Chapter 23
Silence reigned between us, punctuated by sharp cracks of burning logs.
“I can order us some food,” I offered eventually.
“Not yet. Maybe later,” she murmured, her voice melodic and low instead of snarky and biting. For once.
The bond hammered against my sternum, begging me to go to her. To wrap myself around her and warm her up. But I forced myself to remain mere feet from her. I would not give in.
Does she feel this ache too?
Mates weren’t meant to feel this fathomless trench between them. The depth of my torment devoured me whenever she held herself, tense and poised like she was ready to leap into a dance, at arm’s length.
Despite every warning in the rear of my mind, despite what I knew awaited us in Sivy, I spoke again. “Can I check on your knee?”
While she was still unconscious, the healer had said it needed to remain immobilized for at least a week until the swelling went down. After that, she needed to start bending it regularly, though nothing too far.
A tense moment passed before she answered me. “Okay.”
With controlled slowness, I rose.
The mattress dipped as I perched on the edge of it, close enough to reach for the bandage, but far enough that composure remained a possibility. Finding the ties, I tugged them loose, then unwound the fabric. She hissed as I brushed the surface of her skin, where the bones had been broken.
“Still bruised?” I asked tonelessly.
She nodded. “It’s better, but…it still hurts.”
The next pass, I ensured my fingers didn’t graze against her. Once it was fully unwrapped, I shifted on the bed so I could peer at it from above. “The swelling is almost gone,” I commented. But the color was still an ugly purple-green.
Sylaira leaned closer, breath dusting across my cheek as her rested face mere inches from mine. Ghostflower filled my nostrils, and I inched backward, out of the allure of her.
“It’s not the size of the boulder I smashed it into running from you anymore,” she stated, a hint of bitterness in her tone.
She never resisted a moment to remind me of exactly what had happened.
I gritted my teeth and bit back a sharp retort.
Once I’d regained a semblance of restraint, I offered her an olive branch.
“Do you want to try moving it? The healer said if you ever wanted to dance again, you needed to start working it as soon as you felt ready.”
Her head snapped up, eyes crashing into mine like a thunderclap. “How…”
“I heard you think that you would never dance again.” Admitting I’d crept through the corridors of her mind was difficult because she’d be more aware the next time I attempted a surreptitious survey.
Cracks in that icy wall she’d erected between us, left by her pain, had been my only way into the most intimate part of my mate.
I shouldn’t have wanted to know the inner workings of her, but I couldn’t stay away.
To my shock, tears welled among ice. A sob lodged in her chest. She pressed her lips together to smother it, drawing my attention to their perfectly plump shape. “But…” She cut herself off, giving a small shake of her head.
“I don’t know much about you, Sylaira, but by the way you move, I assumed that was incredibly important to you.
Especially with how distraught you were when the idea flickered in your mind.
So I asked him what we needed to do to ensure dance didn’t become a distant memory once you were fully healed. ”
A single drop spilled over and traced the curve of her cheek. She looked away, swiping at the wetness. “I don’t know what to say.”
She didn’t have to speak for me to feel the swell of sorrow in her. Our bond gave me full access to everything.
And these emotions, wide open like floodgates? They were a weakness—hers and mine.
I slammed a barrier shut between us before I drowned in what she felt. I was barely keeping my own head above water as it was.
“Tell me if you’re up for it.” The words were low, and I tried to sound as cold and neutral as possible. But around Sylaira, I was finding that mask increasingly difficult to maintain.
“I am,” she said, determination rising in sorrow’s stead. “But don’t think you can weaponize this moment. You’re still the Issaraeth who hunted and caged me.”
I raised a dark brow. “Would you rather me not touch you at all?”
My mate lifted her chin in a move that was pure defiance. “I didn’t say that.”
I heeled out of my boots and climbed onto the center of the bed so I was kneeling at Sylaira’s feet, facing her. “If it’s too much, tell me to stop.”
