18. Untrusted
~ GRACE ~
“Wake up, Grace. Wake the fuck up!”
I shoved upright, out of the dream, blinking. But all I saw was darkness and black and blue trees and midnight eyes and—
Eyes.
His piercing eyes appeared right in front of my face. I gasped, jerking back, but strong hands clamped onto my arms and stopped me. My bottom ground into the dirt as I struggled for a few seconds, while he muttered curses. Then I blinked again.
“Vane?”
“Why didn’t you tell me?!” he hissed.
“I… what?”
With more colorful words and raking hair out of his eyes, Vane straightened, then pulled me to my feet and planted me on them. I swayed, then caught my own weight, blinking rapidly because I was still half-asleep.
My stomach growled audibly and his jaw flexed.
“Are you awake now?” he whispered.
I looked over his shoulder. Two large shadows in the trees moved toward us. The dragons. I scanned the space, but there were no other men or dragons. “Are you alone?”
“Yes,” he snapped. “Now, tell me what the fuck is going on!”
I frowned and pressed my eyes with the heels of my palms. “What’s going on, is that I was asleep, and now you’re angry and—you tell me what’s going on! Did you find Bren and Donavyn? Or—”
“Why didn’t you tell me you were betrothed to a fucking lord?”
Oh dear.
I wanted to shrink from the pure, unadulterated rage in his eyes. And maybe, a little bit, from my own cowardice.
“Because I hoped it wouldn’t come up?” I said quietly. Honestly.
Vane’s eyes narrowed until they were nothing but pinpoints of light in the dark.
“You sent me back to the castle, when you’d disappeared for a week, and didn’t think it worth warning me that someone powerful might have come looking for you?
The king is receiving messages, and the court is having fits, Grace! ”
I sucked in. That wasn’t good. That wasn’t good at all. Why would the king take an interest in Lord Breckon’s marriage union?
This seemed like the moment for one of those coarse words Vane and the other men were so fond of, but I wasn’t sure which one actually fit, and—
“Were you trying to bring the entire kingdom down on my head? Letting me walk into the lion’s den without even a hint? Did you want me to be blamed for your disappearance?”
“What? No! No one would connect you with a lady!”
I couldn’t make out the details of his expression in the dark, but the scoff of disdain as he pushed away from me and stalked toward the dragons told me plenty.
“Vane? Vane, what did they say? What happened? Did they follow you?”
“Of course not!” he barked.
“Then why are you so angry? I’m not going back! I won’t!”
“You’ll do as you’re told, and you will not leave me to walk ignorantly into a trap ever again!”
“I didn’t—ack!”
He whirled on me so quickly he almost stepped on my toes before I scrambled back from him. But he kept coming and I stumbled and pushed at him, backing away, but I couldn’t get away fast enough.
Then I came up hard against an old, rotten tree trunk. I grunted and cringed as he loomed over me, lips peeled back from his teeth, pointing to the city and snarling.
“You are a spoiled, selfish, immature child. The world is so much bigger than your petty anxieties about marrying some rich, bored lord. You have bonded a fucking dragon—my dragon’s mate.
Your priority should be her wellbeing, and by extension, his, and thereby, mine.
Yet, you left me to wander into a fucking firestorm of scandal.
If I’d been seen by one wrong person, or thoughtlessly offered one poorly chosen word—”
“I didn’t think—”
“Agreed. I am not an adventure, Grace! I’m not your escape from boredom! And the dragons are not playthings for your entertainment.”
“I never—”
“Sit your ass down. Shut the fuck up. And do as you’re told. We’re leaving.”
Head spinning. Heart pounding. My jaw dropped as he cursed bitterly, but stormed away as quickly as he’d turned on me. I soon heard the clink of the harness and the huff of the dragons and realized I was just standing there.
“I didn’t…” I swallowed because my voice shook. “I didn’t send you into danger. I told you I wouldn’t go back. I meant it. I would have left. You said you had to go—”
“Because other people’s lives are at stake!
” he whisper-screamed. “You high and mighty nobles with your bloodlines and your estates think the entire world is there for your wasting, to do with as you will. They aren’t pawns in your game, Grace, they are people!
And they’re in danger—and they’re my friends and my leaders and…
fuck, I don’t even know why I’m trying to explain this to you.
