Chapter 12 Lysa
twelve
Lysa
Ididn’t sleep that night, with Fenrik’s dismissal echoing in my head.
Mad explanation. Wilder accusation. As if I hadn’t spent eleven years learning to read the signs that other healers missed.
As if I hadn’t held dying creatures in my arms and felt the wrongness threading through their magic.
The wyrmling curled against my chest, its breathing steady for once. Small mercies.
By morning, my eyes burned and my patience had worn thin. I dressed quickly, yanked my hair back with a leather cord, and went looking for Lord Stormgarde.
He wasn’t in the dining room, wasn’t in the library, wasn’t in any of the corridors I’d learned to navigate. The manor seemed to sigh with each empty room I checked, floorboards creaking in what I’d begun to recognise as disapproval.
“Where is he?” I asked the walls.
No answer. Only the distant groan of wind against the stone.
By midday, I understood. Fenrik wasn’t always elsewhere, he was avoiding me. Every time I caught a glimpse of dark hair disappearing around a corner, every time I heard footsteps retreating in the opposite direction, the truth became clearer. The coward was running.
I was composing a truly scathing speech about aristocratic avoidance when the sky split open.
Lightning forked across the clouds, so bright it burned afterimages into my vision.
The manor shuddered. I felt the ley-line surge beneath my feet, that second heartbeat I’d noticed on arrival, now hammering like a war drum.
Another bolt of lightning. The corridor flooded with light.
Then the floor tilted. I staggered, grabbing for the wall, but my fingers found only smooth plaster. The boards beneath me angled sharply, sending me stumbling forward. Behind me, an oak door slammed shut with enough force to shake dust from the ceiling.
“What—“
Another door. Slam. Closer now.
I ran. The bloody manor gave me no choice.
Each door crashed closed at my heels, and the floorboards kept shifting, kept pushing, kept herding me down the corridor.
A gust of wind caught me between the shoulder blades that shoved me forward, and I barely kept my feet as I careened around a corner and—
The final door swung open. I tumbled through, then it slammed behind me, and the lock clicked.
But the lightning flashes, the room was dark.
I was currently in Fenrik’s study. The room smelled of cedar smoke and something warmer, almost spiced.
It wrapped around me like an embrace I hadn’t asked for, intimate enough to make my skin flush.
I pressed my back against the locked door, breathing hard.
The next flash of lightning showed me his desk. Chaos reigned there, books stacked haphazardly, empty inkwells, quills with broken nibs. And scattered across every available surface were pages and pages of sheet music.
I shouldn’t have looked. This was his private space, his sanctuary from prying eyes, I wasn’t sure even Mrs. Crane entered the room often.
But my feet carried me forward anyway, drawn by the slant of the handwriting, with tiny notes crowded together.
So he wrote music. This cold, controlled, impossible man poured whatever he couldn’t say into compositions no one would hear.
Then I thought of Kelda and her sarcastic smile. Well, he wrote music I wouldn’t hear.
A ragged, wet sound tore through the quiet. I spun toward the shadowed corner of the room, near the heavy velvet drapes. Fenrik was slumped against the wainscoting, one hand gripping the edge of a mahogany side table.
“Lysa.” His voice wasn’t his own, it was a scrape of gravel. I took a step forward, and the lightning flashed again, illuminating his form.
He had torn at his collar; his shirt hung open, buttons scattered across the floor.
The skin of his chest was a map of agony, silver veins pulsed beneath the surface, branching up his throat and disappearing into his hairline.
Sweat slicked his torso, making the unnatural light beneath his skin gleam.
His fingers were elongated, the nails darkened into curved claws that were currently sunk deep into the wood of the table.
He lifted his head. His eyes were no longer grey.
They burned with a feral, silver luminescence that tracked my movement with predator focus.
I backed up, fumbling blindly for the doorknob. “I didn’t know—the house, it pushed me—“
My fingers found the brass handle. I twisted.
Locked.
I rattled it, panic overriding my shock. “Open,” I commanded the wood. “Let me out!”
The house didn’t just ignore me; I felt a smug vibration hum through the brass into my palm. The lock held fast.