“I will,” she promised. But I knew if I didn’t ask, she wouldn’t tell me. As much as she didn’t want my help, she also didn’t want to look weak in front of me.
She was smart prey.
Gingerly, I lifted her foot, cupping her heel. It looked impossibly small in my large hands. With the barest amount of pressure, I pushed her leg backward, bending her knee.
Her nose scrunched, and she sucked in a sharp breath. I straightened her out immediately. “No, it’s fine. Do it again,” she assured me.
I held her gaze as I bowed her leg again, hyperaware of the rise and fall of her chest. The twitch of her lips. The flare of her nostrils.
She sank back against the pillows, fingers tightening over the blanket around her shoulders.
“I hate that he has to be the one to help me.” Her thought slipped through, raw and unguarded, along with the ache in her bones.
The muscles in my jaw tightened, and I built that barricade higher. I was doing this for her, and still, she fucking hated me.
After the fifth bend, I lowered her leg gently to the bed. “Do you want to keep going or should I stop so you don’t have a setback?”
“One more,” she said, her voice hoarse.
I pressed into her for the final time, lifting her knee, then held the position for longer than I had before. I wasn’t ready to let her go. Wasn’t ready for this moment to end. Where she was vulnerable, where the open hostility was gone. Where I could pretend like we had a real future.
With the bond thrashing in my chest, I released her, retreating only long enough to find the discarded wrap. My back ached as I bent over her, rebandaging her broken knee and ensuring it wasn’t too tight against the bruise.
“Does it drive you mad, having to be gentle with me when all you know how to do is break?” she threw at me like she couldn’t stand the tender moment between us either.
I stilled, then lifted my gaze with predatory slowness. “Little fugitive, if I wanted to break you, I would. I wouldn’t even need my hands on your flesh to do it.”
To demonstrate my point, I ripped a pillow from behind her. She gasped, falling backward, barely managing to catch herself before her skull cracked against the headboard. I tucked it under her leg without so much as looking anywhere else but at the flush painting her cheeks.
“Because you would Command your mate without hesitation,” she snapped, adjusting herself so she was propped up again.
My fingers curled into fists, and I forced myself to drag them away from her. “Without hesitation, should the need arise. Didn’t I already prove that to you?”
She glared at me like she was willing the fire behind me to roar to life and consume me. “You have. And how shameful is it that a mate must use his magic to force his bonded to obey.”
Her words cut deep into my flesh. It was only from the sheer force of will I exerted over myself that I didn’t flinch.
“I’m hungry now.”
A low, wicked laugh escaped me. “Do you think you’re in charge here? That you get to take advantage of my kindness, throw my sins in my face, and then pretend like it never happened?”
In an instant, my arms framed her head. Her breath hitched as I hovered above her, muscles flexing with barely contained restraint. “Because you’re not. You are my prisoner. You are my mate. I own you, Sylaira. It’s time you start seeing that.”
I shoved off the bed and slid my feet into my boots again.
“I am going to order us dinner.” If only to get some fucking space from her. “I will return shortly. I suggest you use this time alone to think about how you want to behave going forward.” Bending down, I laced my shoes tight enough to cut into my skin. To ground me.
Then, I snatched the key and shoved it into my pocket.
I was halfway down the stairs when she called out, soft and tentative. “Wait!”
Despite the pounding in my veins, I did, waiting for her to speak again.
“Can I have some wine?”
Exhaling, I spun to face her again. “What for? So you can flutter out the window in the middle of the night when I’m drunk?”
She bared her teeth at me. “Don’t drink if you don’t want that to happen then.”
Saying nothing, I stomped the rest of the way down the staircase, locking the door behind me.
I wanted to punish her. Wanted to Command her to be silent if only so she wouldn’t throw my own frustration and shame back in my face.
Yet when I emerged into the tavern below, I found myself ordering a bottle of white wine along with our dinner.