Chapter 41
Good news: Lacuna had vanished, taking her haunting voice and terrorising pain with her.
Bad news: the limb holding me in the air had also gone.
“Zaba!” Kier yelled as I fell, gathering dangerous speed, any attempt to stop myself or curl into a ball failing. Valour hissed as she tumbled too, but her claws dug into the wall to slow her descent, and also she was a magical creature with no bones that would break. I wished I could say the same.
I screwed my eyes shut when the ground rushed up towards me, my whole body tensed uselessly. It was going to hurt like a bitch. I was going to scream. I was—choking? Huh?
Fabric bit into my throat, hard enough to leave a bruise, to make breathing impossible.
It was so jarring, so unexpected, that my frazzled mind filled with confused noise instead of screaming and swearing like usual.
By the time I began lowering, slowly, towards the floor, I figured out Valour had snagged the back of my tunic with her teeth.
I’d never been so happy to be choked before. (Except for that one time with Kier…)
My stomach roiled as emotional whiplash struck me. I’d gone from preparing for death to evading it in a second, and it shook me. I was either going to be sick, collapse to my knees, or burst into tears. Maybe a magic combo of all three.
My vision veiled as I looked below and found Kier waiting, his arms outstretched. Well, the tears were coming first. I sniffled, my bottom lip precariously weak.
The moment I was low enough, Kier wrapped strong, blue hands around my waist and pulled me into his arms. I shook. Hard. Harder still when he crushed me to his chest, exhaling my name over and over, his nose buried in my hair as he gulped down my scent.
My whole body quaked, until my teeth chattered, and yep, here were the waterworks.
“I’ve got you,” he chanted, kissing the shell of my ear, my hair, my forehead, the bridge of my nose. “I’ve got you, Zaba.”
“I hate this place,” I whined when I could get a word through the sobs crushing my chest. Two near-death experiences so close together had wreaked havoc on my nerves, and I wasn’t sure I could take any more.
“More than your Chamber of Truths?” he asked, a tiny spark in his eyes when I drew back, but mostly engulfed by fear and demons and darkness.
“Ugh, don’t remind me of that place, too. This whole month has been a series of awful, inhospitable accommodations, and I will be leaving a very scathing review of each.”
Kier laughed, kind of. It was more a rasping crackle of air, but I wrapped that sound around my soul until I warmed, until I was brave enough to set my feet back on the ground.
“You’re right, this isn’t suitable for a princess,” he murmured, tucking a messy red strand of hair behind my ear. “Let’s leave, shall we?”
“How?” I sighed, casting a look around the empty spire.
At least Lacuna was gone. At least I could hear my own voice, not Natasya’s.
There was no erasing the damage done, though.
I felt oily and dirty every time I thought about the future now, like I should be ashamed for wanting Kier, for wanting to go home to Lazankh.
And for some reason, I couldn’t wash off that oily taint this time.
It lingered, like a stain. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there aren’t any doors, darling husband. ”
His mouth twitched into a semi-smile, but that was his only reaction. No growl, no grabbing my ass and warning me I’d regret taunting him with that word. My heart compacted into a tight ball of dread.
“Kier,” I began, not letting a single inch of space come between us, brushing my fingers through his messy dark hair. “What Lacuna made you see, what you were forced to relive—”
“Won’t affect me forever. I’ll be fine.”
“I’m your wife, Kier.” I said it simply, my tiredness bleeding through. “Wear a mask for everyone else, but not for me. Talk to me. It’s not like we have anywhere better to be, and we have an endless wealth of time.”
He tucked me closer, a rough breath leaving his chest, warm when it graced my cheek.
“I was in my childhood room. It was after a diplomatic dinner with the Bluescale lords, and one man in particular disrespected my father constantly that night. I don’t remember his exact words, just the vein that twitched above my father’s eye, more pronounced with every remark, pulsing like an omen.
” Kier swallowed. “I was five, but I knew what that vein meant. I knew what it meant when his tone sharpened, when his hand clenched around his goblet. I knew it meant pain.”
I held Kier tighter than I should have done, considering he was still bruised from fighting all those goblins downstairs, however long ago that was.
“I pretend not to notice those signs in people, but even now I can’t help it.
I just got better at hiding it. Sometimes Xiona will clench her jaw, or Rook’s posture will stiffen, and I’ll be right back there.
Sometimes when voices rise in council meetings, I have to lock my entire body and freeze every muscle in my face to avoid flinching. ”
My eyes stung. No wonder he had nightmares; he lived in those memories, walked through them every single day.