“It won’t open,” I said.
Fenrik pushed himself off the wall, stumbling toward me. “Open the damned door!” he roared at the ceiling, exposing the silver cracks racing down his neck.
The manor’s response was a structural groan that sounded disturbingly like a refusal.
Thunder detonated overhead, a physical blow that shook the foundations of the cliffside estate.
I was thrown forward, my boots losing traction on the polished wood.
I flailed, reaching for anything to steady myself, but the air was empty.
I slammed hard into a wall of solid heat.
Fenrik. I heard the sharp intake of his breath, felt the rigid muscle beneath his open shirt against my palms. But before I could pull away, a deafening crack echoed from above, part of the stone molding near the ceiling gave way, shaken loose by the storm’s fury.
“Down!”
His arm wrapped around my waist, and he spun us fast. He slammed me back against the bookshelves, his body crashing over mine, creating a living shield between me and the falling debris. Dust and heavy plaster rained down, bouncing off his broad shoulders, but I felt none of it.
I only felt him. My back was pressed flat against the spines of a hundred leather-bound books, and Fenrik was pressed flush against my front.
He was heavy, his hips pinning mine to the shelves.
His chest heaved against my palms, which were still trapped between us, resting on his bare skin—and I could feel the erratic thunder of his heart.
Thankfully, he hadn’t crushed me. His claws were dug into the bookshelves on either side of my head, seeing to it that his weight didn’t suffocate me, boxing me in. The dust settled. The thunder rolled away, leaving a ringing quiet in its wake.
Fenrik kept his head bowed, his forehead resting against the books inches from my ear. His breath came in ragged pants that stirred the hair at my temple. He was so hot he burned through my clothes, a furnace of whatever magic was cursing him.
I looked up, my heart galloping a frantic rhythm against my ribs.
One of his hands shifted. The claws retracted slowly, human fingers returning, though the silver veins still throbbed. His thumb grazed the shell of my ear—a touch so delicate it made my knees give out. I could stop this, but I didn’t.
“Are you hurt?” he rasped, lifting his head.
Those silver eyes met mine, mere inches away. The feral light hadn’t faded.
“No,” I whispered. My own voice sounded wrecked.
He didn’t pull away. He stayed there, staring at my mouth.
The heat radiating from him was scalding, soaking through the thin linen of my shirt and searing my skin.
He felt less like a man and more like a predator shaped into one, every muscle rigid, coiled with a tension that threatened to snap his bones.
A low, vibrating sound rumbled in his chest. It pressed into my own sternum, rattling my ribs.
I shouldn’t have liked it. I should have been terrified of the beast surfacing beneath his skin, of the silver veins pulsing at his throat.
But my body betrayed me, softening against his hardness, an ache blooming low in my belly.
The silver in his irises had been swallowed by black, his pupils blown so wide they eclipsed everything else. He looked at me as if he wanted to tear me apart and devour the pieces.
“If you touch me again,” he murmured, sending shivers racing down my spine, “I won’t be able to stop.”
Was it a threat, or was it an invitation?
Logic screamed at me to duck under his arm, to run for the door the house refused to open.
But the heat of him, the scent of cedar and raw, masculine musk, held me paralyzed.
Bloody thing, I wanted it to be an invitation.
My hand, which had been trapped between our chests, trembled as I flattened my palm.
I pressed it deliberately over the thunder of his heart.
Then what I felt wasn’t the usual sensation of my gift, that thread of silence I used to subdue maddened beasts.
This was a collision, a violent wreck of golden warmth crashing headlong into his glacial frost. The impact tore through my head, frying every thought, every instinct to run, leaving only pure, blinding sensation.
I looked down, blinking against the sudden brightness.
My magic was... gold, like he said it was.
I’d never seen it other than silvery and cold.
But against him, it was molten light, spilling from my fingertips to chase away the shadows beneath his skin.
It met the silver frost of his curse as a counterpart.
The two lights flared, tangling together around our forearms.
My knees gave out, I couldn’t bloody help it. The sheer density of the power rushing between us was too heavy to stand under. A small, embarrassing sound hitched in my throat, half gasp, half moan, as I sagged against him. That sound seemed to shatter whatever structural integrity Fenrik had left.
