Chapter 22
THE TRUTH
FELíNE’S MEMORIES SIFTED ACROSS HER visual field like sand trickling through that insufferable hourglass. She had thought ten minutes to be achievable. Survivable.
What a fool she was. Ten minutes was an eternity. That she’d managed to make it this long gave her a flicker of pride. Pride eclipsed by the sheer terror and suffocating despair that drowned her with each ragged draw of her exhausted lungs.
Those glowing yellow orbs fixed on her. Felíne had nowhere to go.
Her limbs ached, Daybreak’s meager weight an impossible burden.
Fire licked across her left shoulder and chest where the grimalkin had clawed her.
It stalked closer. The crowd roared, a hundred voices clamoring in her ear, hungry for her failure, ravenous for her demise.
Felíne searched the gathered mass in desperation for one familiar face. She wanted a final glimpse of that bottomless black gaze, chiseled jaw, and unyielding stature before she met her end—even if all his features held were contempt and loathing.
But Kal was nowhere to be found. Countless faces blurred together as she roved the crowd. None of them recognizable. None of them kind.
A pitiful sob escaped her. The grimalkin’s lip curled back over deadly fangs. Its haunches coiled.
Close your eyes, dear child. Breathe. It is but a moment, and it, too, shall pass.
Mender Alcuin’s serene voice floated through her memory. Anxiety clamped her chest like a vice, but she breathed, focusing on that single kernel of comfort in this wretched pit of despair.
The beast’s paws left the ground, claws flashing, maw gaping.
A tear descended Felíne’s cheek, and she squeezed her eyes shut.
A monstrous bellow blasted the air of the arena. Day turned to night as the blackest shadow blocked the sun overhead. The ground quaked with the shadow’s impact, and Felíne’s eyes snapped open.
A colossal shurii male in second form landed in the arena and snatched the grimalkin out of the air.
The shurii fisted the cat’s scruff with vicious claws, unhinged his monstrous jaw, and loosed a deafening roar in the grimalkin’s face.
Spittle flew. Gleaming teeth bared. The male slammed the cat into the nearest boulder with staggering violence.
The animal wailed. He slammed again. The boulder cracked.
Once more, and the enormous male tossed the limp creature away like a soiled rag.
Felíne’s breath caught as the male turned his scorching attention on her. His eyes, solid gold like two priceless coins, ensnared her. His sleek, inky fur swallowed the light. The stiffly hackled ridge that traveled the length of his spine stood on end.
The crowd erupted into chaotic discord. People’s shouts echoed off the arena’s walls, reverberating through the forest, yet Felíne was enveloped in a cocoon of stunned silence.
The male took two steps toward her on heavy, padded feet, and she jerked her hatchet up on instinct. One backhanded swipe of his claws sent Daybreak whirling through the air in the opposite direction. Felíne yelped and clutched her hand, stumbling back.
The black monster reached for her. Felíne scrambled away.
“He’s taking the prisoner! Someone, stop him!”
“Alert the Conclave!”
“The trial is fixed! The prisoner’s escaping!”
Felíne tried to run, but there was nowhere to go. Every way she turned, she met angry yells, dead ends, and the black-pelted male. Arrows whistled by her ear and pierced the dirt, one narrowly missing the toe of her boot. A line of searing pain lanced her upper arm, and she hissed.
Behind her, the shurii male’s roar seemed to shake the stadium, and Felíne clapped her hands over her ears. Then, without warning, she was airborne.
“No!”
The male hoisted her off the ground and launched out of the pit, landing on the first platform.
People screamed. First forms exploded into seconds.
Felíne glimpsed an enraged blond man gripping an empty crossbow before the male carrying her climbed to the top row of seats, sank his claws into the wall’s edge, and jumped over.
Felíne’s teeth clacked together as they landed, and a fresh wave of pain raked across her chest. She twisted back to see the arena, shurii flooding out of its walls, before they were swallowed by the tree line and the shadows of Stillwater Wood.
Felíne lost consciousness somewhere in the forest. Screaming hadn’t helped. Nor had kicking, punching, or biting. Her demands fell on deaf ears. Overcome with terror, assaulted by ineptitude, her conscious mind retreated into the safety of oblivion.
The scrape of claws on wood reached her wandering psyche, and her eyes flickered open.
Felíne caught the flash of a vaguely familiar nameless black wolf through her swaying strands of knotted hair, before being hauled up several stairs, carted over a set of thresholds, and dumped unceremoniously onto an overlarge mattress.
The midnight male slammed the bedroom door behind him with enough force to rattle the wooden frame. Felíne jumped and scooted farther back on the bed. She glanced around for a weapon but found nothing within reach. The room…wait…she knew this room.
The beast fixed flawless golden eyes on her. Jaws parted, and a rich rumbling voice emerged. “If you had a death wish, you should have said so. I could have accommodated instead of wasting all of my godsdamned time and effort trying to keep you alive.”
Felíne’s jaw fell in her lap. “Kal?”
His chest rumbled with a growl. “Who the fuck are you?”
Felíne had spent untold hours fantasizing about Kal’s second form—what color his pelt would be, how tall he’d stand, if he’d be mesmerizing or terrifying in equal measure. He was more than anything her lackluster imagination could have conjured.
Kal’s silky black coat gleamed, a lustrous living shadow.
He towered over any male she’d ever seen.
Claws like unsheathed daggers tipped each long digit of his hands and the toes on his padded feet.
His lips curled back over elongated, pointed teeth, strikingly white against his fur’s stygian hue.
A strong, furred tail swished back and forth in agitation.
Despite his menacing countenance, Felíne found herself inching closer.
