Chapter Thirty-Five
Earthquake
Impossibly bright brown eyes capture mine as I stretch awake, and no amount of shying away from his gaze can keep me from mirroring the widening grin crossing Varic’s expression.
I let out a yawn and settle back down over his bare chest I’ve apparently been using as a pillow.
His stomach muscles clench everywhere I mindlessly trail my fingertips over his skin, squirming to escape the tickle my touch brings him.
Encouraging me to continue with his playful avoidance in the form of a groan rumbling through him, smiling wide as I follow when he twists, allowing a rare giggle to tumble from my lips.
Varic’s demeanor shifts when he tightens his arm around my back and stares down, with the only movement being the heaving of our chests as we savor this moment before we continue the grueling work of excavating all he has hidden underneath layers and layers of protection.
Something moves, pulling me from the dream, which is more memory than anything.
“I’m sorry, I tried not to wake you—” Varic begins, and I bolt upright with the chilled air assaulting my skin everywhere our bodies had been melded together.
I fold my legs beneath me and draw back to stare down in horror at Varic’s bare chest, swallowing when I meet his eyes, where a sentimental smile plays across his features, lying there with one arm crooked behind his head.
His smirk deepens at my dramatic reaction to realizing I must have sought him out in my sleep.
Lars stalks over to hand Varic a small black towel, and my brow furrows, tracing the way Varic’s muscles clench as he lifts his head to look down at the sheen he wipes from the center of his chest.
No. My eyes widen at what must have been my drool, while the red mark on his skin is proof of where my face rested against him.
I clap a hand over my mouth when the lightning-patterned scars over each of his hips catch the light.
New branches cover the old, and my heart sinks into my stomach.
I thought he had stopped. I thought we had come up with enough ways for him to never need to hurt himself like this again.
“Varic,” I say, looking at him with a pained expression I have no hope of hiding.
I reach for him without thinking, then halt, heart slamming against my ribs to the beat of every scream I need to let out for all the pain this Empire brings us.
“What is it?” he asks, with so much concern my throat tightens. “Did I hurt you?”
He reaches for me, and I fall to the side, just out of his reach as his face mirrors the pain in my own.
“I thought you weren’t going to do that anymore,” I say, gesturing to his side where the tips of the lightning streaks climb up from beneath his waistband.
His eyes follow my line of sight as he deflates, shoulders dropping along with his face.
“Turns out I’m not as capable of controlling my magic as we once believed me to be.”
“Don’t do that,” I admonish. “Don’t blame yourself for what you are made to endure. If you’re hurting yourself like this, it’s to ensure everyone else’s safety. This isn’t something you would seek out on your own.”
He shakes his head, and there’s no point in arguing. He won’t listen to me, anyway.
“I’m sorry I drooled all over your chest,” I say, acting as a distraction.
“I don’t mind. You can drool on my chest every night if it means you sleep curled up next to me like that.”
My jaw drops as I gape back at him, speechless. I need him to be less sweet. Comments like this make everything harder—complicating an already fraught situation.
“You were asleep. You couldn’t help—” he says, misunderstanding.
“I couldn’t help but crawl over and use your chest as a pillow?”
His laughter is light and airy, squeezing my heart with the need to hear it more often. “Something like that.”
He confirms my need, so desperate for him I seek him in my sleep. Yet in a few hours, we will return to the place where we must hide our feelings much better than this, so she takes over—the Imperial Grand Witch.
“No, Varic. It was you who needed connection. This playful act of yours isn’t helping when being near you is nothing but suffering.”
His face falls, eyes darting as they trace my expression, gauging my level of sincerity, which I cannot hide from him. Not even when I’m channeling her. Making this impossible, as I would need to believe my words in order to have any chance of convincing him.
“What I need is your absence, Varic,” I choke out as he leans over, dropping his face so close the ends of his hair brush my cheek.