I hope Koa knocks some sense into you. You’ll never make it as a Flameborne if you won’t even warn your brothers about potential risks to help them remain safe on your behalf. God, the selfishness of you—”
“I am not selfish—” I insisted, frustrated when my voice broke. I sounded like a child. Was it any wonder he thought I was one?
“Stupid then?” he snapped back, turning back to the dragons. “Which is it, Grace? Do you want to put others in danger to save yourself, or are you just too much of an idiot to realize you’re doing it?”
I jerked and my breath rushed out of me.
But before I could say a word, he did something with the harness.
It jingled and slapped. Kham shuffled his feet, but Vane kept muttering under his breath, moving around the dragon, cursing and spitting, as my eyes blurred with tears and I swallowed hard to keep them back because I wasn’t going to give him a reason to call me a child again.
But then I caught the words he was muttering, and they weren’t simple insults.
“…return you to your kind and let them handle you. Like a child sent to their room. Maybe that would teach you—”
Panic shrieked in my head. I took off. Sprinting for the space between the trees, where the moonlight glowed. There was a road out there, I’d seen it when we flew in. I could get away. Koa could find me later when he wasn’t—
I didn’t even hear him approach. My foot caught on nothing while long, steel bars wrapped around my middle and I hit the ground with an “Oof!” but I was rolled before the impact shook me properly.
And though I spat and shrieked and kicked, twisting like a cat, steel manacles clamped around my wrist, weight pressed me into the dirt and dark, furious eyes glared down at me.
“I’m not going back! You can’t make me—I won’t do it! I’ll kill myself first! You’re wrong—I’d never put anyone in their hands. I didn’t know! But I am not going back to that… that prison! I’ll… I’ll—”
Vane straddled my hips and had my hands clamped to the earth up near my head. His shoulders heaved with panting breaths and he flinched when I said the word prison. Then went very still, staring at me.
“I didn’t say I would take you back,” he seethed, but his tone was reluctant. Quiet. Dark.
I froze. “You… you said you’d return me—”
He sighed and shook his head. “No, Grace. I was complaining. Trying to get through to you. Saying you’re lucky I didn’t. God, I wouldn’t! I know what these men are like. I wouldn’t put you in their hands. I was just angry. You didn’t warn me.”
I tensed, but he turned to look back at his dragon. He blew out a breath and shook his head, but when he looked at me again, his tone was less furious.
“I said you have to stop thinking about no one but yourself. Do you want to be Flameborne? Want to train to become a Furyknight?”
I swallowed, a tiny thread of hope twisting through my chest. “If Koa wants to fight, I’ll ride her,” I said quietly.
He laughed. “Koa is a redscale. Trust me, she wants to fight.”
“You know that from her color?”
Voski nodded grimly. “The red who doesn’t look for a fight hasn’t been born yet. The dragons all have different skills and talents just like we do, but trust me, she doesn’t want to sit at home and watch others leave for battle.”
I swallowed hard. “Then I’ll fight with her.”
He didn’t move.
I was suddenly deeply aware of his grip on my wrists, his thighs straddling me, pinning me. The crackle of something in his eyes—
Vane released my hands like they burned, shoved to his feet, and stalked back to the dragons, clawing a hand through his hair.
I sat up, then pushed to my feet, uncertain whether I should run or follow him.
“What else haven’t you told me?” he asked tightly as Kham appeared out of the dark to lower his head and blow breath on him.
“N-nothing.”
He huffed like he didn’t believe me, but scratched his dragon’s head.
“I’m telling the truth. I was betrothed by my parents—I didn’t even sign the contract. They did. I thought if I disappeared he’d just break the contract with them and then…” I trailed off, because I didn’t like to think about what might have happened after that.
Vane went still. “Will they be ruined?”
The question surprised me. Most commoners didn’t understand how the wealth of the nobility worked—how easily it could be increased—or removed—by their alliances, or lack thereof, with other highborn families.
“Eventually,” I said reluctantly. “But I hoped before then something might happen that could help them.” I sighed. “They’ll be shamed and… it won’t be good for them.”
“Are you sure?”
“Sure of what?”
He turned back to face me. “Sure you’re strong enough to carry that? Because I’m not taking the fall for you. And I won’t let anyone else do so, either. If I take you to Vosgaarde and it’s too hard and you give up… if you change your mind and blame me—”
“I would never do that.”
He shot me a look, then went back to the buckles on the harness. “You didn’t even tell me about the contract. If I hadn’t gone back—”
“I didn’t plan this!”