Beneath my palm, I felt the beast inside him roar, a deep vibration in his chest protesting the intrusion.
But then, it recoiled. The dragon was shoved back.
The silver veins on his neck pulsed once, hard, then dimmed, the frantic erraticism of his heartbeat smoothing into a rhythm that matched my own.
Fenrik moved into the space I’d ceded, his hand lifting to cradle my face.
His palm was rough, and hot, his touch agonizingly gentle.
His thumb traced the curve of my lower lip, dragging slightly, and a shudder racked my entire body.
I was burning up, consumed by the gold-and-silver fire wreathing us.
Fenrik leaned in, his forehead resting against mine, his eyes squeezed shut before dragging them open to pin me down. His mouth hovered a hair’s breadth from mine, close enough to steal the air from my lungs.
“I’ve wanted,” he whispered, “since you arrived—since before—“
The lightning outside had ceased its assault, leaving us in sudden gloom. But the room didn’t go dark. Instead, the sconces on the walls lit to an amber smoulder.
Fenrik groaned and his mouth crashed down on mine.
It was a collision of starving things. There was no tentative testing of waters, no gentle exploration, only a frantic, devouring hunger that stole the breath from my lungs.
He tasted of wild mint and copper, of storm-winds and desperation.
His hands, no longer careful, tangling in my hair, gripping my skull to hold me steady.
I should have pushed him away, I should have remembered the danger, the curse, the claws that had been visible only moments ago.
But my own traitorous body arched into him, pressing closer to the furnace of his chest. My hands found purchase on his shoulders, digging into the muscle, anchoring myself as the world spun away.
The connection between us roared. That golden light of my magic soothed the silver frost of his curse, then mated with it.
I felt the tangle of our power in my veins, a rush of heat that made my knees buckle.
Fenrik growled against my mouth, one of his hands sliding down my spine to grip my hip, hauling me flush against his erection. He was hard and overwhelming.
He broke the kiss only to bury his face in the crook of my neck, his teeth grazing the sensitive skin there. “Lysa,” he rasped, the name a jagged prayer against my throat. “Mine. You feel... Gods, you feel like silence.”
That word—silence—pierced the haze of lust. To him, I was relief.
I was the analgesic for his agony, the cool water on a burn.
The realization was a bucket of ice water dumped over my fevered skin.
I wedged my hands against his chest—hard.
It took every ounce of willpower I possessed, my own blood screaming at me to pull him closer, to let this fire burn us both to ash.
“Fenrik.” I gasped, shoving again.
He froze panting, his forehead resting against my collarbone.
“Stop,” I said. My voice shook. I forced myself to lift my head, to look at the man who was trembling against me. “Not like this.”
He pulled back slowly, blinking as if waking from a trance. His eyes were wide, the pupils blown so large the grey was swallowed by black. His lips were swollen, red-bitten, and he looked... destroyed.
“Not while you’re in pain,” I said. I reached up, intending to cup his cheek, but stopped myself. I couldn’t risk the connection sparking again. “I want you to choose me, Fenrik. Not need me. Not just because I make the hurting stop.”
The color drained from his face so fast it was terrifying. He stumbled back, putting a foot of distance between us, then two.
“I—“ He choked on the word. He looked down at his hands, turning them over. “I didn’t... I almost...”
He didn’t finish. He spun on his heels, turning toward the door that had refused to open for me. He slammed his hand against the wood, and the lock shattered with a metallic crack, the door flying open so hard it rebounded off the inner wall.
He fled into the corridor without looking back, disappearing into the shadows of his own home.
I stayed pressed against the bookshelf, listening to his retreating footsteps until the sound was swallowed by the storm outside. The amber lights flickered once, then died, plunging the room into darkness.
My legs gave out. I slid down the spine of the books until I hit the floor, pulling my knees to my chest. My body was still humming, alive and aching with a fierce, terrifying want. I touched my lips, tracing the ghost of his mouth.
He was a monster, they said. A cursed beast. But it wasn’t his darkness that scared me. It was how easily my own darkness had risen to meet it.