Chapter 19
My father, his skin pallid with panic, stuffed me into the chest.
My mother spoke those rushed words, demanding I stay quiet, and then there was the darkness.
Shuffling. My mother’s voice, brutally cut short.
From the darkness where I hid, I heard my father ask, “Why are you doing this?”
I slowly lifted the lid of the chest. My parents were dead on the floor. The scar on the enormous man’s back was stark against tanned skin and blood that wasn’t his.
He turned.
And I was staring into Koerlyn’s ice cold eyes.
I jolted back and the lid slammed shut. Koerlyn wasn’t supposed to be here. He was never here.
But he was here, and I was trapped in this chest, with nowhere to go.
“There you are,” he cooed, the sickly sweet tone pulling raw fear to the surface. The floor creaked with footsteps, each one closer and closer to where I was trapped until they came to an abrupt stop. “I’ve been waiting to put those lovely eyes to use,” he said pleasantly.
Then the chest was sliding across the floor, and all I could do was brace my hands and feet against the walls—
My hands and feet that were no longer small, but full-grown. Mine.
I rammed my shoulder up into the lid, but it didn’t budge. Not an inch.
I was locked in.
Bile rose as I shoved into the lid again.
His voice stopped me short. “Now, now, Etarla, you won’t be leaving me so easily again. We have a city to conquer. And then a world.”
No. Oh, skies, please no.
Koerlyn couldn’t be the one to enter Centralis. He would be a tyrant. He would hold every resource and morsel of food over our heads until we swore fealty, and then he would destroy us as he did every villager we came across.
Trembling overtook my limbs. They shook violently as I kicked into the lid again, meeting solid wood but accomplishing nothing. He couldn’t take me. I struck out again, and then my leg was shackled and it couldn’t kick, couldn’t free my—
The wooden walls disappeared, and I became aware of my arms and legs pressed into the ground by heavy, warm weights that were far more restrictive than that box.
I was chained to the ground. Koerlyn had found me.
He wasn’t only in my dream. I struggled, not finding an inch of leeway in the shackles.
“Wake up. Come on, carella.” The low, urgent voice yanked me to reality, and I opened my eyes to see—
My breath stuttered.
Harthon’s face was inches from mine, a frown creasing his features. The whiskers along that square jaw appeared black amidst the night’s shadows, and hair tumbled around his face in loose waves, nearly brushing my cheeks.
“You’re here, with me,” he murmured, and I fell limp against the ground.
There were no shackles. Only Harthon’s hands firmly around my wrists, and his legs planted on mine.
Around his head, the dark sky was spotted with dull stars, and the chirps of night insects buzzed through the air.
It wasn’t even close to morning. He should have been sleeping, but he was here, waking me from my nightmare.
A new kind of panic raced through me. Were we under attack? Looters? Koerlyn’s men? “What’s wrong?” I whispered, scanning his face for signs of urgency. I only found pinched concern.
“I believe I’m supposed to ask you that question,” he responded, warm breath puffing across my cheeks. Heat emanated from him in waves, keeping away the chill of the night.
“I…I don’t understand.”
“You were having a nightmare. One that clearly required waking,” he said, releasing my wrists to place his hands on the ground. He didn’t move away, staying braced above me like a shield.
As shameful as it was to admit, I was grateful for it.
The dream had rattled me far more than I wanted to acknowledge.
I couldn’t even count the amount of times I’d dreamt of the night my parents were killed, but never once had it strayed from the familiar storyline, until tonight.
Harthon was a comforting presence, easing the terror that’d choked me as Koerlyn dragged me along in that chest. Even now, tendrils of fear remained, and Harthon…
he chased them away, just by being there. There was no fighting that fact.
Still, I didn’t understand why he was here. It wasn’t as cold as our last night outdoors, so I’d fallen asleep on my own at the edges of the camp. “How did you know?”
“You were making noises. The kinds that come from bad dreams. When I tried to wake you the first time, you nearly took me to the ground, so I had to take some measures to make sure you didn’t hurt yourself,” he explained gently.
As if I could ever take Harthon to the ground.
I turned my head to the side, noting the sleeping bodies around us. “It didn’t wake anyone else up,” I argued.
The skin around his eyes crinkled. “I’m a light sleeper.”
And I’d woken him with the sounds I’d made in my nightmare, and thanked his efforts to wake me with a struggle. Could I have done anything more embarrassing?