“You don’t mean it,” he says, and I open my mouth to protest, but he cuts me off with more authority in his voice when he adds, “Or has that monster truly made you believe this lie? That you require nothing and no one? That you are somehow unlike any other witch in existence, relying solely on his every command for subsistence?”
I suck in a sharp breath, heart leaping into my throat.
“He has isolated you so intensely to gain ultimate control over you. But he has made a grave mistake in appointing me over your protection if he means to try to control you further. Because he cannot isolate you from us. You are not alone, Tasch. Not if you let us in.”
My chest rises and falls dramatically, waiting for him to continue while the rest of my Guards shift in place, though not uncomfortably, more in solidarity, angling themselves in a way to show how much they agree with everything Varic is saying.
“You have admitted to healing me through connection, while we all know it would not have worked had it been one-sided.” His hand seeks me across the covers, the black ink of our sigil rippling as his fingers splay the closer they come to mine.
“You had to feel our connection—you had to need it to some extent—or it wouldn’t have helped either of us.
It had to be real, or it wouldn’t have worked, Tasch.
” His voice breaks, and my throat constricts as the truth in his statement tries to wriggle its way past my defenses.
Even if it is a lie that I need nothing and no one, it’s not something I can refute. It’s the constraints I am forced to live within which make it true.
“At least this explains why you have been avoiding me. He has made you believe that being close to me would somehow hurt you worse than he has.”
“No,” I say, without knowing exactly what I mean by it, distracted by the warmth of his fingers threading with my frigid ones.
“Tasch, please,” Varic rasps, and I slowly pry my gaze away from the space where our hands mimic that of a cherished memory—one I recount with what might be considered alarming frequency.
That moment after he sent me a wave of all he had been holding in, when I sought him, and he me, and we threaded our fingers together just like this.
“We’ve had this strange connection from the first day we met.
You can try to deny it, but it doesn’t make it any less real. Not to you, and not to me.”
The fire behind his irises burns too brightly, overwhelming in its intensity.
“If it’s too hard to acknowledge—if he has worn you down until it is too painful for you to recognize it—I can understand.
But I won’t accept you trying to convince me that you don’t need me.
Because I know better.” A flash of resolve passes across his features as he snatches up my hand to press it to his bare chest.
I suck in a breath from the warmth of him, and I don’t try to fight it; instead, I press in.
I give him the pressure I know he needs from me after so much uncertainty, unable to hide my care for him when it comes to this raw physicality.
His heart slams against his breastbone, throbbing frenetically due to his concern for me and my well-being.
“And there is nothing you can do to push me away.”
A scoff sounds from me, and I pin him with her expression. “Of course not,” she says, dryly. “You’ve taken a vow to stand by my side for as long as we are burdened with living.”
“You’re right. I have.” His voice exudes confidence.
“And he has made you ignore your most basic needs to the point you can no longer recognize when you require rest and reprieve, care and consideration. And it must be difficult to have those of us who know what you need because we care enough to nurse you back to health while refusing to allow you to cave in on yourself.”
He tips his chin as shivers overtake my body. “I will prove that the last thing you need is to be even more detached from me than he has forced you to be.”
“But I need to be able to ward,” I let slip just under my breath. “I cannot restrain him without it.”
“I cannot pretend to understand how you have been using force magic without detection for as long as you have.” He presses his hand over my own.
“However, we cannot risk you doing so any further—especially with it working differently than you’re used to in my presence.
We cannot risk the potential consequences of experimenting with your abilities.
Not in your current state, nor with the way the Emperor is behaving. ”
My face falls, and he gently braces my chin with his free hand, encouraging me to look up at him.
“All is not lost,” he assures me. “You have us, and we are going to help you keep him in line until we can execute a plan of extraction.”
“You don’t understand, Varic—"
“No amount of my understanding is going to remove the pressure you feel to protect the citizens.” His words sink in, heavy and leaden, as a metallic taste spreads over my tongue with the fear of what all of this means for the days ahead of us.
