Chapter 20
MORRIGAN
The days were becoming brutal
Eat, occlude, eat, train, eat, sleep. Tristan insisted that I take a day of rest, but I couldn’t afford to.
The longer I stayed here, the more confused I felt.
I stopped drinking the lotus tea, hoping it would end the dreams that twisted into filthy fantasies of Tristan, but that didn’t stop it.
And now, even Tristan was acting weirder than before.
“You’re distracted,” Malakai said, showing off his sharp canines as he smiled like he knew something. “Am I boring you, princess?”
I gasped as his sword swung dangerously close to my face, and dodged just in time. When I stood back up, I shot him an angry glare. “Getting a little presumptuous with your swings there, Malakai.”
He shrugged and backed up, circling me as he waited to go again. “You won’t get better without a little tough love.”
I had started dedicating a little free time to training with Malakai. We would alter between knives and one-on-one combat. Hand me a bow or a throwing knife, and I learned like it was second nature. But, gods, I hated swords.
“If you cut off my head, I’m not going to grow another one.
” I rolled my shoulders and tried to keep my eyes on his feet.
Malakai almost always stepped forward with the foot opposite of the hand that would swing, but I had a feeling that he was catching onto my suspicion.
He had been switching it up lately, but I could at least rely on that first step to indicate when he would make a move.
“Should we test it and find out?” he laughed, stepping forward and bringing the sword down overhead.
I quickly brought mine up to block it and felt the shock of the blades striking my arms, bringing me down to one knee. The metal clanged, and my elbows locked from the force. “I have a lot… on my… mind,” I groaned, pushing every ounce of strength into my sword to shove him off.
But just as I lifted my knee to stand, I felt the sweep of his foot against my ankle, and I twisted, falling flat on my back to the ground. Malakai came with me, landing on top, and drew one of his knives, pressing it just beneath my chin.
“All you do is hold yourself back. I see it. Everyone sees it,” he said as he hovered above me.
I tried shimmying myself out from under him, but his knees kept my legs locked between them. “No they don’t,” I argued.
“I see how you look at Tristan.” He began to smirk, and my eyes widened in shock and embarrassment.
“You don’t see anything,” I hissed before wiggling to give myself just enough room to lift my knee and jam it right into his balls.
“Fuck, princess,” he cried out, and I shoved him off of me, pushing him to the ground and swiping my sword before standing. “If you wanted foreplay, you could have just asked.”
“You’re insane, Malakai. Like, truly insane.” I stepped toward him, throwing the sword onto the grass at his side. “I’m done for today.”
As I turned on my heel, I could hear Malakai shuffling around. “Oh, come on, princess!” he called.
Then, as if the gods truly hated me, Tristan appeared from the patio and stared at the two of us in confusion. “What’s going on?” he asked.
“Nothing!” I stormed past him to make my way toward the stairs.
“Come back!” Malakai yelled. “Seriously?! Is this about the dreams?!”
I immediately stopped moving. “Excuse me?”
“Malakai, stop fucking speaking,” Tristan snapped.
With a quick turn, I stared at the two of them and felt my heart pounding in my chest. “What the fuck did you just say?”
“Nothing,” Tristan answered. “Go get some rest. We can work on your fire in a little if you’d like—”
“Stop dancing around the problem, Tristan.” Malakai poked him in his chest. “If you two would just be honest with each other, maybe I could have an actual sparring partner for once.”
“Honest about what?” I seethed. My palms were heated now, and my face burned with anger. “What fucking dreams?!”
Tristan bit his lip and placed a hand on his hip as he stared at Malakai like he wanted to rip his head off. Then, he turned his face toward me but kept his eyes on the ground. “You have to understand, Morrigan… It’s not something that we can control yet. I can’t always control it—”
“Control what, Tristan?” I was marching toward him now, and I didn’t need to look down to know that my hand was engulfed with fire.
“I didn’t like it just as much as you didn’t—”
“Liar,” Malakai snickered.
“Just spit it out, Tristan!”
“You know what dreams!” This time, he raised his voice, and his eyes met mine with an intensity that made me stop breathing. His chest rose and fell with heavy breaths, and I didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t have been talking about those dreams. If he was…
“I’m going to go,” Malakai mumbled, stepping around us and disappearing behind me.
