Chapter 15 #3
He hadn’t known what he was doing either. He’d lost himself somewhere along the path of dark machinations his family had planned for me. And he’d defied them all by keeping me here…locked away…
Safe.
Had he locked me up here to keep me safe from his family, in his dark, twisted way, thinking that he was doing some grand gesture?
Penn placed the book down on the table beside the couch, slipped her legs from beneath her, and bent down to draw her shoes closer.
Sliding her feet into them, she rose and smoothed her skirt, adjusting her sleeve cuffs before addressing me once more.
“I’m quiet, one of the shadows. I watch.
I hear things.” She angled her chin toward Graysen.
“The Crowthers are good at hiding what’s at the core of them, some of them better than others.
That mask Graysen wears outside his family, he wears with his family as well.
But here, in the past few days with you,” she shook her head with a knowing smile, “not so much.”
Ducking my head, my long locks fell like a curtain in front of my face as I tied and untied the belt around my waist. I didn’t want to glance to where Graysen lay sprawled on the bed. I knew she was telling me the truth.
And shamefully, I wished I’d been a little kinder to him for the last few days.
Penn walked past me, her footsteps silent, leaving a faint smell of jasmine as she headed toward the entranceway. I twisted around as she opened the door. She turned back with a polite dip of the head. “Goodnight.”
I gaped, astounded she was going to leave me here with Graysen, alone. He was vulnerable. I moved closer to her, pointing to him over my shoulder. “I could do anything to him.”
Suffocate him with a pillow.
“You’re no killer,” she replied.
I rolled my eyes, popping my fists on my hips. “How in hells would you know that?”
Her fingers curled tighter about the metal door handle. Dark eyelashes fluttered around a haunted gaze. “Because I lived with one once.”
I blinked.
Here or elsewhere?
Had she lived with one in the life of mortals before she’d entered ours? And I wondered how she had found herself to be here in the first place, and why the Crowthers had taken her in.
Before I could open my mouth to ask, the door shut with a soft snick.
I stood staring at the door, bewildered, my mind swimming with so many questions regarding the mortal woman who served the Crowthers.
Deep in thought, I slowly turned around and found Graysen had shifted his position to face me once more.
I glared at him, but really, childishly, I was annoyed at myself, not him.
I should really suffocate him with a pillow.
Rubbing my forehead, I heaved a sigh, and my shoulders slumped. As much as I wanted to prove Penn wrong, she was right, I wasn’t a cold-blooded killer. And I wasn’t sure now. Practically speaking, if I took Graysen’s life, it might very well mean that I’d trapped myself in this tower forever.
I headed back to the kitchen and popped the box of crackers away, filled a glass of water and quenched my thirst.
It was the movement I heard first before I mentally registered that Graysen had shifted in his sleep. Peering over my shoulder, I discovered he’d turned toward me.
Curious, I drew closer with hesitant steps and angled myself to watch him through the curves of the bedposts.
I drifted slowly from one side of the bed to the other.
Graysen’s head shifted, upper body following as he rolled over to face me, and then slowly adjusted back the other way, unconsciously seeking me out as I reversed my path.
Wyrm and Tamer.
This strange connection we had with one another, always had with one another since we’d met as children. Always knowing where the other stood, even without looking.
I pivoted and headed to my bedroom.
It was a low growl—a deeply wounded sound.
I froze.
The fine hair on the back of my neck rose.
It hadn’t been Sage.
My wraith-wolf stared at Graysen’s slumbering form. I heard it then, the whispering. Low, so low I couldn’t make it out.
My heart thumped in my chest as I slowly turned around. I moved to the edge of the bed, watching Graysen’s eyes rapidly move beneath his eyelids and his lips murmur. Sweat beaded on his skin, and his body twitched as he talked in his sleep.
I leaned closer to hear. My dangling hair brushed over his arm, and I watched his flesh prickle and a shiver ripple through the taut, veiny muscles.
He spoke again.
At first, I thought it was my name he mumbled.
I jerked straight. My spine ramrod. I drew back, one step…one more…then another.
It wasn’t my name.
He was trapped in a nightmare, calling out for his mother.
He’d been there when the Horned Gods had come for Tabitha.
And Graysen, I imagined, would be standing in front of her and his baby sister, only thirteen years old and wielding a sword to defend those he loved.
And he’d failed.
I had vague memories of him when I was younger.
Tall and lanky, his hair just as messy as it was now, but longer.
He’d watched me as I’d watched him, but neither of us had desired to speak.
He’d been a strange presence in my life…
but now I knew, as he had said in the aviary, that he’d kept watch over me, keeping my secret safe.
Something he’d known from the moment we first met as children.
I didn’t want to think about Tabitha Crowther.
I didn’t want to think about what I would have done in Graysen’s position. What I would do to save my own mother.
That if there was a choice, and everything was reversed between us, would I give him up for my mother? Would it be me sending him to the Witches Ball?
And the terrible, awful truth was cruel and agonizing, like a splinter of glass slicing through flesh. Because I thought I would.
Graysen’s eyes fluttered open slightly, glazed and still caught within the dark, torturous dreamworld. He stretched his hand over the mattress, once again reaching for mine. And I think he murmured, “Please…”
I didn’t hesitate. I kneeled and leaned over the mattress.
My palm slid along the soft blanket and reached for him.
As the side of my hand brushed along his, a whispering touch that coursed through my nerves like a bolt of electricity to stutter my heart.
I slid my little finger around his, tightening our grip, and though I closed my eyes, I heard him expel a weary sigh, his heartbeat settling to match mine as he fell into a calmer sleep.
I sat in the shifting shadows of the bedroom with a man who had made an impossible choice. And I think some small part of me now understood that.
I hadn’t forgiven him, but I finally understood.
I drifted off with our fingers entwined, and somewhere in my dream world, there was a faint awareness of weightlessness and warmth and strength banded about my body.
When I awoke, it was in comfort and soft, cozy sheets.
Sitting up, I found myself back in my bed, basking in glorious sunbeams as the mid-morning sun poured through the window he’d carved for me in my bedroom.