Chapter 56 #2
A soft summer breeze picks up, lifting his hair and mine. A claw mark of a moon hangs in the sky alongside a spill of stars. We pass the spot I found him many moons ago, sitting by himself while small glowing orbs floated around him. Then we get further into the courtyard.
When he stops at a wall of rosebushes, he looks down at me. “This may hurt a little bit. Just close your eyes, and remember you put your trust in me.” Then he walks into the rose bushes.
I hiss when a thorn catches my foot, ripping open a small cut. Another catches my hair, attempting to keep me back. But he pushes through. A stone wall stretches out in front of us, and rather than stopping or turning around, he just inhales deeply.
And pushes through it.
Within a blink, the gardens and castle are gone. Instead, we’re in darkness. Rolling all out around us are hills dotted with blue farther than the eye can see. Mountains out beyond that circling us in dark shadows. As I glance down, I realize the dots of blue are those belonging to flowers.
To blue roses.
I look up to search his expression. “Where have you taken me?”
“Somewhere you must never speak of to anyone else.” He turns down to look at me. “You’ve admitted you trust me. But can I trust you?”
I nod. Then he’s walking us down a hill, down to a cluster of shadows.
The blue roses seem to sway out of his step as we get closer to our destination.
As we draw near, I realize the shadows belong to a thick section of forest. The leaves drown out the sky above, and Cyrus picks and weaves through bushes, roots, and rocks.
A soft blue glow rises from the distance, splitting through the darkness.
We get through the last line of trees to where the light pulses the brightest. Carved into the ground is something of a blue river.
Glowing, pulsing, and brilliant. It’s luminosity floating up into the air like a reverse snowfall and disappearing into the darkness.
As he gets closer to the water’s edge, he stops.
Then lowers me gently to sit on the ground.
Once I’m sat, he kneels beside me and begins to unlace his boots.
“What are you doing?” I whisper, feeling as if I’m too loud it’ll be sacrilegious to such a beautiful place.
“I don’t wish to be crude, Marcella.” His words are but a murmur in the soft gurgling of the river. “But I must ask you to take off your clothes. I’ll even close my eyes.”
He doesn’t look at me. Doesn’t glance. Removing his boots, pants, coat, shirt—everything.
Despite not giving him permission to look at me, I can’t keep my eyes from wandering to him.
To the elegant carve of his body, skin glowing in the luminescence of the river.
He takes a step into the water, its glowing edge slipping over his foot.
Rather than the white foam of water collecting around him, it’s something else entirely.
Something like the shimmer of stars, or speckles of glitter from a diamond.
Another step in and he pauses, head straight as he holds a hand back out to me. “Whenever you’re ready, come take my hand.”
It makes it easy, that I’m only wearing a nightgown. Simple to slip off. But as I try to stand, with only the bandages covering my abdomen and thigh, I struggle. Pain rears its ugly head and knocks me back down on the ground until I’m out of breath.
“Are you alright?” he asks tightly, though still facing away.
“I-…” Sucking in a breath through my teeth, on my exhale I let out, “I need your help. Please.”
He turns immediately, and if I weren’t in so much pain, I might have lingered on the sight of him beautifully naked before me. His eyes don’t even wander my naked skin—they just find my gaze. Kneeling before me, he asks, “Can I touch you? Only to help you?”
“Yes,” I hiss out in a wince.
His gaze falls to my bandages. “Grab onto me if you need. Tell me to stop if it’s what you wish.”
Then he’s slowly peeling layer by layer off, winding it down until my wound is revealed. A soft gasp leaves his lips. Eyes hooked on the wide stitching from my abdomen to my knee. A small tremble sparks to life in his hand before he clenches it shut.
Naturally, I cringe, wanting to pull away from him. Out of sight. Into the shadows. “Hideous, isn’t it? You’re appalled? Disgusted?”
His eyebrows draw tight as he looks at me.
Shaking his head furiously, his voice remains calm.
“How could you say that? I’m neither disgusted nor appalled.
I’m…” he pulls in a shaky, uncontrollable inhale, “I’m utterly adrift in anger.
Drowning in wrath that hurts me to breathe.
That some pissrat of a man thought he could… ”
He blows out a long breath, not wanting to look me in the eyes. It’s a moment before he continues in a shaking voice, “I lost control. I hurt you.”
I rest a gentle hand on his. “But you didn’t mean to, did you? It was an accident, Cyrus.”
