Chapter 17 Tamsyn #2
And did he want that? I peered suspiciously at his face. “We have to find him,” I insisted with a slow shake of my head.
“If it could be done, then I would have done it.”
“No.” I whipped my head in a fierce shake. “I don’t accept that.”
“I was afraid you would react this way.” His gaze searched my face. “It’s impossible to find him and I didn’t want you to think you could … and then live with the torment once you realized we could do nothing.”
“Such kindness,” I mocked. “You know what I keep hearing?” I asked haltingly.
He stared at me blankly.
I felt my face catch and hold tight, scrunching with anger. “What you want.”
A flicker passed over his features that resembled hurt, and I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry or just hit him.
“I did not sign my life over to you,” I added heatedly. “It is not for you to make my decisions. You, who are so concerned with my torment, but what of Fell? What of his torment? He’s buried alive! For over a year now. Your brother!”
I pressed a fist to the center of my chest, pushing, rubbing deeply with my knuckles against the sudden surge of pain there as I imagined that. As I imagined Fell alone in eternal darkness.
Suddenly I felt like it was me buried beneath the ground, piles and piles of rock pressing down on me.
I couldn’t breathe. My body fought for air, jerking, shuddering like something dead, dying, writhing on the ground for its last breath.
I bent at the waist, bracing my hands on my knees as I gasped.
“Easy now,” Vetr soothed, as though I was some fragile, wispy thing, a reed on the verge of blowing away.
I looked up—wanted to claw his eyes out for his conciliatory tone.
I considered that tempting prospect for a heartbeat …
thought about snapping my talons free and dragging them down his face.
I was full of such wrath that the fantasy bolstered me.
He clearly didn’t understand my rage or sense of betrayal.
I was struck with the familiarity of it all. Had I learned nothing? I’d been here before. Tasted betrayal. Experienced its stinging cut. It was something I knew well.
First my parents—the only parents I had ever known—tossed me to the altar, discarding and sacrificing me without a blink, like I was nothing more than rubbish.
Then there was Stig’s betrayal.
And now Vetr’s.
Only Fell had never forsaken me.
But you abandoned him.
Vetr’s arm circled my waist as though lending comfort, and I shoved at his chest, backing away. “You swore he was dead … and now you tell me he is not.” I took several bracing breaths. “You’ve hidden this from me.” I shook the necklace.
“What can I do to make this right for—”
“You can find him,” I said, hating the twisting plea in my voice.
He grimaced. “I wish I could.”
“Then I will go! I’ll find him,” I cried, my voice determined.
I felt this conviction deep in my bones, in the telling tingle of my hand. I knew I could find him. I was not afraid to go out there alone.
His grimace fell away, and his expression hardened into unyielding stone. “That’s not possible.”
He made me feel like an underling who dared to challenge him. Worse than an underling … he made me feel like a prisoner.
And to think I’d come here because I had been considering binding myself to him.
I drew in a shuddering breath.
“You need to move on from this. Fell would have wanted that.”
It was too much. Invoking Fell’s name to bend me to his will. I saw through it and bit back a scathing reply. That would not serve me.
Nothing I said could make him understand, so I moved to leave, saying tightly, “This has been a shock. I need time to think.” The words choked in my throat, but I knew I had to say something. I didn’t need time to think, but the vague, placating words were necessary.
He stepped in my path, towering over me, a hunger, a wildness glinting in his eyes that felt contrary to the gently patient words coming from his mouth: “Take all the time you need, but remember why you came to my den.”
I blinked up at him. How did he know what brought me here tonight?
As though he read the question in my mind, he said, “You came here for me. Because you want me as much as I want you.”
With a flash of guilt, I stepped back, putting more distance between us. That was much too close to the truth. I had come here for him. Had. But now it was done. That impulse dead and gone.
He carried on. “You are thinking about it. About me. About what we can be to each other.” He reached out and stroked warm fingers down my cheek.
I swallowed thickly. “You’re not who I thought you were.”
“Fell is gone, but I am here.”
Those words gouged me, flayed deep into me as any talons would. I rubbed at my palm, as though I were evoking Fell. “He is in me,” I insisted.
He nodded to my hand. “That will go away and fade once you accept a new mate.”
I looked at him with the solemnity of one facing the gallows. “I won’t be accepting a mate as long as Fell is alive.”
And I will never accept you. Not after this. Not now after I see the real you.
I fled then, darting around him with the necklace still clutched in one hand, rushing out, past the blur of dens where the others slept, through the ever-present curling mist that felt thicker tonight, denser, fingers grabbing at my ankles, trying to hold me, pull me back to the den from which I ran.
I wondered how many of them knew the truth about Fell. Did they all know? Was I the only one left in the dark? A fool they all talked about when I wasn’t near?
Once back in my den, I paced, Fell’s necklace a living thing, burning in my hands like a hot coal.
I felt caged … alert and tense as a prowling animal.
Sleep wasn’t happening, not the way I felt, but that was just as well.
Even if I could, I didn’t want to close my eyes and lose myself in slumber.
I wanted to throw back my head and howl.
I wanted to open my mouth and let my fire out in a blazing blast.
After a while, I flung myself down on my bed, not bothering to undress. My heart would not slow its race inside my chest. I fastened the black opal around my neck, letting it join my other necklace, the weight of them both a comfort, a balm to the soul.
I’d meant what I said to Vetr. I could find Fell. He just didn’t want me to—or he didn’t have faith in me that I could. Whatever the case, I wasn’t scared. I’d gone through so much. What was a trek through the Crags? I could find him using our bond as a guide.
I trailed my fingers over the humming gemstones circling my throat before moving on to touch the center of my other palm. I rubbed there, stroking the flesh, tracing the mark. “Fell,” I whispered. “I’m coming.”
The X responded, crackling heat under my fingers.