Kal’s eyes imprisoned her. How many days had she gazed into their dark depths?
How often had she floated on the surface of that churning obsidian sea and longed to reach for the flickering golden treasures that lay beneath?
Felíne peered into those golden spheres, realizing the riches bared before her, finally within her reach.
She scooted to the edge of the mattress and eased to her feet. Kal’s breath came in great pulls, his chest heaving. His nostrils flared, eyes never leaving her face. Felíne raised a tentative hand.
Kal’s claws snapped out suddenly, breaking her thrall. A terrifying pressure circled the fragile column of Felíne’s throat. Kal backed her against the wall. “You don’t get to touch me,” he snarled. “You don’t get to look at me like that.” Warm breath gusted over her. “You fucking lied.”
“I’m sorry,” she gasped.
The pressure on her neck increased. “I don’t want your apology. I want the fucking truth.”
Felíne tried to shake her head, but his grip held her fast.
Kal growled again. “The only way I’m letting you out of this room is if you give me what I want.”
Felíne tried to swallow. It got stuck in Kal’s palm. “Please—”
Kal lowered his muzzle to the side of Felíne’s face. He ran his nose along her jawline and over the shell of her ear in a long inhale. “Go ahead and beg, Kitty girl. Plead. Cry.” Felíne’s heart beat an erratic staccato. “It will make no difference.”
She was entirely compromised. Kal’s threat thickened the air between them.
He wanted her to beg? To cry? Felíne had been terrorized beyond measure.
Been imprisoned, hunted, and hurt. She’d barely finished fighting for her life.
For all their lives. Rage, hot and untamed, flared beneath her breastbone.
Felíne leaned into the pressure on her throat. “I’m not begging you for shit,” she croaked. She was sick of fighting, but she’d fight him. She’d give him one last battle.
Her head bounced off the wall as Kal rattled her. “Tell me who you are!”
She winced, anger stoked by the new, unnecessary ache, but the pressure on her neck lessened. “Why? So you can betray me to my enemies?” She sneered. “So you can throw me in a pit to fight an impossible foe? So you can watch me die?”
Kalevar’s teeth snapped. “You think I wanted to watch you get torn to shreds? For all I know, you could be my enemy, and I still helped you! You didn’t even fucking try!”
Felíne’s eyes flew wide. Fury rolled through her in a violent wave that finally crested. “Didn’t even try? Of all the slack-witted, asinine, idiotic—” Her voice shook. “I fought for my life, you imbecile! I nearly fucking died!”
“I TOLD YOU TO SHIFT!” Kal roared, pounding his fist into the wall beside her.
“I CAN’T SHIFT!” she roared right back.
Kal straightened, his lids narrowed to slits. Felíne looked away, suddenly unable to meet his gaze. He released her neck and stepped back. The absence of his touch left her sagging against the wall.
“What did you say?”
Felíne’s brows drew together as she studied a seam in the floorboards. “You heard what I said.”
“What do you mean you can’t shift?”
Felíne tensed her jaw. The effort of maintaining this wretched lie left her spirit in tatters. She couldn’t do it anymore. She didn’t want to do it anymore. Damn the consequences. None of her other plans had worked anyway.
Felíne raised her eyes to Kalevar’s untrusting ones. “I mean exactly what I said. I. Cannot. Shift.” Her arms flailed, gesturing to her entire body. The movement made her groan, the deeper gash across her chest oozing anew. “I have no second form, Kal. I can’t shift.”
Kal’s heart began beating so fiercely that even Felíne’s less acute senses picked up on the increase in tempo. His lungs pumped, nostrils flaring widely with each inhale. The gold in his eyes intensified, glowing. “Who are you?”
Felíne’s posture deflated, but her chin lifted a hair. He wanted the truth? So be it. “My name is Felíne Lochlan Faelstrom. Daughter of the Crown of Asteros.” She met Kalevar’s wide, unwavering stare. “I am the Prima of Ilistaar.”
For a strained, torturous moment, neither of them moved. The only disturbance was the rushing sound Kal made as he sucked air into his cavernous lungs with great, greedy pulls. Time stretched.
Felíne’s heart was pounding so hard, she thought it might fracture her sternum. She’d just dropped the equivalent of an exploding powder keg between them and was still painfully unaware of the resulting damage.
Say something, she thought miserably. Anything other than this eerie unresponsiveness.
“Liar,” he declared, leaning close, voice deceptively soft. His hot breath fanned across her face like a caress, the sensation a stark contradiction to the accusation that slipped between his pointed teeth.
She swallowed. “Yes,” she confessed, and Kal’s pupils constricted. “I am a liar. But not about this.”
Black lips peeled back from elongated canines in a snarl.
She met his unyielding gaze, withstood the crushing waves of his disbelief and anger, the way a breakwater might endure the onslaught of a hurricane.
Felíne could take his rage; in fact, she hungered for it.
It was infinitely better than the hurt and betrayal it masked.
She’d have to face those things eventually, but she didn’t think she currently had the strength.
Kal’s molten eyes searched her, probed every corner of her soul, and she bared it to him. Felíne finally had nothing left to hide. She thought she’d feel relief but was left with only a bone-deep exhaustion.
She saw the moment he understood. Witnessed the slow, inevitable realization of who she was sweep away the doubt that lingered in his predatory features.
Kal’s clawed fist slammed against the wall with a shuddering boom. The house quaked. A sound caught between a growl and a cry of anguish escaped his chest. Then he spun away from her and was gone.
Felíne’s legs gave way. She sagged against the wall, sliding down until she hit the floor, legs splaying out in front of her, and cried.