Chapter Nine
THEA
A solid wall of heat engulfed her. Tremors wracked Thea’s body, but someone held her tightly, wrapping her in warmth, and the comforting scent of rosewood and leather.
Wilder.
She took a trembling breath, her whole body aching. What happened? she wondered sluggishly. How did I end up here? She remembered walking, listening to Hawthorne explain about the shadow wraiths, about his mentor, but…
She was almost naked . He was almost naked.
‘Thea?’ he murmured against her bare skin, his grip tightening ever so slightly.
She was still shaking, her mind foggy with what she now realised was delirium, fever. Her breaths became short, shallow gasps, each one burning her lungs.
‘You’re alright,’ the warrior told her, the rich sound of his voice vibrating against her back. ‘I’ve got you.’
Thea couldn’t open her eyes, but the colours behind her lids were vivid as they took the shape of memories: finding Malik’s dagger on the Mourner’s Trail, spying on the Warswords atop the cliffs, Wilder twirling her dagger between his fingers.
‘Looking for this?’
Each memory barrelled into her with an intensity to match the fever that had her in its grasp.
Kissing Wilder on the doorstep of his cabin, the kiss that had obliterated every other experience before it.
That first time in the Bloodwoods, where she’d gripped the arrow as he drove into her.
Carving out the reaper’s heart after the initiation test. Training with him in the arena, his hands guiding hers.
Those same hands strapping on her armour.
Every kiss, every intimate moment swam in Thea’s spotted vision.
Because I fucking love you.
This thing between us is endless.
Every part of me belongs to you.
A sob shuddered through Thea, at the pain, at the fever, at everything. ‘Was any of it real?’ she croaked, her voice raw and trembling. ‘Did any of it mean anything?’
Her shivering eased as those powerful arms tensed around her. ‘How do you think you survived that reaper attack in the Bloodwoods?’
Thea opened her mouth, but the words wouldn’t come, a fresh wave of tremors taking her.
‘Aveum springwater can only do so much on its own,’ the melodic voice replied, sounding suddenly distant.
She remembered the sweet trickle of water, crisp and fresh on her parched tongue, how her whole body had tingled as its magical properties surged through her.
She remembered watching in awe as the deepest of her wounds knitted together, leaving only faint pink scars behind.
As the network of black veins across her skin retreated, disappearing entirely within mere moments.
‘But when it’s used on someone you love?’ he said. ‘There is nothing more powerful.’
Thea clung to those words with all her remaining strength, but it wasn’t enough. The visions before her ceased, and she slipped beneath the veil of consciousness.
Thea stirred, nestling into the delicious heat that pressed against her front. Warm, comforting and solid, a heartbeat drumming steadily against her own, the gentle pressure of a broad palm across her bare back.
She inhaled deeply, her breathing free of tremors, free to lose herself in the familiarity of his smell. She could almost taste him.
Him.
Thea’s eyes flew open, meeting a bare, tattooed chest.
She was naked but for her undergarments, curled up against an equally near-naked Wilder Hawthorne.
They lay on their sides, atop a pile of clothes, beneath his cloak, with Thea tucked under the warrior’s bearded chin. One of his muscular legs was draped over her lower half, trapping the warmth around her, the weight of it pressing her to his —
Desire pulsed between her thighs, and Thea fought the urge to move beneath him, so that she might…
What was she thinking? Was a muscled body and a warm embrace all it took for her to forget why she was here in the first place?
Hawthorne stirred, more of his nakedness brushing against her.
Thea stiffened in his arms.
‘It seems we’ve come full circle, Princess…’ His voice was thick with sleep.
He was right. They had been here before, and yet they had not. Not like this, not with him as her enemy.
She scrambled away from him, scanning the floor for her clothes in the light of the dying fire. They were spread out on the opposite side, and she snatched them up, the fabric cool but dry on her warm skin.
Hawthorne rose onto his elbows and blinked sleepily, the cloak dangerously low around his hips. ‘Are you alright?’
Thea laced her shirt with more vigour than she intended. ‘We need to get moving.’
Realisation dawned on the warrior’s face. ‘You went into shock,’ he said. ‘From exposure to the cold. I wasn’t trying to take advantage of you. I hope you know that.’
Thea couldn’t bring herself to look at him. Regardless of what she believed and didn’t believe about the fallen Warsword, she knew in her bones that he would never do that.
