Chapter Fifty-Six
Fallyn
The urgency in my feet carrying me back to Greylark’s Rest couldn’t be understated.
We trounced over brambles, twisted through the forest path in a death march.
I refused to stop, not even to drink water.
We needed to stock up again on supplies, and I’d told Ash on no uncertain terms I refused to leave the area without checking on my friends.
He’d reminded me that the last time we had to return to a city for sentimental reasons, the city was torched.
I had never thrown a shoe at someone’s head so fast, so hard, or with as much accuracy.
I really had thought he’d catch it, but he’d turned away, blind to my assault.
This Hades-blessed male may be infallible by mortal weapons, but the goose egg he sported extinguished the flames of wrath over his comment about my home.
A goose egg he rubbed as I pulled my shoe back on with a snide grin I refused to hide.
“Our stop here will be for the night, Fallyn,” Ash said, returning to seriousness. “We get what we need, we check on your friends, and we sleep. At daybreak, we set off for Moonfall.”
Daybreak. I resisted the urge to cringe. “Why did we let morning people decide to run things?” I bemoaned, my feet falling in step with him.
“Because, sleepy head,” he ruffled my hair with a wide grin until I shrieked a laugh, “you were still sleeping when we morning people claimed the honor of running everything. So, as I see it, you have only yourself to blame.”
“Don’t make me throw my shoe at you again,” I muttered under my breath. "You want to sport another lump on your head?"
This time when he laughed, it came with his head tipped back. His gaze slid sidelong at me, teasing me. “Try it and see where you end up, much less your shoe.”
I moved to swat him playfully on the shoulder.
His feral grin he flashed in my direction should have been a warning.
In the time it took me to reach for my shoe, Ash had my back against the nearest tree with my hands pinned harmlessly, empty, above my head and his hips firmly cutting off any escape.
His wicked grin, the lopsided one that quickened my pulse was all I could see.
My knees turned languid. My shoe fell harmlessly and immediately forgotten to the pine-encrusted forest floor with a dull thud nobody paid attention to because the only thing I could hear, see, pay attention to, was him filling my senses.
“Ha, ha,” I guffawed after failing to struggle out of his hold. “Very funny, you’ve made your point—”
“Ah, little shadow, I don’t think I have. Not by a long shot.” That feral grin of his captured mine, causing scattering sparks to ignite along every nerve. He was smoke and darkness, fire and scorch, and his growl of approval was the devastating rumble of an earthquake.
Ash was destruction, tangible, terrible, and bittersweet, and I was the light that regrew everything anew, and when our lips collided, the sparks between us were almost visible before slipping into my skin, setting it alight.
We shouldn’t have fit together so perfectly, but we did.
He was not hesitant. Not this time. This time when we came together, it was like two waves meeting, an explosion of emotion given form by way of roaming hands, clashing tongues, and flesh pressing against flesh.
He eclipsed everything around me, that warm smoky, bourbon scent intoxicating me, and he tasted just as luscious.
My pounding heart stopped, actually ceased beating in my chest at the familiarity of it. Of his touch, his lips feasting on mine like a male deprived. Like a memory from a dream, I saw us at a different time. A different place. A sweeter kiss, tangled and entwined in a lovers’ embrace.
Like a electric flash of lightning, the shock faded just as quickly as it came, but it was enough for my lungs to fail entirely, leaving me with a sinking feeling that sat like stone in my torso.
He stilled, another moment the span of a breath.
Tension crinkled his eyes as he drew back, a question laying there.
His thumb worried over my cheek, an affectionate and sweet gesture I’d not witnessed from him that made my heart ache.
The secure familiarity I felt just a moment ago now felt like the stab of a blade.
And the reason why was as infuriatingly hard to grasp as a tendril of smoke.
“Shadow?” Ash sounded more nervous than I’d ever heard him before, never more than a flicker of vulnerability, but here he laid his soul before me. Onyx eyes shining with depth of feeling, the gold flecks brighter than flame.
“Have we done this before?” I asked, my lips whispering against his.
