Chapter 5 #2
Raana spun from the altar and felt like her stomach had plummeted into her shoes.
Adrien’s eyes ran over her grimoire, his hand perched next to it on the counter as if questioning if he should touch it.
For most of her life, she’d kept the item hidden.
Even Helene had asked where she’d whisked the book away to.
A grimoire wasn’t necessarily something kept private, or not as private as she kept it, but to her, it was like a wound she couldn’t quite close.
One she didn’t want to expose or explain to anyone.
She carried the rocks to him, keeping watch of his hand, ready to sweep the book into her own. “Nothing of your concern.”
Adrien raised his brows, likely noting her nervousness and the rise of her stupid heartbeat. Then, with a speed she couldn’t match, he blocked her path.
She leveled him with a deadpan stare. “Really?”
Adrien flashed her that stupid grin. “Go get ready.”
“Are you a child?” she sneered, pressing forward and futilely attempting to outmaneuver him, only to end up crushed against his broad chest. She reached around again, bracing on his arm as she lost her footing.
But she was too distracted by her annoyance to care about the feel of his muscles beneath her fingers, how perfectly their bodies fit together, or that her nightgown was riding up on her back with each failed stretch.
“Adrien, may the Spirits fucking save you, move or I’ll castrate you. ”
Adrien’s laughter flooded the room, blooming that sickening warmth in her chest. “Well, that’s a new threat.” Raana met his eyes then, the challenge within them. They sparked something in her that she hadn’t been expecting but should’ve. They always seemed to. “Make me move, princess.”
He delighted in getting this rise out of her, too much. Too. Damn. Much.
Raana felt a cold lick at her fingertips and knew shadows ebbed along her skin. She became aware of what lurked in every corner of the room, everything the darkness caressed. Everything that could be used against him, including the fire poker she’d abandoned.
She calculated her next move. Should she circle his arms in dark tendrils to pull him back? Form them between them like a wall and drive him away?
She could walk through the shadows and appear behind him, one of her favorite skills she’d developed years ago. Slipping from darkness to darkness, a secret stalking through the world. If there was one thing she enjoyed about her immortal power, it was that.
But… her magic had been so unpredictable lately.
Raana willed herself to calm and stepped back, pushing the darkness away. She went to spark the stovetop. “It’s my mother’s grimoire.”
In her periphery, she noticed Adrien had sidestepped, glancing back at the relic. “Your mother’s grimoire…” He seemed to test the word mother. “Your…”
“Birth mother, yes,” she finished for him, just as flames erupted.
She placed the metal canister over the blaze and turned to him fully, allowing a woefulness to color her tone.
“The one who died giving birth to me. The one who left me nothing but those spells and the words of our ancestors to remember her by. To figure out who she was, who I am. Who has left me to wonder how different things would be, how much I’m missing by not having her in my life. ”
Adrien blinked at her, his lips twitching downwards. “You’re guilting me?”
Raana had been moving as she spoke and reached around, ripping the book from the countertop and holding it close to her secretly cracking chest. “Pity is its own kind of magic, Your Highness.” She nestled the book onto the middle shelf of the potion cabinet as she bit into her thumb, the tang of blood coating her tongue.
She pressed her injured, leaking skin to the closed wood and muttered the locking spell, feeling a shock tremor up her arm and a wave of dizziness as it pulled at her magic.
Blood was much stronger than a conduit in directing power, but more costly.
“Try to touch it, and you’ll get warts.”
“You know that magic doesn’t work on me.”
“It’ll still keep you out, though.” She staunched the bleeding with the skirt of her nightgown and leaned back against the door.
Another form of defense. “Now, where do you think you’re taking me?
I thought we decided this”—she gestured between them with a finger—“was over. We’re even.
I risked your hide; you risked mine. We’re both alive, and now we move on. ”
“Well, you were so perfectly inconspicuous on my father’s guard the last time that he wants you back.
Not to guard, but to look at the Wall protecting us from being consumed by the monsters your people created.
” Adrien mirrored her position, leaning back against the countertop, casting an assessing eye over her body as if sizing up whether she could keep him from the cabinet.
“My people?”
“Witches. Dark magic. The darkest kind, I hope. I don’t want to imagine it gets much worse than the bak.”
Raana had heard of the bak. The beasts had been down in the tunnels beneath Deimos. Isla had killed them and was coated in their reeking, dark blood. Raana hadn’t ever actually seen the creatures, but they sounded—and smelled—horrid.
Adrien continued, “We’ll be in Io first for a day at my family’s estate in the countryside to keep you hidden while I meet with my father, and then we’ll go to Callisto for a couple of nights.”
Callisto? The name sounded familiar, but—“I don’t have your map memorized.”
“It’s on our western border. It’s not too far. Closer than Deimos.”
“Good, because that journey was awful.”
