17. Ava #2
She dared to meet Brynja’s glare, but she wasn’t just trying to mollify her. She was thinking of Talos and knew all too well that there were horrible males in Gelaira as much as there were anywhere else in Rhuin.
“Surely they aren’t all like Talos,” Jerrid muttered.
How had he known that was what she was thinking?
“If they risked running away, I wouldn’t bet on that,” Ava shot back at him, not entirely sure why she was fighting Brynja’s battle for her.
Only…someone had to fight for these girls.
Because nobody besides Brynja had stepped up to do the job. The face of one of the palace maids swam into her mind. Dagmar, the freckle-faced redhead with a temper to match. She’d come from Haldor to become a peaceweaver, and her potential husband had treated her horribly.
How many others were out there like Dagmar, and Brynja, and little Ylsi with her ponytails? Girls far too young to be sold into slavery.
That’s what it was.
Slavery.
Wrapped in a guise of peace.
“We can’t ask them to go back, Jerrid. You can’t send them away unless you have some place to send them. A safe haven where they can go.”
His eyes rolled closed, his chest rising and falling beneath their still clasped hands. “I fear there is no such place in Rhuin.”
Silence coiled around the three of them as Brynja and Ava exchanged long, tired looks. Because he was right. There were no guarantees. There was no safe place for any of them. Trouble had a way of finding folks.
“We can’t run from this,” Brynja said, as if reading her thoughts, feeling her hopelessness. “We don’t have anywhere to run to. Our only chance is to fight this thing and win. To protect our home. This is our home, dragon shifter, and we won’t abandon it.”
Ava’s blood cooled a little at her adamant decision, but she was proud of her too. Proud of her for fighting for her makeshift family. For these girls who weren’t her responsibility and yet had somehow become just that.
“I want to help,” Ava blurted.
“How?” Jerrid asked gruffly, almost coldly. “How do you intend to help, Ava? You’re just going to get yourself killed.”
Heat flared in her belly, and she yanked her hand out from beneath his, leaning back on her heels. “You don’t know what I’m capable of.”
He held her gaze, mouth tight at the edges. “Neither do you. You’re not equipped for this. You’re just making things worse. You need to go.”
Tears pricked behind her eyes, but also something else… It took her several heavy breaths before she could put a name to the emotion.
Rage.
She was angry—so very angry with him right now. Angry that he had made her feel things for him, stupid and ridiculous things, only to cast her away and tell her she was worthless. That she meant nothing to him.
For one minute, one beautiful minute, she had thought maybe she wouldn’t be alone for the rest of her life. That maybe the cards had something else in store for her, something better than what she’d always known.
That she might be more than what she had always been. Something better.
And yet here she was, in worse shape than she had ever been. It would have been better if she’d never met him, because hope was too painful, too unkind, too unfair.
And she hated him for that. For making her feel more worthless than she had felt before. He was the one making things worse, not her. Him and his flame-eaten dragon…
And she was not referring to the one sleeping peacefully in the camp, recovering from her injuries earned on the field of battle.
She threw her head back, hot words flying to her tongue, but only one slipped out. “No.”
Jerrid arched an eyebrow.
“I’m not leaving. I don’t care if I do get myself killed. At least I will have died trying to do something good, something that will have mattered, even if it only matters to the girls living in this camp—”
“You’re a fool.”
His words hit like a slap across the face, and it made her want to physically slap him in return.
“At least I’ll be a fool fighting for someone besides himself.”
His eyes narrowed as he pushed himself slowly up on one elbow to get a better look at her. “What do you mean by that?”
Brynja rose and shuffled backward, as if to say she wanted no part of this argument, this fight, this…whatever it was.
“I mean exactly what I said,” Ava fired back, her fingers clenched tightly against her thighs. “That you’re the one being selfish and only thinking of himself. You and Dragon.”
His nostrils flared, a light sparking in his eyes.
“Neither of you cares about anyone else,” she pressed. “He just cares about his stomach. And you just care about keeping him locked up and sticking to this twisted form of duty you’ve assigned to yourself. I didn’t ask you to be responsible for me. And…and…and I relieve you of command over me!”
“You…relieve me of command?” he echoed, one brow arching imperiously. “You were never the one who gave orders. You can’t relieve me of command when you aren’t in possession of it either.”
More fire raged through her veins. “Well, you aren’t in a position to command me either. So, we’re up against a wall, then, aren’t we?”
“It would,” he said, his tone edged and dangerous, “appear so.”
It flickered into the back of her mind that he wasn’t acting like himself—he was acting more like Dragon, more obstinate than normal even for him—but then she wasn’t acting like herself either.
And she liked it.
She liked speaking her mind and letting him hear exactly what she thought of him.
“While we’re on the subject,” she continued, tossing her head back, “I think Brynja is right about you and Dragon. You’re the one who is a fool for trying to ignore him. You need to embrace who you are and work with yourself, not against yourself.”
He snorted as he eased into a sitting position. “What? Are you suddenly an expert on dragon shifting?”
“No, I’m an expert on not being stupid.”
“That’s rich coming from you.”
That heat in her veins was fanning into an inferno. How was her body so hot without her bursting into flames? Genuine flickering flames?
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean,” he said in a tone that was far too mocking, “the only logical thing for you to do is protect yourself and get out of here. Hanging around pretending you’re fighting some noble cause to help humanity is a farce.
You don’t really care about these girls.
You are trying to make yourself feel better. ”
“You can’t know that. You don’t know how I really feel,” she spluttered, jabbing a finger into his chest. “You may not care about fighting causes to make people’s lives better, but I do. I’ve always cared. I’m a healer, and that’s what healers do—”
He snorted, grabbing her hand and holding it tightly to keep her from continually jabbing her finger into his collarbone. She wrestled to free herself, so angry she could…she could—
He caught her chin with his free hand and yanked her toward him, his head lowering as he pressed his mouth to hers.
She could do that. Exactly that.
His lips were firm and warm against hers, but infinitely gentle. And yet there was a hardness and desperation behind them, something…something that wasn’t him. Something that was hot and uncontrolled.
Something that could set fire to the world and burn it down. Something that made her want to burn the world down, to burn it to ashes, just to make it all stop…
The heat built inside her as Jerrid deepened the kiss, his hand shifting to cup the back of her head. She didn’t pull away because she wanted this. She wanted to catch fire and burn. She wanted Jerrid to burn with her.
She wanted the world to burn.
As her hands moved to rest on Jerrid’s tense shoulders, the first flicker of reason teased the back of her mind. She wanted to ignore it, to shove it away and live in this moment.
This here and now, where she and Jerrid burned beneath the trees.
But something wasn’t right, and the sensible part of her, the part that wasn’t being stupid, knew it. Knew that this wasn’t right. Knew that something was wrong. It didn’t feel wrong, not the way Jerrid’s mouth moved over hers as if he were memorizing the feel of her. Memorizing her herself.
But feelings sometimes lied.
The heat continued to build in her chest, the pressure tightening in her lungs, in her head…
Her eyes popped open as flames exploded from her fingertips. Moments later, something pressed into her mind, into her thoughts, intrusive and yet somehow familiar.
Flames below, what was happening? What was in her head—
Hello, Meat Pasty.