Chapter 10
Ten
Iwas falling. Scrabbling. Finding nothing.
The ground rushed toward me in the darkness. I closed my eyes, bracing for impact. Bracing for pain, bracing for death.
Something hard collided with my chest, knocking the air out of my lungs. My head slammed forward into the hard thing, my face bursting into pain, and the wrenching of my body felt unbearable—as I was lifted upward.
My foot hit something—a branch—that scraped agonizingly down my skin, but I was alive. Relief flooded me.
Strong arms were wrapped around me. My face was pressed against a hard shoulder.
Fieran.
I looked up at him through dazed eyes. His face was a handsome blur, his eyes worried.
“You’re bleeding,” he said, and the two of us settled back to earth. His wings still stretched out to either side, fluttering protectively, as if they had a mind of their own.
My feet were on solid ground now. I inhaled a deep, shaky, desperate breath that gave away too much of how I felt.
“You’re all right,” he murmured. “I’ve got you.”
He gently encouraged me to sit down on a fallen log, then knelt before me, cataloguing my injuries. His hands were firm and careful—and gods, they did something to me even when he was just checking for broken bones.
“That was a rough stop in midair,” he told me, his hands probing my ribcage.
Though he seemed totally intent on his work, his head bent, his handsome face in profile limned by moonlight, I was keenly aware of how close his hands were to my breasts.
A rogue spiral of need raced through me, and I barely resisted the impulse to shift my torso, to guide those big hands to cup my breasts instead of checking so carefully for—
“No breaks,” I told him quickly. “I think the worst of it is my face…where I collided with your shoulder.”
He looked up at my face, close enough that I could lean forward just an inch and kiss him. Except no—blood was still trickling from my nose, salty and coppery on my lips. I must look like a disaster.
“I’m sorry,” he told me, pulling a cloth from his pocket and blotting the blood away.
“Sorry?” My laugh was shaky. “You saved my life.”
“After you saved mine.”
“I have a feeling you would have been fine.” After all, he had survived how many monsters without a mortal at his side?
“You thought so quickly. Clever girl.” His lips quirked in a smile, his eyes twinkling gold even in the moonlight. “Reckless, but clever.”
I pulled a face. His evident admiration, mixed with the faintest scolding tone, made me feel a pulse of warmth—and that made me uncomfortable.
He guided my hand up to hold the cloth to my nose, trying to stem the last of the bleeding. At least it wasn’t too bad. Not like the time I’d accidentally kneed myself in the face trying to somersault into the lake when I was ten.
Then he returned to checking for wounds. His hand touched my bare shoulder, sending heat flaring through me and—
My bare shoulder.
My clothes were torn.
“You’re scraped here,” he said. “The griffin got you—”
“It’s nothing,” I said, grabbing the collar of my dress—or what remained of it—and trying to yank it up to cover the mark on my back.
“Griffins are not exactly clean,” he told me. “Their talons can carry—”
“I’m fine,” I repeated, clutching every shred of fabric I could gather to pull it tight around my throat. But my shirt was torn, and it wasn’t helping.
“Try not to be stubborn.” His fingers brushed the nape of my neck, just above the mark, as he shifted behind me to see the wound.
I turned to try to shake him off, but he was quicker than I was.
“Fieran!” an unfamiliar voice called out.
I couldn’t be sure what passed over Fieran’s face, or what he saw in that split second before his expression smoothed into its usual stoic lines.
“Take my tunic.” In one smooth movement he dropped his belt and drew the tunic over his head.
His body rippled with the motion, revealing the chiseled body beneath—a glimpse of tattoos, the flex of powerful biceps.
I took it in all at once, memorizing his body even as I grabbed the shirt out of his hands.
I slid it over the remnants of my clothing. It was far too big, the sleeves sliding past my hands, the collar loose. I yanked the front down so the back of the collar was snug against my neck.
Only then did I realize how it was still warm from his body, how it carried the scent of his soap and his skin.
“Brace yourself,” Fieran muttered to me quietly.
“What are you doing down there, old friend?” a deep male voice called.
We looked up from the gully in which we’d landed after my fall. At the top stood three figures, squinting down at us.
My mind raced. Had he seen my mark? Had they? They were looking down from above, and they might have seen it before Fieran gave me his tunic. I still wasn’t entirely sure how much keener shifter senses were.
Had Fieran given me the tunic to protect my modesty…or to protect the secret he now knew?
“Another clan has arrived to help us, in such timely fashion.” He held his arm out to me, an invitation to fly again, and there was no time to obsess over the state of my secrets.
