Chapter 36 #2
“I don’t give a fuck what the Korona’s messengers said.
I am her brother and my command is second only to your monarchs.
From now on, she won’t leave here without my escort.
You do realize she how important she is?
The Demons would do unholy things to get their hands on her.
” I hoped my flurry of violent words and the woven threat of an infiltration by our enemies would be enough to shut them up.
“Yes, Issaraeth,” they swallowed.
Without further regard, I spun on my heel and stalked the halls until I reached the healer’s hall. Ducking through the arched entry, I found it empty.
A growl of frustration built in my chest. With gritted teeth, I opened myself up to the magic tying me to the most powerful Seer in the Angel Realm.
Like a beacon in the dark, I traced its path until I burst through a door and into a small outside space.
The scent of healing herbs assaulted my nostrils immediately.
Silver whirled in the distance, and ice-blue eyes clashed with mine. Then narrowed with lethal precision.
Hate blasted me from her side of our connection. I bared my teeth in what was supposed to be a courtly smile. It felt more like an animalistic snarl.
Until I saw that a male had a hand around her waist and was turning her back toward me. I was striding in their direction before I was conscious of what I was doing.
“One more lap and then we can be done,” he told her, completely oblivious to my sudden appearance.
But Sylaira? Oh, she was acutely aware. Anguished fury flashed between us, but she completely ignored it in favor of quickening her pace to meet me.
And not in the way I would have liked.
“No crutches today, Seer?” I said, my words as smooth as glass. Inside, I was fracturing. My nails bit into my palm as I resisted the urge to knock the healer on his ass for touching my mate so intimately.
Sylaira must have sensed my internal turmoil, for a knowing grin lifted her lips. “Not with the help of my skilled healer. He’s allowed me to lean on him so I can put as much weight as is comfortable on my injured leg.”
The male started at my proximity, a small squeak escaping him. “Herr R?viel, I didn’t see you there.”
And yet, he didn’t remove himself.
“If he doesn’t stop touching you this instant,” I growled into Sylaira’s mind, the jagged threat wrapped in velvet, “I’ll cut off his fucking hands.”
She leaned further into him like she belonged with someone other than me.
Like she wanted to watch me drown because of it.
My world tilted, and all I could see was her reaching for another, smiling for him, dancing for him.
I blinked, hard, to dispel the images developing like a grotesque play behind my eyes. My nostrils flared as I tried to steady myself, to find an anchor. This healer seeing me unmoored amid the storm of Sylaira would not serve my goals.
“I can take it from here. I think there’s a soldier who needs tending inside,” I told him without taking my focus off my mate.
“Is he the same one who gave you the black eye?” the idiot asked. I slapped my ire on him. “Yes. You can heal this before I escort the Seer back to her feather.”
I reached for Sylaira, but she shrank back.
“I am too tired for more laps. The healer can bring me inside where my crutches are,” Sylaira spat.
The male flicked a confused gaze between us.
“Pain is just another dance, isn’t it?” was my only reply as I stepped into her space. “You should push yourself.”
Wisely, the healer let her go.
Energy surged where our skin met. Sylaira’s breath hitched as her face drifted up. The knife between my ribs slid out when she didn’t pull away.
But the proximity wasn’t enough. The chain linking our fates wasn’t satisfied.
I wasn’t satisfied. Not when I felt her slipping through my fingers like she was nothing more than smoke. I barely heard the healer return to the palace interior.
“Let me go,” Sylaira hissed.
There she was, making that demand all over again.
“Never,” I bit out. She was mine—irrevocably. And not just because of our Goddess damn bond. But because she’d forced me to feel, and now that the ice around my emotions had cracked, I didn’t know how to freeze them again.
She was undeterred by the thin restraint preventing violence from snapping out. “Don’t you need to spend time with your betrothed before your vows?”
The hurt in her eyes was a volley of arrows piercing my heart. I loathed myself for putting it there. Hated her more for rejecting me before and doing so again without even listening to my explanation.
“You don’t understand,” I began, but she silenced me with a sharp laugh.
“I don’t care, Issaraeth.” She jerked out of my grip, her white wings sprouting from her back to keep pressure off her bad knee.
“Sylaira.” Her name came out like a harsh order.
Her nose wrinkled, then lifted like she could look down on me from her much shorter height.
“If you want me to listen to anything you have to say, Command me,” she snapped, her wings stirring a wind as she half-walked, half-flew around me.
I caught her wrist, rage smoldering inside me.
Why does she have to be like this?
Because she watched another kiss me and I did nothing to stop it? Because I didn’t reveal to her that I was betrothed? She would have spit it in my face time and time again. I never would have gotten out of the eye of her storm.
And now that I had once…
I was anguished to do so again.
“Do you want some virelthorn or not?”
She halted immediately.
Loathing battered my insides. She cared more about consuming those fucking leaves than any explanation I could give her.
Slowly, she turned toward me again. Her face was placid, though that didn’t mask the tempest of emotion inside her. The thick barrier between us cracked and leaked information I was desperate to snatch from her.
“You’d really give me some?” The question, the disbelief in her tone speared into my gut.
From my pocket, I produced a small vial I’d snatched from the empty storeroom. The herb had other uses than suppressing visions, so it was around, but not in large quantities.
To source more, I’d need to trek into Sivy. I’d slink away in the night if that was what it took for her to stop hating me. If she ever looked at me like I was hers, I’d fall to my knees.
I hadn’t appreciated the contrast until after Sylaira had told me to Command her to listen to me in that hall.
“It’s yours,” I told her, holding the virelthorn out for her to take.
She glanced between the leaves and me like she didn’t trust I wasn’t going to snatch my hand back the moment she reached for it like a cruel joke. I wouldn’t do that to her. But I wasn’t sure she’d show me the same respect.