“This is something which requires action to be perceived. We have to show you how we mean to support you until we can safely take you somewhere to recover.” His heart rate slows, though it still thrums with relative intensity against my palm, and I derive comfort from it being less than when he first placed my hand over his chest.
Maintaining eye contact, he gently returns my palm to the bed, sparing me a soft smile as he retracts his hand from my chin to turn and lower his legs over the side of the bed.
Then my eyes widen, and my jaw drops as I gawk at the new ink adorning his shoulders, a toxic sort of envy filling my abdomen.
The amount of work he’s had done since I last saw him shirtless means someone spent a lot of time bent over his body. Touching him.
The new art depicts two Dragons facing each other from opposite shoulder blades, wearing playful expressions as they stare back with their tails entwined in the center of his spine.
A mix of symbols I neither recognize nor understand are scattered around the Dragons, with eight thick lines bisected in the center spanning the top of his broad shoulders.
Stomach churning, fingers aching with the nonsensical need to claw the memory from his skin of the sorcerer who had the honor of touching him so intimately—bracing his back with one hand while the other permanently inked these marks beneath his skin—when I want to be the only thing permanently etched in him.
He catches me looking—holding my gaze far longer than he should—and sparks flicker within my limbs.
“No need to be embarrassed, Tasch. You always did prefer my chest to any pillow.”
My mouth clamps shut at his attempt to lift the mood from such an intense topic. I turn and glance at each of my Guards, who all fail at pretending not to be paying close attention to our exchange.
“What’s there to be embarrassed about when you say his name in your sleep most nights, anyway,” Malin says, and my cheeks flame, imagining just how satisfied Varic’s expression would be were I to give in to the urge to look.
“Malin,” Lars says, eyes flaring.
“What?” Malin gestures to the sorcerer I apparently name when my subconscious is in control of my actions. “It’s the truth.”
Lars and I let out a sigh as Varic rises from the bed, leaving me to contend with the warring urges to throttle them all or to pull Varic beneath me, not caring what anyone thinks.
“Fray, you’re next,” Varic commands.
Deep, dark crescents mark the thin skin beneath Fray’s eyes. Flying me here with the extreme level of fear we experienced would be too much for anyone. Gratitude unfurls in my chest knowing they have all agreed to rest as I pat the bed in invitation.
“Don’t worry. I’ll understand if you don’t feel the same need to use me as a pillow, especially since we spent the entire journey here holding each other so tightly,” Fray says, staring pointedly at Varic, whose ears burn brighter as he scoffs.
All I can do is shake my head now that Fray slowly lowers himself to sit on the mattress.
Groans leave him and the bed frame once he leans over to untie the laces on his boots and unceremoniously drops each to the floor.
I pivot around to lean back on the actual pillow while he settles under the covers with his eyes falling closed.
“You hate being touched, Fray,” Cirrin says. “You’re just riling Varic up when we need him at his best for Tasch’s safety.” Fray’s shoulders lift, noncommittally.
Without much thought, I reach out with my magic and find he is mostly fatigued and in need of healing, yet the nervous energy bounding through him is one with which I am especially practiced.
I siphon his worries to meld with my own, then smile once his breathing evens out.
Varic trades places with Cirrin to stand directly next to my side of the bed as his eyes dart from me to Fray and back.
“You just used your magic to help him, didn’t you?” he asks, and I let out a big yawn.
“Tasch,” he tries again, and my chest constricts.
He knows exactly what I did, and I don’t need his reminders to prioritize my health or to conserve my energy, yet my heart throbs painfully in my chest because ignoring his attempt at caregiving hurts, even when it’s for the best.
I startle when the warmth of his fingertips finds the inside of my wrist, which he circles within his palm before telling me, “Just showing you I mean to keep my promise.” Bits and pieces of my worries leave me to remain with him as he uses his influence.
And I don’t dare fight it, since this contact alone is settling my nerves more than all of Cirrin’s magic.