Instead, I stepped into his waiting arms. His arm wrapped around my waist carefully, and he flew me up toward the precipice.
The world reeled around me, my stomach tilting at the sensation of rising through the air. Reversing the fall that had almost killed me was an eerie feeling.
But Fieran held me carefully until we landed, as far from the cliff edge as he could manage. I glanced across the gully and caught the faint glow of one of our boundary stones. I shuddered.
“The griffin can never reach you again,” Fieran promised.
“Well, until we see it again in the Trials.” This was a feminine voice, lilting and haughty at the same time.
Fieran sighed under his breath as we faced the three new arrivals.
“This is part of Clan Amber,” Fieran told me. “Ander.”
He gestured to a tall, unsmiling man with brown hair, shaven at the sides and long on top. Then to a girl with her hair in long black braids. “Nixi.”
Then to another, very tall. “Haron.”
“Hello,” I managed, my mind still spinning.
I had spent my childhood hiding the mark I was born with.
It had been easier when I was younger and it was smaller, but as I grew older, so did it.
Sometimes I thought it was growing in defiance of being hidden—growing larger with every year I did not present myself for the Trials.
Fieran was watching me carefully, as if he were worried. I tried to shunt my terror to the back of my mind for now and pretend to be normal.
“Where’s Maura?” Nixi demanded.
“Searching for any other rips,” Fieran said. “Hello to you too.”
“Forgive me for being worried about my sister.” She flashed him a sharp smile, one that seemed familiar after spending time with Maura. “I feel so safe knowing she’s with you, after all.”
“You’re twins.” I was shocked there were two of them.
Nixi’s appraising gaze swept over me as she snapped, “What a clever mortal.”
“Forgive Nixi, she’s just like Maura. She was raised by wolves. Sarcastic wolves.” Fieran set his hand on my shoulder, and the timber of the air around me changed.
Nixi wasn’t the only one looking at me now.
Fieran tweaked the too-big tunic, pulling my collar up a little bit in the back. My spine prickled; I always felt something when Fieran touched me, but this was different.
He knew.
“I just was surprised you two are twins, but in different clans?” I blurted out, trying to distract from the attention fixed on me.
“It happens sometimes,” Fieran said, in a rather careful way that made me think it didn’t happen often. “The clans are dragon clans, not our own families.”
Nixi’s chin lifted. “Clan Amber fought to claim me.”
“And it was the best decision I’ve ever made,” Ander told us. His gaze bounced from me to Fieran and back again, curious, appraising, but he didn’t say anything.
Still, I heard the question as loudly as if it had been voiced.
Why is the mortal here?
“This trap is set,” Fieran said. “We should join the others.”
Nixi looked at me again consideringly. “Did you rescue her from the monster?”
“No,” Fieran said, and I wished I could clap my hand over his mouth, already knowing what he was going to say. “She rescued me.”
He seemed colder, less cheerfully cocky than he had been since I met him, as if he had raised a hard facade.
Ander studied me. “Well, I can’t wait to hear this story.”
“We’ll have time once the rips are sealed,” Fieran said. “Until then, I suggest we keep the wyrms from munching on the villagers.”
I looked up at him, trying to make sense of the different version of himself this seemed to be. Fieran had never sounded blasé about protecting us all before.
“You might want to fix that wound first.” Ander’s voice was cool. “Don’t pretend to be so blasé that you fall over in front of the mortal.”
Fieran might have shifted back, but the wound from the griffin was still torn deeply into his flesh. He shrugged, taking it in stride, but I felt a lurch of horror for his sake. He glanced at my face and then began to dig through his supplies.
As Fear fixed himself up, the other shifters studied me. I turned to Fear, feeling awkward. “Do you need any help?”
A mocking smile ghosted over Nixi’s lips.
“I’ll be fine. Let’s fly,” Fear said. “It’ll be faster.”
“I can take the rider,” Ander offered, and the others glanced at him in a way I didn’t understand them all enough to interpret. “I’m more experienced. And you’re recovering.”
“I’ve got her,” Fieran said firmly.
I didn’t get the chance to respond before Fieran’s arm looped around my waist. He pulled me taut against the side of his body, his thigh splitting mine.
“I can walk,” I said, remembering all too keenly the feeling of falling not long before. It was a sensation that would haunt my dreams.
“Alone in the forest? There’s a reason you’ve never been here before.” He didn’t sound as if he were going to tolerate arguments.