Chapter 12
Roiven keeps staring at the dragon. As if she’s saying something to him.
They may have stolen me from the Bluff and dragged me halfway across the Wild Seas, but Roiven is bound to my command. He’ll convince her to take us back.
He turns abruptly. His strong arms wrap around my waist, pulling me close against his chest. My breath catches, hating the way my heart beats faster with his warmth against my skin. He shouldn’t be touching me. I shove against him.
“What are you doing?”
My feet leave the damp stone and he tosses me over his shoulder like I weigh nothing.
What is it with this man and picking me up without warning?
My body, still sore, aching, and numb from being carried through the night sky in a dragon’s claws, is slow to react.
I twist, and manage to land a clipped blow against the back of his head with my elbow.
Roiven grunts in pain and yanks me into the ocean.
I fall off the rock and into the water too fast to react. It’s no gradual slope. It’s a straight drop into the sea.
Panic swells up and I thrash as the sea overtakes me. Every inch of my skin crawls and screams in disgust. I swallow a gulp of salt water and come up hacking, pushing myself out of Roiven’s muscular arms. He lets me go.
I thrash, and begin to sink.
There’s no voice. Not this time. But I can feel it, feel the presence below the deep. Its mind isn’t on me, but I can sense it. A hot sickness burns in my chest like I’ve been lit on fire from the inside. An invisible tether connects me to something in the ocean.
“Gods, no,” I wail, reaching for the island’s edge so I can pull myself up.
The swell shoves my body against Roiven’s, pushing us both against the rocky edge of the island, then relents, then shoves again.
I dip below for a moment, thrashing but unable to keep my head lifted.
Roiven’s hands find my waist. His fingers dig in over the fabric of my shirt as he pulls me up.
Between the man I hate most and the sea, he’s actually preferable.
The back of my head thunks against his collarbone as the ocean shoves me into him again.
I kick free, grab for the rocks, and begin to haul myself out. The attention of the thing in the water turns toward me, as if slowly noticing I’m here. A wave of dizziness threatens to pull me under.
“I was right,” Roiven rasps.
He grabs my calf to drag me back. Relentless man. My other leg kicks out, landing a blow hard on his shoulder with the ball of my boot. He falls back with a grunt of pain.
“Fuck,” he growls. I drag myself up onto the rock just as his hands find my thighs. Rolling away from the shore, I stumble upright, hand to my sword hilt. My whole body shakes.
Why do I feel empty, like there’s a hole in my chest? I just escaped. All I should feel is relief.
Roiven’s still in the water. A lock of his black wet hair falls across his face.
“Were you trying to drown me?” I gasp. My throat still burns from the seawater I swallowed. My stomach rebels, wanting to empty itself. But I cannot afford to be vulnerable for even a moment.
“You’re the one who gave the fucking command,” he growls. “There’s no way to get back to that island of yours but swim. Savasaeirn isn’t going to take us.”
“We can’t swim. That’s insane.” We’re hours away by a dragon’s flight. Even if it weren’t for the reapers, the thing in the ocean, the fact that I don't know how to keep my head above the water, and the gods know what else haunts the terrible deep, no human being can swim that far.
There was no natural way for me to have washed up by Amkrieg then, and there’s no natural way to make it back to the Bluff now.
“You think I don’t know that?” Roiven growls. He winces as he rubs his shoulder. The witch drags himself out of the water and I back up, hand still on my sword hilt. He rests for a moment on hands and knees, long hair dripping onto the rock, then staggers upright.
He takes a step forward, then another, like his body is being forced. My command must still be in place.
“Don’t touch me. We’re not swimming to the Bluff. And no more picking me up without asking.”
He stops.
“Be careful with your words, knight. They have power.”
“I didn’t realize you’d try to drag me off the island. I figured you’d argue with your dragon until she agreed.”
Roiven snorts.
“Savasaeirn said no. I won’t force her.”
As if he has any right to be mad about me using commands right now.