“Is this a strange way of telling me this is your first time?” He chuckled against my lips before claiming them sweetly once more, swallowing whatever smart-mouthed reply I had been about to send his way, turning my limbs and my insides entirely to mush.
This time when he pulled away, his hand drifted to my chin, forcing my uncertain gaze to his steady one.
“I assure you,” he pulled me closer until there I couldn’t tell where I ended and he began, “I see no world, no realm, no time, no place, no magic accessible here that could rip your memory from me.
You're branded on me and even if the world disappeared into the ether, I would know you.”
“The feeling is mutual.” I took his lips this time, pulling him to me and pouring the words I couldn’t say into him.
All my emotion, my appreciation, and things I dared not yet acknowledge.
My heart clamped down on the words I wanted to say.
It kept the padlock and key on the words my tongue so desperately wanted to say.
Something I didn’t think I could possibly ever say.
But wrapped up in him, consumed by him, I could pretend. It was all too easy to imagine a future together as his arms would around my waist and pulled me closer as if he wanted to meld us into one being. My heart pounded a drumbeat, thundering against my ribs.
When his lips parted from mine, when I glanced up at him, all the warmth in my veins vanished, replaced by chilling, bone-deep horror.
The left side of his face was suddenly bone white.
No—actual bone. White flashed out, skin appearing and disappearing fluidly, and strangely see-through like that of a specter.
His left eye was milk white, claimed by death.
Ash froze, his vulnerability like a door slamming shut in my face at my change. “Fallyn?”
“Your face. I don’t—” My sentence didn’t finish before he turned away, his hands flew up to cover his face, but I saw an emotion there that he wasn’t quite able to shield from me, an emotion I knew all too well—shame.
When he faced me again, he was himself as I knew him, his face intact, but there was a distance in his eyes that left me breathless.
His stumble backwards was a retreat, as if I'd struck him.
“Fallyn, I…” His voice was cold as it trailed off in the wake of shutting down. Soft. The last whimper hope made before it froze over. “I’m deeply sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten you.” He turned away, striding further into the trees with long steps.
Something tore inside me seeing him like this.
That sadness earlier was only a glimpse.
I’d thought before I’d seen the shattered pieces of his heart, but this showcased how very wrong I was.
I didn’t think. I didn’t stop. I ignored the calm voice in the back of my head that this man—this male—might not be entirely human, might be dangerous.
The last time I listened to that voice, I regretted it wholeheartedly.
Shoving that voice aside, I reached out, ensnaring his wrist.
“Wait, Ash!” He didn’t turn, but his feet did stop.
His head dipped low underneath that shame I’d glimpsed earlier.
“I’m sorry I balked. I wasn’t afraid of you, I thought something had happened to you.
It was unexpected. Will you enlighten me?
” Ash didn’t move, his stillness making me quietly drop my arm.
For several long moments, I wasn’t even convinced he was breathing.
“That is my true form,” he said at last, turning towards me.
I had expected him to reveal his true form for me again, but his face remained as it usually was.
“It was part of why my family never accepted me. Why others didn’t either.
There are rare moments, such as now, that the mask unintendedly drops and reveals the monster beneath. ”
He might as well have shot an arrow through my heart. His family rejected him. They sent him away. And they weren’t the only ones. How many people had the privilege of seeing him like this and threw it in his face? How many others had scarred him? Left a mark on his soul like this?
My sadness mixed with wrath on his behalf, turning into a strange, potent type of protectiveness.
I stepped towards him, slowly, refusing to flinch when he stilled.
This was why he was so upset that I’d ran.
Because I was just another in a long line of people who did.
Being Hades-blessed must have been every bit as much of a curse as it was a blessing.
I stepped lightly, slowly, until I stood in front of him.
“Will you show me once more?" I asked softly, like anything harsher might crack him further. His eyes widened, his lips parting on a refusal when I reached out to him once more, my hand landing on his gently. “Please?”
A beat passed as he pondered his next move, his eyes raking me, assessing me.
I could see his struggle to trust written clearly now.
It was in his eyes, the blaze of emotion so strong it was a force of its own, even without magic.
With a deep breath, a light shudder went through the air and on the other side of it was Ash’s other face.