‘We need to move,’ she said again.
No matter how hard Thea tried, she couldn’t reconcile the two men she had known. The fierce, hardened warrior who had betrayed his guild, his people, and the man who had told her he was hers, who had fought at her side and chased her nightmares away.
She turned her back as Hawthorne stood, letting the cloak fall as he reached for his clothes.
‘Thank you,’ she said, facing the jagged cave wall. ‘For what you did.’
‘Couldn’t let you die without your vengeance, Princess.’
Thea tensed at the nickname, hating how it made her toes curl, even now. She distracted herself by picking up the cards Audra had given her from where they’d been left in a neat stack. She ran her thumb over the bleeding words on the top card: Strong of mind, strong of body, strong of heart…
‘I’m decent,’ Hawthorne told her.
But when she turned around, he was still buttoning his shirt, much of his golden skin still on display.
Thea started as his manacles rattled. How’s that possible?
How had he removed his clothing with the irons linking his wrists?
Was she imagining things? She tried to remember whether he’d been wearing them when they’d awoken, but her mind was fuzzy.
She fumbled in her pocket. The key was exactly where she’d left it.
She was still delirious from the fever, she decided.
But it was his scar that caught Thea’s gaze next.
The scar she had given him with her arrow.
The satisfaction she expected to feel didn’t come.
‘Admiring your handiwork?’ Hawthorne asked, tugging his shirt in place.
Jaw clenched, Thea scooped his cloak up from the ground and thrust it at him, but he caught her hand at his chest, his fingers gripping her palm firmly.
‘It was real,’ he breathed. ‘All of it.’
It was an echo of something that had passed between them the night before, but the memory was just out of Thea’s grasp, lost amid the remaining fog of her fever. She made to pull back, but the warrior held firm, his silver gaze molten as it pierced her own.
‘Tell me you don’t want me, Thea. I need to hear you to say the words.’
He was close enough that she could feel the heat radiating from him, the same heat he’d offered her in the depths of her cold exposure. Yet despite the furnace of a man standing before her now, she shivered, digging deep for the power of will.
‘I don’t want you,’ she told him, knees buckling.
‘I don’t believe you.’ He closed the small gap between them, still clutching her hand.
‘My shirt smells like you,’ he murmured, the sound a low rumble in the shell of her ear.
‘I still have your marks on my back from our last night together. You claimed me long ago, Thea. You don’t get to say I’m not yours now. ’
The mere mention of that night in the war camp had her thighs clenching together.
She knew better than this by now. She knew he wasn’t to be trusted.
But her body was a traitor, just like him.
Already she was leaning into his touch. Already she imagined the feel of him inside her, filling her and stretching her until everything else fell away.
Hawthorne’s gaze darkened, as though he could see straight through her, as though he was picturing the very same thing.
Manacles clanking, his hands slid down her sides, gripping her hips, drawing her even closer.
The press of hard muscle against her was thrilling, need dampening her undergarments, blurring her senses.
His lips brushed the line of her jaw.
‘I…’ The words caught in her throat.
Hawthorne stilled at the first sign of her hesitation, his chest rising and falling. ‘I didn’t have a choice,’ he said, voice hoarse.
Thea stepped back. ‘Choice? You want to talk to me about not having a choice?’ It was as though an icy bucket of reality had been tipped over her head and she scrambled to put more distance between them, horrified at what she’d almost done.
‘I can’t believe I almost fell for it, for you. Again. Your lies are poison.’
Hawthorne’s hand drifted to where the arrow scar marred his skin beneath his shirt, his face falling before he seemed to gather himself, swinging his cloak around his shoulders and fastening it at his collarbone.
‘To Vios it is, then.’ He picked up one of the still-burning torches and started down the tunnel.
They had been walking in silence for over an hour.
The only sounds were the dripping of the cave walls, the rattling of Hawthorne’s chains and the crunch of stone beneath their boots.
It was still cold enough for Thea’s breath to mist before her face, but her clothes were dry and she wasn’t shivering.
Thanks to him , she thought bitterly.
But with only her anger and resentment for company, the hours stretched on infinitely, and after a time, Thea glanced across at her surly prisoner.
‘Let’s pick up the pace. I want to get to Vios before this fucking eclipse.’
To her surprise, Hawthorne gave a dark laugh at that. ‘We wouldn’t want to miss the festivities, would we?’