When he flicks his kind eyes to me, he doesn’t need to clarify. “I’ve never lost myself like that before. It doesn’t matter if I didn’t mean to.” He shakes his head and drops his gaze from mine. “After you told me of his threat to you, I should have ended him sooner.”
Squeezing his hand, I whisper, “You didn’t know if he’d be bluffing or not. And I told you not to reprimand him—that I had it under control.”
“Are you scared of me?” he breathes.
“No.”
His eyes are back to mine, squinting in disbelief. “Even after what you saw?”
The claws, teeth, and ease of which he slaughtered them would be a thing of nightmares. Yet, one thing is true. “Even after what I saw in you, yes. I knew your intentions weren’t to hurt me.”
His head drops, muttering, “Can I do one thing, to try and make amends? One thing that might alleviate your pain?”
Removing my hand atop his, I cup his cheek and tilting his face to look at me. “You have no amends to make with me. I don’t even want to think about what would’ve happened if you hadn’t come.”
His eyes crinkle slightly as he smiles. “Regardless of what you say, I’ll still hold it in my heart that I’ve wronged you.”
With my free hand, I reach out, then draw back, before reaching again and pressing my palm to his chest. Right over the steady beat of his heart. As gentle as I can ever muster, I whisper, “Then I absolve you of it.”
His hand softly presses over mine, eyes lost in me as he holds my palm to his heart. We sit there, guided by the thrum of his heartbeat and the gurgling of the river behind him.
At a glacial speed, I move to him. Watching between his lips, where I wish to be, and checking his eyes for his reaction. Then back again, over and over. He’s frozen. Allowing me to take the space I’m comfortable with. Not moving a single muscle.
With my hand on his cheek, I draw him toward me. He bumps his forehead into mine, and as I angle my face to kiss his lips, he moves against me. Avoiding the kiss I’m so drawn to take.
I search his eyes. “You won’t kiss me?”
“I don’t want to kiss you like this.”
“Why is that?” I ask as I stroke his cheek. “I want you to. I’m asking you to.”
“It feels wrong to touch you in the ways I want to. Especially when everything has happened because of me. If I didn’t feel for you the way I do, I wouldn’t have listened to your wish of not reprimanding him.
I would have expelled him immediately. And because of that—because of my feelings for you—that’s the reason everything happened the way it did. ”
“The reason everything happened the way it did was because Crawford was a terrible man.” I slip my hand out from under his, away from his heart, and grab both sides of his face.
“Listen to me, you foolish, self-condemned man. I don’t blame you for what happened.
In fact, I thank you for saving my life, my—” I clear my throat. “My honor.”
Breaking the contact between our foreheads, I admire him.
The softness in his gaze, the way his eyes follow me.
Brushing a strand back from his temple, I tuck it behind his ear.
“Now, I said I trust you. Show me the reason you brought me out here and asked me to strip bare.” I hold out a hand to him with a small grin.
A ghost of a smile lifts his lips, and he sweeps me into his arms again. Though, this time nothing separates us. Skin is pressed against skin. He steps into the water carefully, the light around us growing brighter as he gets deeper.
The water brushes the bottom of my foot first, sending a shock of sparks through my leg.
“It might hurt at first, but…” He nods. “Trust me.”
Gritting my teeth in anticipation, I nod.
Further and further he walks in, until the water swallows our bodies.
The initial sting of it fades quickly, until I’m surrounded by nothing but warmth.
It’s to my chest, covering the swell of my breasts, and just below his shoulders.
He stops, standing and letting it flow around us.
Carrying my long dark hair back in a lazy stream.
Holding me in one arm wrapped around my back and hamstrings, he frees his other one.
With one finger I can barely make out underneath the surface, he drags it from the top of my wound down to my knee.
Heat gathers along the trail of his touch.
Warm, but not excruciating. Once he ends at the bottom of my wound, he shifts his grip on me again and is holding me in both arms.
As I wiggle my toes, I realize my sense of feeling is gone. All replaced by warmth. Moving my hips, the pain in my thigh and abdomen, is gone. “What is this?”
“The elders translated it from the old language to mean a Gods’ river.
It’s the purest source of magic. Most of them run underneath the ground far from where we can see.
Throughout the realms, they will sometimes seep out in small flames.
But here,” he grins, tilting his chin downstream, “here is a main vein. Though, only I’m able to access it. ”