Chapter 6 #3
We walk the familiar path, snow crunching beneath our boots, silence hanging between us like it always does. But today I can’t stand it. A week of this, of nothing, and I’m ready to combust. And if anyone deserves to endure my frustration, it’s Lowan Veynar.
“I already know you won’t answer any of my usual questions,” I say, my voice sharp with challenge, “but perhaps you could deign to answer a couple about the night you found me in the woods.”
He doesn’t slow down. Doesn’t turn. Just, “Perhaps.”
My fists clench at his tone, but I barrel on. “What were you doing in the woods, anyway? How did you even find me?”
“I often patrol the forest surrounding my family’s lands. I consider it my duty to protect them.”
I let out a mocking little laugh. “Your duty? How about your father?”
That stops him. He turns, and the look in his eyes tells me instantly I’ve struck a nerve.
“My father is dead,” he says, voice hard as steel. “As you would be, if I hadn’t found you.”
We’re closer than I realized, the space between us charged and tight. I can’t help it—I huff out a short, bitter laugh. “Maybe that would have been easier for everyone.”
The words leave my mouth before I can stop them.
And the instant they’re in the air, I wish I could snatch them back.
His expression changes—silver eyes flaring, his whole body taut with fury.
In a blink, he’s stepped into my space, and suddenly, my back hits rough bark.
I hadn’t even noticed I was retreating, but now I’m pressed against a tree, caged without him even touching me.
His voice is low, menacing. “What did you say?”
I can’t repeat it. I don’t even mean it. I just wanted a fight. My throat bobs as I swallow, and I see his eyes track the movement like a predator watching prey.
Then his hand moves. Slowly. Deliberately. My breath catches as his fingers rise toward me. For a split second, panic claws through me—what is he about to do?—but it’s drowned out by something more profound, more substantial, a pull that roots me to the spot. I couldn’t move if I wanted to.
His fingertips brush my cheekbone. The world detonates.
Heat and light surge from somewhere deep inside me, flooding out in every direction.
Power rips through my veins, raw and uncontrollable, sparking in the air between us, lighting the clearing in a blaze of energy.
The earth shudders under my boots, the trees groan, and the sky itself seems to reverberate with the force.
And all I can think, through the chaos exploding from my skin, is that it happened the moment he touched me.
My back slams against the tree as my knees give out.
His arms are suddenly around me, holding me up.
A grunt rumbles through his chest at the jolt of my weight.
My vision blurs. My pupils blown so wide the world is just smoke and light.
I feel unraveled, undone—as a spool of thread snapped loose inside me.
It’s too much, too good, and every nerve ending is caught in a wave that crests into something orgasmic.
Flashes tear through my mind—my body, naked, my head thrown back in ecstasy. Two men on a wooded path, seen from above. One plunges a blade into the other’s back. Death.
Then nothing. I sag against him, gasping. His forehead rests against mine for a breath, his voice ragged in my ear.
“I think you just released your magic.”
But the warmth is gone almost instantly. He straightens, stepping back, ice snapping into place.
“Let’s go.”
Alva’s chamber flickers with low firelight. Lowan speaks first, his voice clipped.
“I touched her skin. Accidentally.”
I cough pointedly, a noise full of disbelief. Accidentally, sure.
Alva narrows her eyes. “And?”
“Some of my power transferred,” he says. “Mine feels the same, but I know she carries part of it now.”
“How do you know? Was it painful?”
He shifts, shoulders tight. “It was not… unpleasant. But I can’t explain it—I just know.”
I see it. The flicker in his eyes, the discomfort in his stance. He felt it too—the same overwhelming rush. I can’t stop the smile that spreads across my lips, smug and satisfied.
His gaze slices to me, sharp and dangerous. Then back to his mother.
“Watch.”
Steel flashes before I can blink. A dagger whistles through the air—straight at my head. My hand snaps up. The hilt slaps into my palm, the blade halting a breath from my eye. I freeze, staring at it. At myself.
“See?” His voice is cool again. “My power.”
He turns and leaves without another glance, while I’m left trembling with shock—and something else I can’t name.
I close the door to my chamber, heart pounding, the dagger cool and heavy in my hand. It feels… familiar. Wrong, impossible, but familiar. I can feel him in it—in the hilt's curve, in the perfect balance against my palm. A piece of him, here with me.
My fingers trace the hilt, lingering as if following the path of his touch.
I picture his hand wrapped around it; the blade pressed close to his skin, hidden where no one else could see.
The longing it stirs in me should unsettle me.
Instead, it soothes, like a Thread pulling taut, stitching me neatly into place.
I slide the blade across my fingers. Once, twice.
My body moves as if it already knows the rhythm.
I flick it into the air, catch it clean, spin it across my knuckles.
I step in front of the mirror. My reflection stares back at me, wide-eyed, a stranger.
I lunge, twist, sweep the blade in an arc that feels right.
Too right. My body flows with a grace I’ve never owned.
I have never wielded a weapon. Not once. Yet I know exactly how to hold it, how to strike. The longer I move, the more it feels like mine. My reflection becomes something else—strong, beautiful, lethal. I imagine an enemy before me, steel flashing as I cut them down. It thrills me. It terrifies me.
I can’t explain it. I don’t understand it. But deep down, I know the truth. This dagger is his. And somehow, that means it’s mine too.