Chapter 21 #3
My heart exploded as fast as the beat of dragonfly wings as the insect hovered over the curled leaf of a lily pad.
I didn’t hear what surrounded me…
Sage’s worried bark…
Peals of laughter…
The rattle and squeak of bike chains and wheels coasting on grass…
“Shit…” And another soft curse…
My awareness blackened at the fringes as if a raging tempest had erupted from nowhere. All that hollowed out my ears were my rapid, hitched gasps. Terror locked every inch of my trembling body rigid. My thoughts turned in on themselves as a wave of dizziness threw my equilibrium off balance.
Danne brought with him a flash flood of memories. I was no longer standing in Tabitha’s garden. I was somewhere else, closed in with rich walnut finishes and the scent of expensive leather. Somewhere that rocked and swayed. Greasy sensations I couldn’t scrape from my skin and mind.
A calm voice, sounding as if it came from a distance. “He’s not here. He can’t hurt you.”
Fingernails gouging flesh. A spike of pain across my cheek. Heinous laughter and spitting curses…
“You’re safe, Nelle. You’re standing in my mother’s garden, her lawns.”
I couldn’t breathe. Adrenaline injected my heart like nitrous gas, forcing it into fight or flight. Yet there was a third choice—freeze. I was frozen and trapped inside my head. And Danne was there, and I couldn’t get him out. I couldn’t find a way free from the limousine.
“Nelle, take a breath…”
I scrambled to latch onto the voice, the soothing timbre, and followed the thread, inching my way back to awareness, breath by breath.
Slowly, so slowly, like color spreading across a Polaroid, sparking life into a black-and-white photograph, vivid bright colors stained my surroundings.
Sound returned. Every day, normal sounds of humming insects and birds flying overhead.
A soft breeze rustling leaves. Low conversation and children’s joyful laughter.
Graysen stood in front of me, eyes wide and flickering with worry.
And my hand was pressed across his heart, the pulse a gentle rhythm against my palm.
This time his heartbeat urged mine to follow its pattern.
While a large warm hand covered my own, his other hand cupped my cheek, and my fingers gripped his wrist like I was drowning and I’d grabbed hold of him to save me.
“Take another breath—slow and steady.”
I followed his instructions. Took a breath, then another, until the shaking in my limbs subsided, the panic seeped away, and my heartbeat matched his.
I was in Tabitha’s garden.
Danne wasn’t here.
He could never hurt me again.
My mouth was dry as paper when I croaked, “That’s not how twenty questions works. You need to ask me yes and no questions.”
Something like relief relaxed his features. His thumb gently brushed across my cheekbone slick with sweat. “We don’t have to do this.”
I wet my lips with the tip of my tongue. “No. There’s a lot I want to ask.”
But even though I wished to stay out here for a bit longer, to haunt the Heart of the Keep with its knowledge, most of me wanted to retreat to a place I knew well, where I knew where my exits were, a place I could recenter myself. I loathed myself for asking. “I want to go back to the tower.”
He nodded. Dappled light danced across his forehead from the sunbeams poking through the leafy embrace of the willow we were tucked away beneath.
I let go of his wrist, and he withdrew his hands. But I lingered, keeping my fingers spread across the curve of his chest, the soft t-shirt and warmth from his body heating my palm. I opened my mouth to thank him, but I couldn’t push out what I wanted to say.
His blacks warily scanned my grays.
I gently squeezed my fingertips across his heart, speaking to him in the only way I could at that moment. His gaze softened as one side of his mouth curved up.
Briefly closing my eyes, I took my hand away and flexed the crackling energy from my skin.
Drawing in a deep breath, I straightened my spine and nodded to him to lead the way back to the tower.
Right as I stepped forward, the soft sole of my foot scuffing through lush grass, he stopped me.
His rough-padded fingers latched onto my upper arm.
I stilled, scanning his face, wondering what he wanted to say.
He chewed on his bottom lip, the fine skin around his eyes feathering as his gaze narrowed in thought, as if he needed to choose his words carefully.
“If you… If you ever need to talk about it…”
My gaze hardened. I didn’t want to talk about it.
He spoke softly, but there was steel beneath his tone. “You’re strong and brave…”
And going to die. So what was the point?
I cut him off with a wave of my hand, then pushed into motion. He reluctantly let go, his long-legged stride carrying him past as he led me back into the copse of trees a different way from the way we’d come. Sage trotted beside me, kicking up pebbles.
We walked along a longer trail that cut through the trees and their moist, earthy air.
Sage nudged my thigh every so often with his muzzle.
Graysen pointed out things his mother had planted, a seating arrangement, and a few magical spots for children.
But I’d tuned him out, uncomfortable in my own skin, in the way my dress stuck to my sweat-clammy body and chafed.
My senses were on high alert. I suppose what happened back there in Tabitha’s garden was always going to happen.
I’d stupidly expected too much of myself to believe I’d walk away unscathed.
After a while, I began to hear Graysen and became distracted by his gentle probing, breathing easier, mildly intrigued with all the special places Tabitha had created within her gardens, asking a few half-hearted questions and trading knowledge of plants I knew.
