Chapter 9 #3
He threw the sword down and offered her his hand. He pulled her to her feet, wincing again. She turned her back on him.
Danae was nearby; she’d watched from afar. Amelia wove through the men towards her.
“That was quite a show,” Danae said.
She smiled. “I beat the first guy,” she said. Her smile faded.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m tired of not knowing what’s going on, Danae. What are they going to do to me? I overheard Casyl and Tharos talking. He said he couldn’t do this to me. What can’t he do?”
Danae remained silent for a moment.
Amelia waited, silently pleading for an answer.
“He’s protecting you as much as he can.”
*
Her traitorous feet followed Casyl back to the tent. He took off his shirt. Fresh blood bloomed on the bandage around his waist.
“Did I do that?” she asked.
“You wish. I should still have been resting, but I couldn’t resist. You looked so dangerous,” he drawled.
Her blood boiled. She hadn’t planned on confronting him, but the questions tumbled from her.
“Everyone keeps telling me what I am. A danger, a weapon, a threat. But nobody will tell me why. What am I? Why am I so important to you that you’d fight a war to save me?”
The silence stretched as she stood waiting for him to answer.
“Because you are unexpected. You shouldn’t be here, but here you are. They’d kill you. They fear you. We know how valuable you are.”
Valuable. A weapon they could use. Perhaps they had already succeeded in turning her into one.
“I’ve killed someone,” she whispered. Something she never thought she’d be capable of. This world had changed her.
He grimaced and leaned against the table.
She sighed. “Sit down.”
He obeyed. He peeled the bandage away. Amelia grabbed the bowl of water and the washcloth.
“Let me.”
Her hands shook as she pressed the cloth against his warm skin.
He went still beneath her hands. Some of the severity left his face.
“Does it ever stop?”
“The remembering?”
She nodded.
“No.” His gaze dropped to the blood-soaked bandage. “But you realise that forgetting would be worse. My first kill… it was ordered. I obeyed before I understood what my obedience would make me.”
“How old were you?”
His gaze remained on the bloody bandage. “Young enough to follow orders blindly.”
She wondered how many of those orders he’d followed.
“Our parents help shape who we are. Sometimes it’s hard to escape their shadow. I thought that my discovery, finding something no one else had, would make me feel significant.”
“Did it?”
She shook her head. The damp cloth trembled in her hand.
His warm hand gently closed around hers as he eased the cloth from her grasp. He slowly wiped the blood from her skin.
“My father has never allowed me to be insignificant. Some days, I think I might have preferred a life without bloodshed or politics,” he admitted.
“Is that why you keep the broken things?”
His hand stilled.
“They are the only things in the fortress that are truly mine. Things I can put back together. The only things not damaged by me.”
Their eyes locked.
“Earlier… I should never have done that to you. If my father found out…”
“I’m getting a little tired of being your prisoner,” she said.
He placed his hand gently against her face. She’d not seen this side of him before.
“I wouldn’t stop you if you wanted to leave.”
But where would she go?
“And your guards?”
His silence answered for him.
“They would.”
“On whose orders?”
“Mine. The moment I give that order is the moment I defy my father.”
“Then I’m still your captive.”
“Yes,” he said. The admission appeared to cost him. “But I no longer know whether I am protecting you or keeping you for myself.”
For a heartbeat, neither of them moved.
“I’m doomed anyway,” he said, leaning towards her slowly, as if giving her time to decide.
She could have stepped away. Instead, she closed the distance between them, choosing this despite everything that warned her not to.
Their lips met and his fingers tangled in her hair.
This kiss was gentle and his touch was tender—a stark contrast to the cold, violent battlefield outside the tent.
It surprised her. He surprised her.
He was a mystery.
She saw fragments of who he was, pieced together like the repaired relic in his chamber, with parts of him missing. It made his cruelty more difficult to understand.
His eyes were closed; his long lashes rested against his high cheekbones. The tension had left his face.
She lifted a hand to move a stray lock of his dark hair that had fallen across his face, and her fingers lingered against the antlers that rose delicately from his forehead. She touched them gently.
He opened his eyes. She laughed at his indignation, and his expression softened into amusement.
He laughed. “They’re sensitive.”
It was the first time she’d heard him laugh. That deep rumble vibrated through her body.
“Oh, Amelia, what have you done to me? Get some sleep.”
*
In the middle of the night, she awoke expecting Casyl to be in the tent. She sat up to find him gone.
He strode through the tent flaps, looking exhausted, carrying a letter.
“He’s coming,” he said, his face pale. “The king will be here by noon.”