7. Chapter 7
Chapter seven
Astorm was simmering in the winds and the clouds were pregnant with torrents overhead, glooming in the night’s inky sky.
My bones ached. My muscles had frayed. I hadn’t moved the entire time he’d held me as he flew.
The feel of his hands on me tripped a cascade of confusing ripples through my mind.
Some pocket of my thoughts was still stuck on the fact that he’d intervened when others were attacking me.
But as my arms were still tied around him, bound by his magic, I was afraid to feel anything other than disdain for the fae who had abducted me.
But his body was hard and carved from pale onyx, and after hours of being pressed up against it, it was difficult to not lean into his warmth.
The night air was cold, and he was entirely too easy to nestle into; his warmth scorched me until my core heated.
I blamed exhaustion for allowing myself to be cradled in his arms and not fighting him with every breath.
We landed and as soon as I could stand by myself, his hands fell to his sides, and he didn’t touch me. But my wrists were still pinned around his neck. I suddenly felt far too close to him, and my eyes darted from his.
Without moving, the shadow bonds came free, and I took a step back.
I knew he was watching my movements. I was an insect in a spider’s web. Every shift I made plucked the strings of his senses.
My eyes whipped to everything around me. “Where are we?” My voice shook. I hated it. The tremor was like the shudder of an earthquake, a portent of far worse devastation to come.
“We will walk the rest of the way.” His jaw was set as he tracked my movements.
I released a ball of tension that had been sitting in my gut. At least he wasn’t going to carry me again.
But it wasn’t an answer. I followed his eyes as they fell to the great stone walls far off behind us, the barbican gates illuminated by flickering torches.
Hundreds and hundreds of lights of the walled city twinkled against the stygian night.
It was like a thousand stars clustered together for warmth.
The glow of the city was star-bright blue and pale yellows.
The glimmering lights bobbed softly like they were breathing the aura of the night around them.
That unmistakable pulse of magic that I could now feel from the stranger next to me was mirrored in some way in the glint of the city.
But the stark reality of how I’d gotten here shut down the flutter inside me.
“What are you going to do to me?” My voice trembled as I spoke.
Maybe this was it. Maybe there was no future for me outside Shadowfall.
I thought of Bray. Dead or alive. I didn’t know.
Maybe I’d never know. I didn’t even know where I was.
Where had he brought me? I scoured my mind for clues.
Walled cities? There were so many in the Four Corners that it was impossible to tell anything about the prison before me.
Maybe that’s all this was, a prison. The walls of my future.
“I will not hurt you. But I need you to do as I say. We are going to walk through the gates. And when we cross the guards on duty, you will be demure. You will be by my side. You will not scream. You will not call for help. You will behave.”
Each command was like a stone in my tomb.
I regarded the tall fae before me. Did I have a choice in that? He’d already carried me off somewhere unknown and then flown me halfway across the Four Corners.
Maybe he would kill me if he couldn’t get what he wanted. He’d killed those men, and he didn’t even flinch.
The sword he’d used was still sheathed at his back, and the jewel pommel flashed in the moonlight.
“And if I do none of those things?”
Maybe he needed me badly enough, needed the faebane badly enough, that I was worth more to him alive.
“I cannot fly us over the city walls. The ward against magic stops me, or at least would cost me if I flew us over. But in answer to your question …” He took a step closer to me, leaning in until his dark hair fell over my brow.
“If you aren’t the picture of serenity and submission.
” He placed his finger under my chin and tilted my head upwards.
“Look at me.” He paused until I forced my eyes up to him.
“I will bleed every single person you speak to.” His words tripped out of his mouth like silk.
A caress. “I will cut them down before they can raise a hand to help you. And their blood will be on your hands. Not mine.” His voice was hushed as it fell on me, and I shivered at the power in it.
Terror mingled with an unwelcome heat that flooded through me, reddening my cheeks.
