Chapter 30 #3
“Didn’t he?” I challenged. “He let them take you. He let it happen.”
She shook her head. “It wasn’t like that.”
I stared at her intently. I had a flash of my brother’s face. My face. Had he used our likeness to win her over, to beguile her? Or did I just want to think that because it would be worse to consider that he himself had enticed her, persuading her to believe him good and worthy.
“I know only one thing,” I said. “I will kill Stig … and if I ever see my brother again … I will kill him, too.”
The color bled from her face. “No,” she breathed. “He is all that is left to you. Your only family.”
“You”—I took her face in both my hands and growled—“are my family.”
Moisture welled up in her eyes. “I don’t want you to kill your own brother because of me. I can’t have that.”
I brushed my thumbs over her cheeks soothingly. “Even if he hadn’t let Stig hurt you, what he did to me is enough. He handed me over to the skelm on a silver platter—and he seemed glad to do it. Glad to get rid of me.” I could still see his cold, frosty gaze. Not a flicker of guilt or remorse.
Her eyes flared wide. “He lied …” Shaking her head as though she could not quite fathom it, she pulled herself up out of the pool.
Standing, she started pacing back and forth on the ledge in short, agitated strides, hot color flooding her face.
“He lied to me,” she repeated in a hushed voice, almost to herself. “What a fool I was.”
She continued pacing, indifferent to her nudity, her movements hard and abrupt. “I lived among them. With him. I—I respected him. I let him—” She stopped, her eyes suddenly shining with an emotion I could not name. She looked at me and then glanced away sharply … guiltily.
She let him … what?
“Tamsyn?” I queried softly, even as nothing inside me felt soft. Far from it. “What did you let him do?”
After a long moment, she inhaled and faced me, shoulders squared as she looked down at me in the water. “He had almost convinced me to move on … to put you in the past.”
Almost.
“Of course he did,” I said, an ugly emotion coiling through me like a serpent. Not jealousy. This was darker. Because this jealousy filled me with fantasies of Vetr’s blood on my talons. “And how exactly did he recommend you do that?”
She paused a beat, gave a long blink. “By forming a new bond.” She was avoiding my gaze, staring down at her hands as though they were the most fascinating things she had ever seen.
“Forming bonds, taking mates, bringing the dragon population back up. This is important for the survival of the pride.”
I felt my lip curl in a sneer. “That’s what he told you?”
“Yes.”
That bastard. He wanted her and he had pursued her … after getting rid of me.
“And let me guess,” I continued. “Was it his suggestion that you bond with him?” The words felt like rocks lodged in my throat. My hands curled into fists at my sides, wanting to break something—break Vetr.
Her gaze held mine, and she nodded slowly in response.
Of course he would have put such a proposition to her. Tamsyn was mine. She was a fire-breather. She was beautiful. Three reasons that would prompt him to want her for himself.
I glided closer to the edge of the pool and looked up at her. “So what does my brother convincing you to move on and form a bond with him look like?”
“Oh, um.” She blinked and squared her shoulders. “Just … a lot of talk—of talking.”
She was stammering again.
“A lot of talking?” I echoed.
She sucked in an audible breath, her eyes fever bright. “What do you want me to tell you, Fell? That he kissed me? Touched me?”
“You don’t need to tell me anything. I knew that the first time I touched you.” I shrugged. “After we stopped trying to kill each other. I could smell him on you.”
She pulled back with a sharp inhale.
I angled my head, lifting an eyebrow. “That comes as a surprise? We are connected. Bonded.”
It did surprise her. I could see it clearly in the eyes that flickered like firelight. I, however, wasn’t surprised. I had not known the exact details … not whom she was with, but I had detected it, sensed another had touched her, held her, kissed her. Another craved her as I did.
Now I knew that someone else was Vetr. My own brother. Fucker.
She was horrified, shaking her head fiercely, the wet strands of her red hair pelting the wall behind her as the words tumbled from her in a fevered rush. “I’m going to be sick.”
I pushed myself up out of the water in one smooth move and joined her on the ledge. She backed away from me, bumping into the rock wall until she could go no farther. “Tamsyn,” I said with gentle slowness.
“I—I didn’t know … I thought you gone. I am sorry, Fell.”
She was the picture of remorse. Her lovely face still pale and screwed tight as though she were battling tears.
I took her face in both hands, speaking earnestly, the words wrenching from some place deep inside myself.
“You don’t need to tell me you’re sorry.
I left you to fend for yourself. I’m sorry for that.
I understand, and I don’t blame you for doing whatever you needed to make it through, to survive, to make your days less …
shit … so that you can be here now, alive. ”
She looked at me with an incredulous expression on her face. “You … understand?”
I nodded, smiling, and swept my thumb up and down her cheek. “Of course I understand.”
“But how—”
“Because you safe and well matters more than anything. Because hating you would feel like hating myself. We’re a part of each other.
Caring for each other means acceptance and understanding.
It means I want you to always do whatever you need to do to live a better life, because that is what you deserve. ”
Leaning down, I kissed her.
Both her hands settled on my chest and pushed me back. “Really?” she demanded breathlessly. “You say all that and then you kiss me so I can’t say anything?”
My body tightened, muscles tensing. I stepped back, putting space between us. “Forgive me. Please, speak. Say what’s on your mind.”
Perhaps she was right.
Perhaps I wanted to kiss her because I was afraid of what she would say. Or what she would not say.
Her fingers flexed against my bare skin, like a cat kneading its claws, and then she smiled up at me like she harbored a painful little secret.
“When I lost you,” she began in a low voice, “it broke my heart. It broke me.” She lifted her shoulders and dropped them in a helpless shrug.
“That’s when I knew … you can still go on living even broken, and—”
I held my breath, waiting.
“I never want to lose you again.”
“You never will,” I vowed.
She flushed and closed the gap between us, dropping her face into the crook of my neck as though struck with a wave of bashfulness. “What now?” she murmured against my skin, her warm breath raising goose bumps on me.
“Well. I suppose we should go home, then.”
“Home,” she repeated in all solemnity, her fingertips flexing lightly over my skin again. “And where is home, Fell?”
“So we are in agreement?” I asked, as though we had spoken the words out loud.
She nodded, hearing what was not said between us. “Tomorrow we go back to Penterra.”
I nodded. Home. Penterra. The Borg.
Decision made, we remained in the cave throughout the next day, recovering from our wounds, resting, eating, and being together. Enjoying each other. Making up for lost time. Not that one day together could completely do that, but we could try.
We could begin.
Begin again.
It seemed beginnings were all we ever had. Starts followed by hard, jarring stops.
This time, I vowed, there would be no more stops. This time would be different.
When nightfall descended, we were ready.
We stood at the opening of the cave, bare toes curling into dirt and rock as we turned our faces up to the kiss of deepening night. Then, in a burst of light and an explosion of bones and skin, we were off.