at us both. “Do not lie on my behalf.”
Arwyn’s serious expression cracked just a little. “I get the impression that was not what the familiar said to you.”
I shrugged, forcing out a reply to Emon through my mind. “Can you go back to the base, Emon? Keep the perimeter safe. You have my full permission to rip the throats out of anyone who gets near it.”
The familiar’s excitement swelled inside of me, even if he attempted to hide it. “You drag me into the fire and now you are barking orders at me? Rich.”
“Go,” I repeated, adding an extra word to help rid Emon from my presence. “Please.”
“Are you not even going to ask how I am here?” Emon chided. “I will give you a hint, it was…”
Deep down, I already knew the answer. “Kai.”
“I was going to say the redhead witchling who can’t keep his hands off the other witchling woman back at the base, but yes I suppose we can use first names.”
My head thundered with discomfort as a barrage of questions and what-ifs came to me.
“Is Kai’s demon still around too?”
Arwyn nodded, lip caught between his teeth as he regarded me.
“Fortunately,” Emon answered for the both of them. “And you see, I came here to tell you that I am not allowed to be at the base because, as I said, they cannot keep their hands off each other.”
I turned back to Arwyn who, bless him, just stood and waited for our telepathic conversation to end. He didn’t pry; hell, he probably didn’t care. Again, his focus was on me, his hands rubbing up and down my thighs, as he patiently waited for me to finish.
“Emon has been banished by order of Kai’s little demon kitty,” I said to Arwyn.
The serpent grunted something, but I missed exactly what.
“He’s not permitted back at the base, and I get the impression we aren’t right now either.”
Nearly dying did many things, so I didn’t blame Romy and Kai for taking the moment alone to… celebrate passing. I felt that same desire kindling in my groin too.
Apparently all it took was the X-rated images to pass through my mind for my familiar to get the hint.
“On that note, I am off to go and hunt some dinner,” Emon announced, slithering around and jetting off into the forest of poppies.
No doubt he’d sensed that same shift in my needs as I had.
In a flash, Emon slithered off into the underbrush of poppies, his obsidian-scaled body disappearing within seconds.
I loosed a long, heavy sigh.
“So much has changed, hasn’t it?” Arwyn laid his hands on either side of my face again, eyes drinking me in. At this point there wasn’t an inch of my body he’d not inspected since I’d been transported from burning fire, to his arms.
“And I sense we’ve only just experienced the tip of the iceberg.”
Arwyn nodded, grimacing as he did so. “It’s all one big shit show.”
“I’m certainly not going to argue with that statement. So,” I encouraged, slowly. “Are you going to tell me what you’re sorry about?”
“I am. But first, how about we both go and wash off the scent of burning? I’ve never felt so dirty.”
Truthfully, I wanted nothing more than to shower or bathe that hell away. But like Emon had suggested, our base was out of bounds.
Arwyn watched my thoughts with the change of my expression, thus reading my mind. “I spotted a lake not too far from here. Think you can make it there?”
My legs felt odd, but I could walk. That didn’t mean I wanted to. “Actually, I think you’re going to need to carry me.”
“I was hoping you were going to say that.” Arwyn’s eyes narrowed, making the skin on my body shiver with anticipation.
“Well then, do it.”
Before I could mind my manners, Arwyn swept me up in his arms, stood up and then waded in a direction away from where the trial had discarded me. All the while, he didn’t look where he was going.
He only focused on me.