I kissed his throat, robbed of words, my heart full of hurt and fury and emotions I didn’t even have names for.
I’d have to watch him even more carefully, to search for the signs he was back there, forced into nightmares he’d never moved on from.
I could manage my own anger, soften the ways I expressed it, if it stopped Kier feeling unsafe.
“Kier,” I murmured, drawing back to look at him, my soul tender like it was covered in bruises. His bruises. Even Valour pressed closer to us, rubbing her chin against his leg, sensing his pain through her bond with me. “When we get home—”
A harrowing screech of stone against stone bulldozed through what I’d been about to say, and Kier and I locked eyes in a panic. He reacted faster, strong hands finding my waist, lifting me off the floor.
“On my back,” he urged. “Arms around my neck.”
“I’m not sure I like this, Kier.” But I climbed onto his back and locked my hands around his neck, wide eyes searching the walls, the roof, the floor, mostly the floor. If it fell beneath us, we’d both go down. At least last time, Kier never fell.
The metallic taste of blood filled my mouth and my panic spiked, irrationally thinking it was his blood. But I’d only bitten the end of my tongue. Fine, we were fine. If you ignored the droning growl of magic blocks shifting.
“Eyes on the floor,” I breathed, remembering far too clearly how it had felt to hang over the deadly drop by my arms alone. I could still feel the wind tearing at me, hungry for my broken bones.
“Watch behind us, and I’ll watch the front,” Kier replied, his rasping, haunted tone replaced by the gruff, ironclad voice of a man who’d led armies. It slowed my frantic heartbeat, helped me get a breath in my lungs as I twisted my head to scan the floor.
“When the slabs drop, we jump,” Kier said with unbending confidence. I nodded, holding tight to him, and my breath shattered when I watched the first chunk of the floor drop.
“Three behind us, but we’re safe,” I said shakily.
“Two in front,” he replied. “Hold on.”
I tightened my grip, and shrieked when we were suddenly airborne, Kier leaping onto the slab that had just slotted into place with a resounding thud. My arms shook, but I held on with a vicelike grip, my stare fixed on the floor.
Wind bit into my arms, the only warning.
“Kier, the wall!” I shrieked, staring in horror as the entire wall behind us fell away, leaving us exposed to the vicious air.
It pushed and pulled, determined to make us fall, churning from the sea around the island.
But Kier in goblin form was like a stone monolith, and he didn’t even waver.
Another thud signalled a piece of the floor slotting into place, and then we were leaping through the air, landing on the stone with perfect aim.
My whole body shook, so much that Kier sent a rush of calming reassurance through the bond.
It felt like sunlight against goose-bumped skin, like a hug after a long day.
I held him tighter, as much as I could without choking him.
“There can’t be many more stones to move,” he said in a low, roughened voice, his hand resting on my thigh, warm and broad and more than a little possessive.
This was a bad time to be turned on, but I needed the contact so badly I didn’t tell him to move his hand. If anything, it crept closer to my ass.
“Kier.”
“I don’t like how scared you are.”
“So you’re turning me on?” I huffed, scanning the walls, the floor, on edge for the next drop.
“You can’t be scared and horny at the same time.”
“I think you’re severely underestimating meeee,” I screamed when the floor plummeted from beneath us.
Kier kicked off the stone before it could completely fall away, and we surged up, up, his arm thrown above his head. I screwed my eyes shut, ducking my face against his shoulder blade, but we stopped moving with a sudden jerk.
That awful grinding sound would haunt my memories forever. I flinched against Kier as it got louder, followed by a violent bang, and then… silence.
I opened my eyes tentatively, one crack at a time, and my stomach dropped when I saw we were hung on the wall by two of Kier’s fingertips wedged between bricks. I was going to be sick. And sob. In that order this time.
“Kier!” I screeched when he let go, air rushing up around us, a death sentence, a— Oh, we landed on the solid floor. My whole body turned to jelly, and I let out an embarrassing noise as I flattened myself to Kier’s back, clinging to him like a barnacle.
“I hate you. I love you,” I whimpered.
“I know,” he murmured with nothing but care and warmth, stroking my thigh. “We’ll be okay now, at least for a while. The spire didn’t pull itself apart until you defeated Lacuna, so—”
“Oh gods,” I groaned, wishing I could become a cat, or a fly, or a toad; creatures that were unbothered by anything, and didn’t give two shits whether their crazy surroundings killed them. “What will the spire torment us with this time?”
“Maybe nothing,” Kier suggested, but hopefully, like he didn’t believe it.
That’s when the screaming started.
I buried my face in his shoulder with a groan.