Then, against my own control, I felt my eyes stinging with shameful tears. The embarrassment extinguished the fire in my palms, and Tristan immediately reached for me, but I stepped back. “No, don’t be like this, Morrigan,” he pleaded. “You couldn’t control—”
“Why?!” I yelled. “Why is this happening to me?! I don’t understand!” I smacked my hands over my face to hide myself. He had seen… He saw it all.
“Morrigan… it… They weren’t just your dreams.” He pulled my hands from my face and placed his finger beneath my chin, forcing me to look up at him. “That first night, that dream was mine. I don’t know how, but you stumbled into it and… you weren’t supposed to… Fuck.”
He let go and turned around, running his hands through his hair.
“Tristan,” I said quietly. “Please. You have to tell me what’s going on. I’m going insane. I don’t know what I’m feeling anymore, and I’ve been furious with myself over it.”
When he turned around, his eyes were sad and hesitant. He looked almost as torn as I was. “There’s something I need to tell you, but I’m scared that, if I do, you’ll think I’m no different than your lords, and you’ll choose to leave.”
“I deserve the truth.”
He stared at me for a while, studying my face as he tried to come to a decision. But ultimately, he nodded. “Come with me first. There’s something I want to show you when I tell you.”
“Why can’t you just tell me—”
“Morrigan,” he stopped me, “please. I will tell you everything I know if you just… humor me for a moment longer.”
My shoulders deflated in defeat, and I agreed, following him away. He led me through the trees, distancing ourselves from the castle, until we reached a hill with a little cave inside. Over it, hung the same black moss that Azrael and I hid behind.
“I designed these caves,” he said, pushing the moss to the side.
“Only I can see them. I have a couple hidden everywhere from when I was a child. Whenever we would try to find a way for me to leave this place, we needed somewhere to stay—somewhere we would be safe. So, I designed little caves that would only reveal themselves to me. They’re warded with my magic. ”
I chuckled lightly. “Well, I’m not so sure you did a good enough job on some of them. I was able to hide in one of them with Azrael.”
Tristan’s hand tightened around mine, but he didn’t respond. I found it odd, but as we entered the cave, he pulled me closer to him. “Stay beside me, it might get slippery.”
Slippery?
My confusion was quickly answered after a few minutes of walking. I felt smooth, wet stones beneath my feet, but could only see a short distance ahead from the slight glow in Tristan’s eyes.
“So… is that why you have been acting so… weird lately?” I asked, trying to sound casual without exposing just how nervous I was. Dream or not, I had moaned his name, and he… The way he had looked at me…
“I’m the weird one?” he chuckled, easing some of the tension. “You haven’t been able to even look at me. You really know how to stroke a man’s ego.”
I cringed a little, realizing how true his words were. “I don’t think that’s completely fair. At least you were aware. You could have told me.” I looked around, trying to figure out where he was taking me. “What is this place, anyway?”
“Another escape. One I’ve wanted to show you since I first found out about you. Just a little farther…”
Suddenly, the space around us brightened as we approached what looked to be a spring inside the cave. The water glistened brightly, illuminating the small space around us. It was so beautiful.
“I found this spring a long time ago and made some minor adjustments.” He tugged my hand, pulling me closer to the water. “Come, this is what I wanted to show you.”
We stopped at the edge of the spring, the warm water slowly rising to meet my bare feet. I didn’t know how to explain it, but the water felt like silk—thicker, but somehow… cleaner.
“When I first felt you, it was during a nightmare. You were running through darkness, unable to see anything around you. What you don’t know is that it was my dream.”
When I turned to look at him, I found him already gazing at me.
“Somehow, you wandered into it. At first, I was incredibly confused. Then, I felt something—something familiar. And as if someone had whispered in my ear, your name sat on the tip of my tongue. It was as though I had known you forever.”
I couldn’t decipher the look in his eyes, or what it meant, but something inside of me pulled toward it. I had the feeling that my eyes conveyed the same thing to him.
“I told you that you would always have a choice with me, and I meant that, Morrigan. So, when I tell you this…Just know that it doesn’t change anything, okay?”
“How did I end up in your dream? How can you see mine?” I asked him, my voice causing a slight echo throughout the cave.
“In some of my mother’s books that she left for me, she always referred to our power as light. Like we had this other being inside of us that granted our abilities. Think of it as a soul for mortals.” He took a deep breath and looked up.