Chapter 10 #2
I’m not seeing any effort to overcome your fears, and my string of patience is thinning. Fast.
Something inside me snaps.
A haunting sort of calm laces through my veins and sets like mortar, lining my insides with that concrete grace he wears so well.
I blur.
Leaping forward, I drag the tip of my sword through his top. The material splits like a severed wound, and I slam to a stop, sobering, the weapon slipping from my hand.
My mouth falls open ... nothing comes out.
I’ve wounded him.
I stagger forward, splayed hands colliding with his warring chest, frantically peeling fabric back to inspect the damage.
There is none.
No cut exposing his insides ...
No blood.
Glancing up, I become hooked on his chilling stare, almost buckling under the weight of it.
His heart is a hammer against my palm, his beat slow.
Too slow.
Whipping my hands away, I stumble back.
He lifts a brow, drops his gaze to the bare skin exposed from my brutal strike, and grunts. Crushing the tattered material in his fist, he snaps his arm down, ripping the shirt right off his back and tossing it aside.
I stare at him, unable to look away from the smooth slabs of muscle he’s made of—like every piece is a perfectly crafted stone. Stacked together, they form a work of art.
He reminds me of my wall in Whispers, but instead of mortar holding him together, there are words.
Delicate words I don’t recognize, the script stained silver like the ocean goes when the sky is crammed full of clouds.
Lines yield and interact with the phrases, linking them, so if I were to transfer his body art to a sheet of parchment, every detail would be connected in some way.
“Your tattoos,” I rasp, hand hovering in the space between us.
An illuminated pulse is throbbing through the markings, as if they have their own entity.
Their own soul.
It’s a slow, sludgy beat I find myself timing my breaths to match ...
Thud-ud.
Thud-ud.
Thud-ud.
A wintry perusal scores across my face, luring me to seek the source.
My hand drops.
In those stony eyes I see more than just the hard man who stalks these halls and rules with a rigid regard.
I see a predator. I see my own morose oblivion.
He strikes.
If I thought my movements were quick, I was kidding myself. He’s lightning —sharp and sporadic.
Impulsive.
There is no rhythm to his crippling lines. They’re all power and destruction, meant to maim and disable and kill.
I swerve the advancing storm of his body, dodging blow after blow, retreating from wild, reflective eyes I don’t recognize. Steered further and further from my sword lying discarded on the ground.
My back collides with stone, and he’s on me, his blade a cold line across my throat, our shared breath intoxicating in its own malignant way.
My chest rises and falls in erratic bursts, mind racing. But though he has me caged between him and the wall with a death strike at my throat, something inside me has my chin lifting ...
His upper lip curls back, exposing teeth I picture ripping into my neck.
My gaze snags on them and struggles to unstick, until he growls low, weakening my knees, threatening to leave me hanging on the line of his sword.
“That was—” my tongue darts out, tasting the icy air as I flounder. “ You’re ... ”
Something flashes in his eyes, reminding me of a thunderstorm rolling off the ocean.
The space between us shrinks. “I’m what, Orlaith?”
Dangerous.
There’s a cough, and my eyes chase the sound, though I can still feel the chilling brand of Rhordyn’s stare tacking me in place.
“ What? ” he snaps.
Baze, standing by the entry with his hands dug into his pockets, seems entirely unfazed by the fact that Rhordyn has me pinned against the wall with a killing blow at my throat. In truth, he looks far more amused with the glare I’m practically flaying him with.
Not the response I’m looking for.
Rhordyn’s been orchestrating my training for the past five years, and Baze led me to believe it was our little secret. The bastard.
He doesn’t even have the decency to look sorry about it.
“You wanted to be notified when the High Mistress crossed the border,” Baze states, chocolate eyes detangling from my threatening stare.
Rhordyn releases an almost indiscernible sigh.
He pulls back, tossing Baze the sword while looking me up and down. “You finish up with this, ” he says, jerking his chin at me before retrieving his shredded top off the ground.
“But I agreed to this under false pretenses!” I protest, eyes darting from one to the other. “I quit. ”
Rhordyn stops cold.
A few long seconds pass, feeling like a small eternity. He finally unravels, shirt held in his white-knuckled fist as he looks my way. “Then your training will be replaced by daily trips to nearby villages. Escorted by me. ”
Not a single cell in my body escapes the attack of his words. Even my bones want to crumble from the blow.
I find myself mouthing the word no ... unable to draw enough breath to say it.
Rhordyn’s eyes harden. “Training it is, then. I’ll be back tomorrow night.”
My heart drops.
Tomorrow night ...
He’s reneging on a blood-letting. Possibly two . Something he’s never done before.
“But ... but don’t you need me?”
“No,” he growls. “I need you to sort your shit out.”
Asshole.
“Ride her ass, Baze. Keep going until you can see the color in her eyes again.”
“I hate you,” I manage to whisper, watching him stalk toward the wide-open doors.
He grinds to a halt the moment the words slip off my tongue.
A small, humorless smile curls his lips into something almost painful to witness—a wicked sharpness that reminds me I don’t know this male despite all the years we’ve lived under the same roof.
All the droplets of myself I’ve shared with him.
“Oh, precious,” he says, surveying down, then back up the lines of my body still pinned to the wall by his phantom touch. “You don’t even know the meaning of the word.”
And then he’s gone.