7. Denied
~ GRACE ~
When he ran from me, I was heartbroken. Embarrassed. Confused. I started after him, the words on my tongue to plead that he tell me what had frightened him. Why he ran from me. From this. But the answers swam to mind very quickly.
This was what men did, when faced with me.
He didn’t want me. Couldn’t fathom it, apparently.
And at that thought, something in my heart shrieked, and died.
Fighting tears, I tried to walk away, back to the castle, though it would take hours. But within mere steps, the tug deep in my chest made me groan and stumble back around, in the direction Vane had run.
He’d sprinted. Out of sight in seconds. But I felt him like he’d tied a leash to my heart and now dragged me through the trees. I couldn’t possibly keep up, but I could follow. Had to follow.
My soul demanded it.
Around and around… was he aware that he ran in a circle? For an hour. More. I was exhausted, yet, I only walked. He ran until he must be on the verge of collapse.
I existed in two minds—one focused only on finding him. On needing him. The other, disoriented and spluttering. Had I been drugged? Magiked? How was it possible that I sensed him so clearly, and yet couldn’t control my own limbs?
I followed, stumbling, weeping, throat raw, until, well after the forest had grown dark and the only light was moonlight filtered by the trees overhead, his direction stopped changing.
The dragons’ calls rose in the distance, their images and sensations came in waves that made my body hot, and my knees weak. They made me need him urgently.
I didn’t know how far away he was, but I knew precisely which direction in which to move to find him. And so, I stumbled on, heart aching, lips numb, mind reeling. Until, between one step and the next, the trees opened and there he was.
Vane sat in the shadow of a thick tree, almost hidden by a thick branch, half-broken from the trunk, that skewed drunkenly toward the ground, its leafy tips peppering the line of sight between us.
My heart ached. He’d sat at the base of the trunk, knees pulled up, elbows resting on them, his head low and fingers clawed into his hair. Every line of every limb, taut, and rigid.
He looked tormented.
He looked like I felt, and my heart went out to him. I whispered his name and hurried forward on tottering, shaky legs, my heart leaping—then a twig snapped under my boot, his head whipped up, and our eyes met.
I stopped dead, still some space away. But drinking in the sight of him. Something inside me swelled, pleading for him. But his eyes went round. Hunted.
“How the—” he cut himself off, shoving to his feet and backing away, only to come up hard against the tree behind him.
“I won’t hurt you—”
“How the fuck did you get close without me hearing you?!” His voice was hoarse. Cracking like a boy just becoming a man.
“I don’t know, I just—”
“Get away from me!”
“Vane, please—” I sobbed as that hollow in my chest that had been driving me toward him, the spot that pulled, jerked so sharply it stole my breath.
“Don’t touch me.”
“I’m not.” Though I drew closer to him, unable to resist that desperate tug within.
“Get the fuck away from me, Grace!”
“Why?!” I shrieked, stumbling to a halt just out of his reach, sight blurring with tears. “What did I do?! Why do you despise me?! I’d never hurt you—I want you!”
I reached for him, intending to beg, desperate to show him I meant him no harm. But my fingertips barely brushed his chest when the world flipped.
A snarled curse.
A singing pain in my shoulder.
Darkness whirling too fast for sight.
A hollow thump, and grunt, and the moon overhead.
And when my vision cleared, I had no air.
Vane stood over me, his legs thick and long from my vantage point on my back in the dirt. Hands clenched into fists at his sides, knuckles and tendons standing proud. His lips peeled back from his teeth, and his eyes were wild.
He’d flipped me?
He was frightened of me?
The dragons groaned somewhere north of us, and desire crackled through me like lightning in my veins, but I couldn’t make a word. Couldn’t breathe.
‘I won’t hurt you.’ It was instinct. That place within me, so aware of him, so needy, also somehow aware of the dragons and if I couldn’t reach him with hands, or words… I had to get through. ‘I don’t want to hurt y—’
With a vicious growl to rival a wolf, Vane dropped to squat, one hand flat on my chest to stop me rising, the other moving faster than I could see. Something flashed, moonlight on a blade. And I felt the cool chill of that razor-sharp edge, right under my jaw.
I gasped the tiniest breath in, but froze.
His eyes narrowed to slits, and when he spoke, he spat the broken words between gritted teeth.
“I will not… allow you to… you cannot… I am not yours,” he snarled. “Leave me or I will cut your throat and leave you for the beasts!”
Fear, as potent as the hunger in my body, sang through me.
I didn’t dare move as I felt the sting of that blade slide just a hairsbreadth into my skin. But my aching eyes welled. I stared at him, silently pleading. Begging.
‘Please, let me touch you. I won’t hurt you. I need you. Something’s happened. I don’t understand. I’m scared. But I know you’re the one—’
The knife flashed and there was a dull thunk just an inch from my shoulder. But Vane leaped to his feet and stumbled back. I sobbed as he screwed his eyes closed and roared. “GET OUT OF MY FUCKING HEAD!”