Not now at least.
A long moment passed. Then another. With tentative suspicion, she plucked it from my palm. Her skin barely brushed mine with the motion, but it was enough to send a shockwave up my arm and straight to my heart.
I watched her every movement as she uncorked it and popped the few virelthorn leaves into her mouth.
“This doesn’t mean I trust you,” she said once she finished chewing.
“I know,” I sighed, raking my hands through my hair. “But will you listen now?”
Her tongue dug into the side of her cheek as she considered. I crept down our connection, trying to snatch a glimmer of her thoughts. But they swirled too fast for me to keep up.
Maybe this would be the first surrender of the war between us.
Maybe she’d finally let me explain.
Maybe I hadn’t lost her completely.
“No,” she finally said, tearing me back to reality.
“What?” I spluttered, but she was already turning away from me again.
I snatched for her, like halting her might stop the entire collapse of our relationship, when the healer popped his head out of the door again. “Herr R?viel, I couldn’t find the soldier. Did he come in with you?”
My hand retreated, fingers curling into a fist. One I very much wanted to swing into the male’s face. “No. He must have found the support lacking and disappeared.” Anger threaded my tone despite my attempts to remain calm.
Sylaira floated forward, and I trudged after her. She wasn’t leaving here without my escort. I could force her to listen then.
I sat on a chair, bringing me to a more reasonable level for the healer to work. Truly, my black eye wasn’t terrible. I’d had worse. Only the bottom part was bruised and puffy. In minutes, it was shrinking from the potion he’d given me to accelerate my natural healing abilities.
Sylaira didn’t so much as look at me the entire time the healer worked on my swollen skin.
“No sympathy for me, little fugitive?” I asked down our mental connection because I couldn’t help myself.
No response.
And then…
“I should thank whomever gave it to you. You deserved it.”
That tugged up the corner of my mouth.
“Thank you, healer. I’ll escort the Seer back now,” I told him when he finished.
“Same time tomorrow. That knee needs to be worked daily.” He pointed at the binding around her leg.
“Absolutely,” she replied, shooting him a genuine smile.
Sickly, green envy curled vines around my heart.
Shoving the crutches under her arm, she hobbled into the hall. I followed, checking behind us before trotting to catch up with her.
“You will listen to me,” I hissed under my breath.
“Command me, then,” she shot back, fingers tightening over the wooden handles.
She wanted me to use my magic so she could continue to paint me a monster. Had my moments of vulnerability, of opening up about things I never talked about, not shown her who I was, deep down?
I wouldn’t use my power like that on her again. Because I’d already violated her, traumatized her, one time too many.
“I won’t force you. You don’t want that,” I said, frustration leaking into my tone. How could she not see I was taking her needs, her feelings into consideration? That was what she had wanted, was it not?
“Then it appears we are at an impasse,” she pointed out, keeping her focus straight ahead.
I exhaled a long breath, trying to rein in my rising emotions.
With this female, maintaining a semblance of self-control—one I had worked so fucking hard to gain all those centuries ago—was impossible.
“I didn’t know Dasha would be there to greet me.
I was going to tell you after I figured out how to break it off. ”
White dripped from Sylaira’s palms and curled around her ears to shut me out.
I yanked her into the next alcove, pinning her against the hard wall. My hands planted on either side of her head as I leaned down. “If you try that again, I’ll force every word into your mind.”
She glared up at me, and fuck if that didn’t heat my blood in the best way. “Because you were never supposed to want anything, until you met me?” She blasted my own words back at me, bitterness drenching every single one. “It was all a game to get me to stop resisting my fate, wasn’t it?”
“Never. Never with you,” I replied. “I want you, Sylaira. More than I have ever wanted anything.”
“Then why isn’t your betrothal already broken?”
A muscle jumped in my jaw. “It’s complicated.”
An audible scoff slipped out of her. “Get off me, Issaraeth.”
“No,” I snarled, pressing my hard body into hers.
“I’ll scream,” she threatened, her tone deadly serious. Her fingers dug into the fabric of my tunic. A flicker of the time she’d shoved me away with her magic after our first kiss returned.
I leaned closer, my mouth brushing against the shell of her ear. “Go ahead. I’m the Issaraeth. I can Command them to leave us and forget what they saw.”
Her breath hitched. “You wouldn’t.”
“There are many things I wouldn’t do. But that is one I absolutely would.” I was bluffing about Commanding them to forget—my power didn’t extend that far. But she didn’t know that.
White blasted me backward. I knocked into a painting, sending it askew.
Sylaira was already rushing down the hall, her crutches clicking against the stone floor. I glanced back at the priceless art.
Fuck, it was one a Sensor was attached to. They’d be here at any moment. And I couldn’t risk anyone discovering this secret. Not yet.
I chased after the female pushing my patience to its breaking point.
“I didn’t choose Dasha. I don’t love her,” I said into Sylaira’s mind.
She didn’t acknowledge I’d spoken. Like the fluid dancer she was, she glided easily around the turn that led to the Seer’s feather. The sound of trickling water was the tolling of a bell sealing my fate.
“Bring me more virelthorn, and I might consider listening again,” was the only response I received as the Sightkeepers straightened, hands flying to their hilts. I smoothed my expression to prevent the absolute torture Sylaira dispensed from rising to my face.
One of the males swung the door inward for her, and she disappeared without so much as a backward glance.
The lock slid into place with a harsh finality.
Because Sylaira was soaring away from me on a violent, rushing wind. Like she dove into the current without a care for how she’d land.
And I knew if I didn’t figure out how to fix this—and soon—I’d lose sight of her forever.
I stood there for a moment longer, cursing my mate, myself, and the Goddess for putting me in this situation.
And then I gathered my cloak and slipped away to Sivy, determined to find more of the vision-suppressing herb.