Chapter 27 Lysa
twenty-seven
Lysa
The heavy oak door clicked shut behind Mrs. Crane, and the room seemed to exhale.
The polite air of the sickroom vanished, replaced by a force that pulled everything toward the man sitting beside my bed.
At first, Fenrik watched the door as if making sure the world had truly stopped intruding, then turned his gaze to me.
His eyes were grey, just grey. No frantic silver, no shadow-flashes.
He dragged his chair back closer, until his knees bumped the mattress again.
He took my hand, his thumb tracing the skin below the new scar.
“I remember,” he said. His voice was a rumble that I felt in my chest more than my ears. “Everything. The memories crashed back.”
“The ritual?” I asked softly.
“It wasn’t a ritual. It was an installation.
” A mirthless laugh escaped him. He looked down at our joined hands, his jaw tightening until a muscle leaped in his cheek.
“My parents didn’t die in an accident, Lysa.
Kelda broke the containment circle. She hijacked the ley-line deliberately so she could install her little pet project. ”
He guided my hand to his chest, pressing my palm flat against the linen of his shirt. Beneath it, his heart beat with a steady rhythm.
“I spent thirteen years thinking I was a monster,” he said. “Thinking my lack of control killed them. But I wasn’t a monster. I was just plumbing.”
I blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“Plumbing,” he said again, his eyes dark with a mixture of fury and absurdity. “Municipal infrastructure. That thing, the shadow, was a governor valve. The Law of Arcane Entropy states that waste magic must go somewhere. Kelda didn’t want the bother of managing it, so she built a filter. Me.”
“She turned you into a sewage treatment plant for magic,” I said, the horror of it warring with the ridiculous analogy.
“Precisely.” He leaned forward, his face inches from mine. “And do you know how a governor valve works? It shuts down the system when pressure gets too high. And for that particular construct, ‘pressure’ was human emotion. Joy, grief, rage... desire.”
His gaze dropped to my mouth, and the air in the room all of a sudden felt hot.
“That’s why I couldn’t...” He trailed off, a faint flush rising on his high cheekbones, conflicting delightfully with his stern expression. “That’s why I struggled to maintain composure around you. The moment I felt anything genuine, especially regarding you, the valve clamped down.”
“So,” I said, a slow smile tugging at my lips despite the grim context. “You’re telling me that you didn’t nearly shift into a beast and eat me in the study because you hated me, but because your internal safety switch panicked at how much you wanted to kiss me?”
Fenrik groaned, tipping his forehead forward until it rested against mine.
“Panic is a mild word for it,” he muttered against my skin. “The machine was designed to handle maintenance levels of emotion. You, my inconvenient wife, caused a catastrophic system failure. Every time you looked at me with those damn honey-gold eyes, the filtration system went critical.”
“I broke your valve,” I said.
He pulled back enough to look at me, and the hunger in his expression made my breath catch. There was no governor now.
“You obliterated it,” he said. “Do you have any idea how humiliating it is to be a grown man, a Lord of the Vale, who literally cannot function because he’s too...” He gestured vaguely between us.
“Horny?” I suggested.
“Overwhelmed,” he said sharply, though his lips quirked upward.
“The shadow construct interpreted arousal as a threat to the town’s safety.
It suppressed me to keep the ley-line stable.
” He squeezed my hand, his thumb brushing the sensitive skin of my wrist. “It appears my capacity for feeling was... volatile. High-yield.”
“Nuclear,” I agreed, remembering the gold and silver fire that had consumed the shadow dragon.
“Quite.” He kissed my knuckles. “And now the safety is off. The valve is gone. I am entirely unregulated.” His eyes darkened, promising trouble once I was healed.
“Good,” I said. “I prefer you messy.”
“Careful, Lysa,” he warned, though he was leaning in again. “Without the governor, I suspect I’m going to be very, very demanding.”
How could the air get any hotter? Was the House playing tricks on me, or was it simply my imagination, running ahead of him and finding him very demanding indeed?
“If Mrs. Crane brings me one more bowl of broth that tastes like dissolved parchment, I am going to set the bed curtains on fire,” I said, tossing the heavy quilt aside. My legs felt like wobbling jelly, but the need for fresh air was a physical ache.
Fenrik was out of his chair before my feet hit the floorboards. “You are supposed to be resting. ‘Resting’ implies horizontal inactivity.”
“I have rested three days already,” I countered, leaning heavily into the solid warmth of his chest when he caught me. “I am now decomposing. Help me outside.”