Then he was gone. Nothing left in his wake but a quivering branch on a nearby shrub, and the not-so-distant call of the dragons rising into the night as they reached their peak again.
In their rush, then easing need that followed, I lay there and wept.
My body ached, desperate for him. Frantic because I could feel him drawing away.
That persistent tug had started in my chest again.
But now it fought the thudding in my heart, the jangle of fear at the real threat that he might kill me if I touched him.
The two sides of my soul were at war, one driven to connect. The other desperate to flee.
I was torn in two.
But, why? Why?
What had been done to me? And how could I survive it?
‘You are safe.’
It was that unfamiliar voice again. Gentle. Tender. The forming of the words just a little bit odd. Had I taken a blow and—?
‘No, Firebird. Your heart hurts. Mine follows. Don’t cry. You are safe,’ she repeated.
It was the she-dragon. The one who’d said she’d protect me. The one Vane’s dragon was chasing.
I was so exhausted, so spent, that even with the pulling in my chest, I couldn’t move.
I rolled onto my side, curled fingers into the dirt to ground me, to remind me what was real.
And I lay there until the shaking in the ground forced me to sit up, when I found a stunning creature, the size of a small house, peering down at me.
I couldn’t see the color of her scales in the dark, but her eyes were bright. And though she twitched and fluttered her wings, her nostrils flared as she extended her snout and inhaled, then snorted so deeply, some of the pine needles were thrown up.
My eyes weren’t dry, but against the backdrop of the ache of missing Vane, a new, warm joy emerged. This one free of fear.
I pushed up to sit, and she nudged me with her snout. A moment later, I reached a tentative hand out to touch the end of her nose with one palm, stunned by the warmth under her scales, and the smoothness of her skin.
Why does she let me touch her?
‘You are mine, Firebird,’ she replied.
I blinked. I hadn’t understood. Were we… talking? ‘You can hear my thoughts?’
‘If you wish, yes. I wish so. Always.’
My jaw went slack and she snorted once more, her hot breath rushing over me like a wind off the desert—the faintest scent of clean campfire, and sunbaked grass.
‘Why are you talking to me?’ I sent her, awed.
‘You are mine.’
A conviction, deep and certain, as solid as a rock buried in sand, entered my chest. As if there were chambers in my heart now. Rooms within me. And she stood inside one.
The other ached with an absence. A hollow gap in dark shadow that made me want to weep—
‘Leave him. Kham speaks good heart. He help. Mate is… beautiful. Wise.’
The words were broken and hesitant, but behind them, a rush of love and pure delight. The unrestrained trust of a child, and the sweet joy of a woman.
I sucked in another aching breath as she gave me pictures and I finally understood. “He’s your mate?”
‘Yes. Do not cry. We help.’
I hadn’t even asked her. Hadn’t told her a thing. But the echo of the words brought a fresh wave of tears because she knew. She felt the ache inside me, and mirrored it. Nudging me with her snout again when I dropped my face into my hands because it hurt. And I was afraid.
But I couldn’t follow him.
At least the dragons had taken a moment, though that simmering want remained—it wouldn’t be long until she went to Kham again, I knew. I could feel that it hurt her to be here with me, without him.
“Go,” I whispered to her, stroking her snout with a shaking hand, smiling despite my tears, because she was beautiful, and she wanted me? “Go back to him. I’ll leave Vane alone until he feels better.” I wasn’t sure how, but I had to try.
The dragon huffed. ‘Why call him Vane?’
I frowned. “Isn’t that his name?”
‘Human names be strange,’ she sent, then lifted her head, looking back over her shoulder. I felt the ache in her, the draw back to her mate.
But before she moved, she looked down at me again. ‘Come.’
I blinked. “Come where?”
‘I have… shelter. For you. Safety. Come.’
Without another word, she turned and slipped through the trees. Chest aching and throat still raw, I stumbled after her. But it wasn’t far. I hadn’t realized how close we were to that first clearing.
A moment later, she’d stopped in a place where the trees grew thick and there were large clusters of underbrush and bushes.
‘Here.’
I slipped past her to find the shadows had hidden the mouth of a cave.
It seemed impenetrably dark when I crept in, keeping one hand on the wall and following it as it curved.
But when she snorted again and I turned to look back, the moonlight washed in from the open sky behind her, and I could see the form of the floor, a dead fire pit just feet from where I stood, and something against the other wall that was either a big bag, or a large boulder.
‘Safety,’ she said sweetly, then sighed.
‘Thank you,’ I sent back with tears pinching my eyes again, this because she was hurting herself to help me. ‘I’ll stay here and rest.’
‘Good. We help. Sleep, Firebird. You need.’
Then she was gone.
And I was alone.
And once again torn in two pieces, because one side of my soul sang with joy that she was there, and I could sense her, even when she moved away.
While the other gasped and ached, hollowed and cold. Because the second heart that my ribs had shifted to make room for, had rejected me.