“It will be nice not to have you vomit on me.”
“I didn’t vomit on you.”
“Over me.”
“Sorry, I’m not used to riding around in those metal contraptions you wolves call cars.”
“The witches are getting there, so I’ve heard.”
“Maybe on the mainland,” she murmured.
Adrien hummed as if agreeing to disagree.
He rose from his lounge. “If we’re going to make it back before sunrise, we need to go now.
Grab the bare minimum you’ll need. I’ll be giving you clothes anyway, so you blend in.
” He cocked his head. “Or I can just tell my father to forget it and take back the gold.”
Raana narrowed her eyes. “I dare you.”
Adrien answered her challenge with a grin, and the kettle finally whistled as he headed for the door. Raana, poised at the countertop, felt that piece of her rise, beckoned too many times now not to play.
The room darkened, a hollowness filling her ears.
Her shadows, the little beasts, crawled from the corners of the room, creeping towards his retreating form. Adrien surveyed them, had the audacity to meet her eyes, look back at them, and scoff. He snatched up the bag and kept moving.
Raana’s blood chilled, then, and her eyes darted from him to the shadows, to the fire poker she’d abandoned on the floor. She stepped sideways, running on an ancient, ingrained instinct as she called upon the darkness to gather, to swallow her up.
It happened in a blink: her body, beneath what felt like freezing water, became part of the black space she whipped through.
Adrien’s hand had been on the doorknob, twisting and pulling.
The exit slammed shut as Raana appeared between him and the wood, the metal poker now in her hand and pointed at his chest, having been claimed by her through the darkness.
“Drop it,” she commanded, and delight flashed in Adrien’s eyes. Flashed in hers, too. She couldn’t deny the high that came with using her immortal power, the natural way it responded to her.
They remained like that, nothing between them but deep breaths, before Adrien spoke.
“If you want a chance at killing one of us,” he began, his hand lifting to shift the steel bar over an inch, over what Raana assumed was dead into his heart.
“You aim here.” He pushed it up higher, to the base of his throat, and her breath caught at the ease with which it pressed into his flesh.
“Or here. The strongest of us don’t break easily anywhere else.
Don’t give us a chance to think. Don’t let us draw our claws. ”
As if to emphasize the point, sharp protrusions erupted at the tips of Adrien’s fingers, and Raana dipped her eyes towards them, the claws that could carve her to bits right here. Shifting looked horrendously painful, but it was done with such lethal ease. Wolves were predators crafted by a deity.
These lessons, he always fit them in when he could.
Always had. To keep her safe while she was with him.
To keep her safe in general. Witches weren’t naturally endowed with brute power.
Those who became such forces were molded that way, undergoing intense, soul-shredding training within the Bend between the Great Cities.
They were never the same again, or so she’d heard.
There was a pause, and Raana felt like her heart was about to beat out of her chest. Before she could blink, he swiped her weapon to the side, entirely disarming her and pinning her beneath his heavy body. The wood of the door dug into her back.
“Don’t take your eyes off us,” he said. “And you need to be quicker.”
Raana glowered, her blood heating then chilling as she called upon the darkness again, as she ebbed through that pool and appeared behind—
No. In… front?
Adrien was facing her, grabbing and whirling her to pin her to the wall again.
This time, he’d been bowed over, low laughter falling from his lips so close to her ear, her neck. One of his forearms rested beside her head while his other hand pressed to the wood of the door by her hip, his thumb barely skirting her skin. But just enough.
Spirits, save her.
“Also, work on being less predictable.” The deepness and nearness of the words made her shiver.
With a heaved breath, her pebbling breasts brushed against him.
She caught his fist clenching and felt him adjust his stance, but he didn’t rise until he whispered, “At one time, the fae were the most feared beings to walk this world, and for good reason. Don’t squander the power you have with novice mistakes. ”
There was a hidden seduction in his words. She could be feared and powerful if she’d embrace who and what she was. But that meant risks she couldn’t imagine taking. Even just the thought of it had anxiety tightening her chest.
Raana beat it down, distracting herself with the man before her and what hummed between them. Both she and the prince walked a fine line of discipline, one she could shatter right now if she wanted.
Actually…
Raana angled her face towards his, speaking low and smooth, “Who said the shadows were my only power, Prince?” She got closer, closer until she knew her breath fanned across his lips.
Adrien’s eyes dropped to her mouth, clearly distracted.
Raana hid her smile as she reached up to touch his face, darkness slowly filling the space between them.
Too late, Adrien realized it, and she pushed.
As he stumbled back, the shadows keeping him off balance, she laughed and reached for the bag of coins he’d dropped.
“Try not to think with that little thing between your legs.”
Adrien scoffed but was still grinning as he righted himself. “You and I both know it’s not little.”
Raana waved him off, refusing to agree. “I’ll be ready in twenty minutes.”