I slapped my palms over my face. “Sorry.”
He grasped my hands and pulled them away, dipping his chin. “You have nothing to be sorry for. We all have bad dreams.”
Sure, everyone had bad dreams, but they usually handled them like adults, not whimpering children. “You’re telling me that you also make noises and fight imaginary foes in your dreams?”
He shifted onto his haunches, and I became all too aware of how his muscled thighs still pressed into mine. “I know a thing or two about nightmares that reach deeper than they should.”
I studied the man who sat above me, the one who was such a force that it’d never occurred to me that simple things like dreams could hurt him too. “I’m sorry for that,” I whispered.
He stilled for a moment, lips parting as he visually traced my features. He lingered on my lips for a breath, and I became as still as him. My skin buzzed with…with…what, exactly? Anticipation? Want? Attraction? Maybe all three, together.
The nightmare had done more than reach deeper than it should. It had scrambled my mind and made me lose my sanity, because for the first time in my life, I thought about what it might feel like to be…to be kissed—
“I’m sorry for you, too,” Harthon said quietly, shattering the moment. “Did the dream have to do with our visit to Josenne?”
My limbs immediately locked up. After I’d told Harthon that Josenne couldn’t help him, he hadn’t pressed the issue, and I hadn’t revealed a word of what she’d told me.
While I was surprised he didn’t hammer me for information, I knew it was only a matter of time.
Harthon was too determined and shrewd to assume Josenne had nothing to offer.
For him, the stakes were far too high to accept my cryptic response.
After hours of deliberation, I still didn’t know what I would tell him when the conversation arose. There was always the truth: that I couldn’t unlock the path because I simply didn’t want it enough. But that truth felt incredibly lacking and carried with it the heavy weight of shame, of fault.
Logically, it shouldn’t. I wasn’t part of Harthon’s circle, so it shouldn’t matter whether my answer disappointed him. But the thought of speaking the weak-sounding truth filled me with trepidation, and it wasn’t because I thought he would retaliate and harm me.
Above me, Harthon shifted his weight. I still had yet to answer his question.
“No. It was something else,” I said vaguely, not wanting to speak about my nightmare either.
He nodded once and rose to his feet before walking away.
As he disappeared into the darkness, Koerlyn’s frigid eyes flashed through my mind, and I knew I wouldn’t be sleeping again tonight.
Exhaustion was better than falling back into that twisted reality that had felt all too real.
I would rest my body for another hour or two, and then I’d get up and begin my training exercises.
I’d just curled myself back under my blanket when Harthon approached once more and set his sleeping mat next to mine.
“What are you doing?” I asked in a rush as he laid down inches from my body, resting on his elbow. There was no need for him to warm me tonight.
He drew his blanket to his waist and gave me a bland expression. “Lying down to sleep,” he said, as if it was obvious.
“Why are you doing that here?”
“This seems like a good place to rest.”
Aggravation rose at his second obtuse response, and I welcomed the emotion, grateful for anything that replaced the fear from my dream. “You had a good place to rest over there.”
“It’s cold on that side of the camp.”
I eyed the hem of his blanket, where it rested halfway down his torso. He didn’t even wear his cloak, donning only his thick tunic and leathers. “You’re clearly not cold,” I pointed out.
He tilted his head. “Are you trying to tell me how I feel?”
“I’m not trying. I’m telling, Princeps Harthon.”
The corner of his mouth kicked up. “I think you’re letting this magvis charade go to your head.”
“And I think you’re having far too much fun irritating me at midnight. What do you want?”
“I want you to sleep.”
That wasn’t going to happen. “Talking to me isn’t helping me to sleep.”
“I didn’t start this conversation. You did,” he pointed out, and I rolled my eyes.
“Maybe I have no intention of sleeping.”
He searched my eyes as if he could see right into my thoughts. “You’re afraid to fall back into the dream.”
His soft statement had a denial racing to my lips. I staunched it, knowing he would see through the blatant lie. With Harthon, it was as if I were an open book, no matter how desperately I tried to close the cover.
Overcome with the urge to defend myself, I said, “Before all of this, I was never afraid, you know. My greatest concern was bringing home food to eat, and that was within my control. My nightmares were predictable. I handled everything just fine. And now…what you’ve seen of me is not who I am.”
“And what is it that you think I’ve seen of you?” he questioned.