“If you didn’t want me to force you, you shouldn’t have kidnapped me from the Bluff. You haven’t left much choice, asshole.”
He grunts.
The arrow is still sticking out of his arm. He wraps his other hand around the shaft and grits his teeth. The wound must have hurt terribly in the salt water.
“I command you to force her.”
From where she rests, Sava makes a low rumbling noise that sounds like a laugh.
“I can’t,” he growls. “She’s her own creature. You should understand that.”
And then, with a roar of pain, Roiven yanks the arrow out of his own flesh. The arrowhead comes out whole, the blood so dark in the moonlight it’s black.
I stare at him in absolute horror.
“You idiot. That was plugging your wound.”
“I heal like you do,” Roiven rasps. He drops the arrow and its wooden shaft clatters on the stone.
One-handed, the witch pulls at the bandages I’d used to stabilize the arrowshaft, tightening them over the wound.
Now that they’re drenched in filthy salt water, the bandages will just burn and infect.
“Like I do?” Is he an idiot?
“Answer one question. Why are you doing this?” Roiven says. His voice is thick with something. Pain, probably. Or hatred. He lifts his arm and grips the bandage in his teeth so he can tie it tight. “Are you under an enchantment, too?”
“Why am I doing what? Defending myself?”
There’s a moment of silence as he finishes the knot. Roiven drops his arm back down slowly.
“Betraying your own people. Acting like you’re one of them. You seem to still have some shred of decency left.”
I stare at him.
“I wondered, when we first fought. I suspected, when I realized you’d survived.
But just now, I felt it. A pulse of magic, from you, in the water,” Roiven says.
The glow of his orange eyes seems to brighten.
A chill runs down my back and my eyes shift towards the utterly dark sea.
Shh, shh, the waves say as they swell up against the rocks.
My spine crawls. The pounding in my head starts up, a low, distant warning of pain.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“We’re alone. There’s nobody here but us,” Roiven says. I don’t answer, and he shakes his head. “You have a familiar. You're a witch.”
The pounding in my head gets louder.
“I am not.”
“You can’t be doing this of your own will.”
“I’m a knight.” I grind the words out.
Roiven shakes his head.
“Fine. Go on killing your own kind and pretending it will save you from the same fate, as if they haven’t already decided you’re expendable. It’s not like anything you could say would redeem you to me.”
With every word he says I bristle. Harfor should have let me kill him. He’s a waste of air.
“I don’t need your redemption.”
“No,” he says quietly. “You’re perfectly happy to help them ruin the world.
Whatever they did to make you into a monster…
you’re lucky Savasaeirn is kinder than I am.
If it were up to me, you’d be dead, no matter what it cost me.
No matter whether you were just Enchanted. No matter that you’re one of us.”
“I’m nothing like you.” I don’t let myself dwell on his words.
“That’s obvious,” he says, with disgust in his voice. “Savasaeirn suggests you sleep. Do what you want. I don’t give a fuck.”
Roiven turns away from me and starts walking toward Sava. I grip my hands into fists, my breathing labored. I should make him sleep beside me so the dragon has a harder time killing me in the night, but I don’t want anything to do with the witch.
“No more talking in your head. You have something to say to her, say it out loud.”
“Fine,” he says, as if he has any choice in the matter. He doesn’t pause or look back at me.
“And no leaving here without me,” I call after him. Roiven doesn’t bother answering that one.
I know Sava could just pick him up and fly off, but at least he can’t go willingly.
There must be some way I can manipulate my command over the witch to get off the island.
But it’s cold and dark. By the moonlight I can’t make out anything but the black rocks, the violent sea, and the great scaled side of the dragon.
In the darkness Roiven’s shape blends into Sava's until I can’t see him at all.
I take my wet boots off, find a stretch of dry rock, and pray it’s above the tide if the seas rise. Despite everything, sleep comes quickly. My body is exhausted.
When I finally wake, it’s to the low sound of Roiven’s voice.