He sighed, but didn’t argue. He swept me up, carried me to the door, and paused. He listened, checking the corridor.
“Clear,” he said. “No prying eyes.” He navigated the halls with a new, careless grace, ignoring the Sentinel Beast that merely chuffed affectionately as we passed.
We made it to the stone terrace overlooking the cliffs, and he set me down on a cushioned lounger, though he kept his arm wrapped around my waist as if he expected a stiff breeze to carry me off.
The air was sharp and cold, stinging my cheeks. Fenrik sat beside me, his long legs stretched out, staring at the horizon where the sea met the sky.
“It wasn’t just the valve,” he said, picking up the thread of our earlier conversation as if we hadn’t stopped. “It was the editing.”
“Editing?”
“My memory.” He turned his hand over, examining his own palm.
“For thirteen years, I lived in a fog. Every time I started to question the isolation, or wonder why the curse worsened when she arrived. A friendly visit. A touch on the arm.” His lip curled.
“She used Veil magic to burn away the resistance. She edited me, Lysa. Cut out the chapters where I was worth something.”
I reached out, lacing my scarred fingers through his. “She wanted you to think you were the villain.”
“She needed me to believe that my love was weaponized,” he said, his voice tight. “She convinced me that connection equaled destruction. That if I let anyone close, especially you, I would hurt them.” He looked at me then, his eyes searing.
“Well,” I said, squeezing his hand until my frost-scarred knuckles turned white. “Reviewers are calling her narrative structure derivative and her character development lacking.”
A startled laugh broke from him. “Uninspired, truly.”
“And the dragon?” I asked, looking at the stillness of his chest where the silver-black mass used to writhe. “The one I saw in the chamber. The silver one. Is that... plumbing too?”
“No.” He shifted, a faint, proprietary heat rising in his skin. “That’s me. The parasite... it needed a power source. It latched onto my natural magical core, my inner beast, if you want to be dramatic about it, and corrupted it. It mimicked the shape, wore my magic like an ill-fitting suit.”
“So the horns? The scales?”
“Standard equipment, I’m afraid. Stormgarde legacy.” He smirked, the expression wicked and entirely too attractive. “The Shadow Dragon was a distortion. A muted, strangled version of the real thing. The parasite fed on the magic; the real dragon produces it.”
“So,” I said, running a bold finger down the front of his shirt, tracing the hard line of muscle beneath. “If the shadow was the governor valve...”
“Then the real dragon is the engine,” he said, his voice dropping an octave, slipping into a velvety, dangerous tone. “And the engine runs very, very hot.”
“Is that a warning, Lord Stormgarde?”
He leaned in, his teeth grazing the sensitive cord of my neck, making me shiver. “It’s an operational manual, Lysa. I suggest you study it thoroughly.”
“You think my interest began in the study?” Fenrik murmured against the sensitive skin below my ear. His hand had slid under the hem of my nightgown, his palm hot and rough against my legs. “You think I only wanted you when the walls started shaking?”
I gasped, arching into his touch despite the chill air. “Well, you certainly weren’t sending flowers.”
“I was incapacitated by envy,” he growled, biting lightly at the junction of my neck and shoulder. “Do you remember the first night you laid hands on my familiar? When you Quietened him?”
“He almost bit me,” I managed.
“I felt it,” Fenrik said, pulling back to look me in the eye, his pupils blown wide.
“The bond between us, between me and Kirion, it’s a conduit.
When you poured that peace into him, it flooded me, too.
For the first time in so long, the noise stopped.
” His expression darkened, looking almost petulant. “And I was jealous of my lizard.”
I blinked, a laugh bubbling up. “You were jealous of your familiar?”
“He was curled up in your arms, blissfully intoxicated by your magic, while I was upstairs trying not to claw the wallpaper off the walls.” He slid his hand higher, cupping me firmly through the fabric, making my breath hitch. “I wanted to be the one you were handling with such... competence.”
“I thought you were watching me like a hawk because you didn’t trust me,” I said, my hands tangling in his dark hair as I struggled to process this new reality. “You were always there. In the corridors. Listening.”
“I wasn’t suspicious, Lysa. I was addicted.
” He pressed a kiss to the corner of my mouth.
“I stood outside your door listening to you hum off-key while you brushed your hair because it was the only thing that made the shadow settle. I was drinking you in like a man dying of thirst, terrified that if I took a real sip, I’d drown us both. ”