“You also didn’t warn me after it happened.” He locked eyes with me, a dark accusation in his. And deep suspicion.
I squirmed, and my chest pinched. A sharp, ringing pain like a tiny blade slid under my ribs. The anger that carried me on that sprint, drained out of my toes into the damp earth.
I shook my head, but my voice was hoarse and wouldn’t stop shaking. “Please, Vane,” I breathed. “Please, don’t make me go back there. Whatever it takes, whatever will convince you, I’ll do it. Just please… Don’t force me back there. Please.”
His shoulders hunched. But he didn’t respond.
~ VOSKI ~
I didn’t expect the vulnerability. I thought she’d get angry again. Get strong. But she wavered, and it was a gut-punch.
‘Do not use her fear to break her,’ Kham growled in my head.
I nodded. I needed to tell her I understood how careless nobles could be with the lives of others. That I’d never return her to a prison. But I struggled to breathe.
I knew how it felt to be trapped. Caged. And that quavering terror in her voice…?
I cleared my throat to stop my voice cracking. “Give me your word that if they ever come for you, you won’t name me as your captor,” I said flatly, though I already knew the answer.
“Of course I wouldn’t.”
I was skeptical. But in truth, I’d thrown my own self-discipline out the window, ripping into her like that.
Until we were in Vosgaarde and she was acknowledged, I was the closest thing she had to a superior officer.
I should have been calm. Shown her the error, and firmly impressed the gravity of the situation on her.
Instead I’d laid into her like she was a child.
‘You dishonor your rank and your mate,’ Kham sent sharply.
I hunched, wanting to reject the reprimand, but I knew he was right. About the rank, anyway. ‘She’s not my mate.’
Kham huffed, but I made myself face her and raked my hair back from my face.
“I shouldn’t have been so aggressive. I was angry.
You did the wrong thing. But I was wrong to attack you like that.
I understand,” I added reluctantly. “I’ve worked in the court and dealt with nobles a great deal.
I do understand the undercurrents of your world,” I said.
“I won’t take you back to them. You and I are flying to Vosgaarde.
I don’t yet know if Bren and Donavyn are safe—I pray they are.
But they aren’t here, and there’s only one way to find out where they ended up.
We’ll have to ride together. I don’t have another harness for Koa, and you can’t ride safely alone yet anyway.
So, I have a change of clothes for you—get rid of those, they stink.
There’s food and water in the bags, as well.
We can eat and drink when we’re flying.”
Her head came up and her eyes widened. “We’re flying? Now?”
I nodded. “There’s no choice. The Fyrehold court thinks you fled.
They haven’t connected that with me or Vosgaarde.
We need to keep it that way. We have to get you out of here and pray it will be as you said.
That he’ll break the contract with your parents and leave it at that.
It’s scandalous right now. But there’s nothing we can do. We need to ride.”
She took a tentative step closer, then another. “We’ll fly? You and me? Together?”
I nodded, but let my expression turn firm.
“For the rest of this trip, you don’t mount until I tell you, and you use my technique, even if it feels harder.
You listen to my instructions. We have days of travel ahead of us.
We might as well use it for training. But the important thing is that we get out of this kingdom while no one is looking for me—or connecting you with Vosgaarde. ”
She nodded quickly, then swallowed. “What about your brother?”
“He’ll follow in the next day or so. He’s going to make sure there’s no reports of my appearance, or us leaving together. And he’ll pull a few, final threads in case we can find out what happened to our friends.”
“Bren and Donavyn.”
I still hadn’t told her that I knew Bren had returned home alone, and on purpose. My suspicion wouldn’t allow it.
Kham growled. ‘She is Flameborne. She can be trusted with a simple truth that would allow her to sleep easier.’
I grunted, but didn’t answer.
Grace sighed. “I pray they’re safe.”
Her plaintive tone and slump to her shoulders seemed like a show, but I didn’t say so. I was too busy checking Kham’s harness and bolstering my own courage.
I had to prepare to fly. In just a few minutes we would leave, and I’d spend the next week with her in my arms. Nestled between my thighs.
I swallowed a groan of pain. This would be pure torment.
I should have known the moment I saw her sneaking through the forest. Trouble always started with women—especially women of high birth. Clearly, God was punishing me.
As I turned my back to give myself a few blessed minutes without the sight of her, I sighed.
If the Creator was displeased, I was more than willing to learn the lesson to make it stop.
Just please… make it stop.