It wasn’t until we’d made our way back through the gateway and across the cobblestoned inner courtyard to the graceful arched entrance of the tower that I figured out what he’d done.
He’d purposely taken me on a longer route to give me time to piece myself back together the best I could.
I also didn’t realize how closely I’d stuck beside him until we’d finished climbing the spiral staircase and my arm brushed up against his.
Both of us glanced at one another at the same time. Me in surprise, and him not so much.
After we’d left the gardens and traipsed back through the Keep, he’d reverted to his cold indifference, but I’d felt his gaze on me often, a worried stroke of concern sliding across my profile.
As I stared at him, there were so many emotions tumbling in his dark eyes.
Worry. Rage. And guilt too. It weighed heavier than anything else in his gaze.
He didn’t know how to fix this. Fix me.
What Danne had tried to do to me hadn’t been his fault. It wasn’t my fault either.
“You’re right,” I said. “I am strong. I am brave. I am fire and brimstone, and I could burn the world down over a slight.” My words floated through the shadowed stairwell, but my voice was threaded thinly.
I didn’t realize I’d been crying either until salty tears ran over the curve of my top lip and slipped across my tongue.
His hand rose tentatively and slowly so as not to scare me. I stared at him wide-eyed, my vision swimming, as he gently caught a tear before it fell and tenderly wiped the others away, one at a time. “Brave, sweet liar,” he whispered.
“This thing… I’ll survive it, and I’ll survive you too.”
He tipped his chin up, respect sharpening his eyes. “You do that.”
We continued to stare at one another, one breath, one heartbeat too long.
I didn’t know what made me do it. Perhaps I simply needed to prove to myself that I could do it. That I could touch him. A small part of me was aware of what I had to do to free myself—tame him—and this was simply my way of testing myself.
Stretching up on tiptoe, I reached out to cup his cheek. Warmth and the dusting of stubble tickled my soft palm. Silky, disheveled hair was featherlight against the back of my fingers.
He went deathly still.
I heard the sharp intake of breath.
Saw the way his lashes flared wide.
He didn’t blink. He stayed exactly where he remained, staring down at me, perhaps not daring to break this connection either.
His skin was warm beneath my thumb as I swept it across the broad plane of his cheekbone, watching the faint freckles disappear and reappear under my moving thumb.
Curled my fingers and brushed the backs of them along his jawline.
Traced a single fingertip over his full bottom lip, the pulse of his breath whispering against my sensitive flesh. The helpless groan he tried to stifle.
He didn’t move. He didn’t press back into my touch. He just let me quietly explore him.
I enjoyed the way his throat bobbed as he swallowed thickly. The hollow at the base of his throat too, when I dipped a fingertip into its indentation and then slid along the wyrmfire ink before meeting the ribbed neckline of his t-shirt.
I wondered what it would have been like if I had entered the fortress under completely different circumstances. If indeed there were no Alverac or machinations, and I was simply his bride.
How different our lives could have been if this tragedy hadn’t happened between our families. If I wasn’t a Wychthorn and he wasn’t a Crowther. If I wasn’t a wyrm and he a tamer.
Would we have met in a normal way, like a boy and girl did? Maybe at one of the House Gatherings. Shy smiles and interested glances.
Would we have even been attracted to one another without the chemicals of wyrm and tamer influencing each other?
Would my parents have even entertained the idea of my marrying a Crowther?
This Crowther, with his arrogant swagger and tattoos and filthy mouth.
If I had fallen in love with him.
For a moment, I truly felt sorry for him.
I’d spoken honestly earlier. I was going to survive. I was going to survive him too. But he wasn’t going to survive me. It was a surety that hummed in the depths of my bones.
I drew a deep breath, closed my eyes, and let the moment be.
Rolling back onto the flats of my feet, I stepped closer and pressed against him, his hard body tense beneath my soft curves.
A sense of safety draped over me the instant I spread my hands across the swell of his pecs and turned my face into his chest. The smell of cedar smothered me like a cloak, and I gulped down great greedy inhales of woodsy scent, not caring whatsoever that it was unique to Graysen, that it was part of what we were to one another.
Right this moment I needed to feel at ease, and his scent and presence did that.
I didn’t want to over-analyze it. I simply wanted to steal some of his strength.
He hesitated.
Not because he didn’t wish to hold me. I could feel the need coiled tightly within him. But because he wasn’t sure if I’d accept him.
Soft fabric whispered against my lips as I breathed the word, please, while I drifted my hands down his sides to round his back to hug him.
His indecision was almost tangible in the air before he finally wound his arms around my body to hold me, letting me melt against him, nuzzle his chest and breathe him in. How long we stayed like that, clinging to one another, I didn’t know or care.
When I finally half-pushed myself away, the light slipping through the narrow arrow slits was a deeper shade of gold.
His hand had found its place beneath my heavy braid at the nape of my neck, his other arm wrapped around my back, fingers spread across the dip in my spine.
I blinked up at him, and his gaze silently asked if I was okay as he tucked a stray strand of hair behind my ear.
I scrunched my nose in reply, smiling a small smile, but genuine.
There would always be a shadow of darkness and moments when I wouldn’t be okay, but right now I was ready for what was to come. Talking about Silas Boon and taming Graysen Crowther.