He looked at me for another moment, testing if I’d taken in his words at all. And then he released my chin from the unnatural angle he held it at.
My body was warring with staying still or fleeing.
I could take a chance. I could run. I might not get far. But it was better than being walked to my prison cell.
He pushed back his hair, smoothing it after the hours spent flying through tangled winds.
It was hard not to look at him in the moonlight.
His cheekbones stood out in stark relief against his dark hair.
That long scar that ran through his eyebrow to his cheek looked wicked in the silvery light.
His chest was carved out where the laces of his leathers had opened.
He was strikingly beautiful. And I hated that I thought that. It felt like a betrayal of myself. To not wholly hate the male who had taken me just because he was nice to look at. I’d never really used that word to describe anyone before. But he was beautiful. And just looking at him was dangerous.
He was terrifying in an entirely different way from the men who had attacked me in the meadow.
He was quiet. Dark.
And he seemed to be waiting for me to give him an excuse to throw his shadows around me again.
“Why did you let me take you?” he asked, pulling back a little to look me over.
Was he being funny? “I didn’t let you do anything. You took me!”
“You could have stopped me.”
I looked him up and down as if to say, No, I couldn’t.
“You could have tried to stop me. Your magic—”
“I don’t have any.” The truth of that flew from my lips like it was supposed to hurt him, not me. But it did hurt. It hurt to admit to the first fae I’d ever met that I wasn’t like them.
He was silent, his eyes searching as he put the pieces of me together. But it wasn’t judgement. It was something else, something coiling inside him.
And then his entire demeanour changed, and he was back to taunting me.
“It doesn’t matter. You wouldn’t have beaten me.” He smiled down at me. It was roguish and promised something more. “Trust me.”
“You say that a lot for someone who just kidnapped and threatened me.”
His lips twitched, trying to withhold a smile.
Maybe I deserved to have been attacked and captured in one day if I couldn’t stop looking at my kidnapper like he was my saviour.
And that was the problem, wasn’t it?
Right there.
He had saved me. And then he’d found I was worth something to him and had just obliterated my chances of freedom.
I had no idea where I was or how I was ever going to get to the coast, let alone the Southern Corner. I thought finding fae would have helped me get closer to finding my parents, to getting answers. I don’t know what I had expected when I finally found fae, but he was not what I had anticipated.
His chin dipped, and he looked at me through heavy lashes, his stare menacing.
He closed the gap between us. “Move.” The command was emphatic.
His voice filled the night, but he didn’t shout.
It was like the charged air of a storm was gathering in the space between us. There was no room for arguing.
And yet … when he realised I wasn’t going to obey him, he stepped impossibly closer.
“My shadows can carry you, tied and bound. Or …” He traced his finger along my jaw and leaned in a little closer.
Why didn’t I recoil?
Instead, I went perfectly still under his touch.
“Or?” I breathed in challenge.
One side of his mouth curved upwards, and I hated that it made him look fiercely enticing. “Or you can behave for me. You can be good …” he crooned. “Which will it be?”
Shadows rippled out from his fingers, and their cool caress moved over me like mist whispering a kiss over a millpond. His shadows moved so silently, so perfectly at his command.
My eyes snapped down, and my wrists were bound again, the tether gripped in his fist.
“Don’t worry, peach.” Tiny shadows danced on his fingertips. “All you have to do is behave, and I’ll release you. Just ask.” His face turned rakish, and I didn’t miss his meaning.
I scoffed. “I would never ask you—”
“Most females beg, in fact.”
“What kind of criminal are you that you think you can charm or flirt your way through this?” I couldn’t hold back the disgust in my voice.
“Criminal?” He sounded comically wounded.
“What would you call kidnapping a woman? Lawful? Helpful? Charming?”
“You mean female?” He dipped his head to one side, raising a brow. The motion shook loose strands of hair from over his eyes as he examined me.
“Yes. I just—”
“Don’t seem to see yourself the way others do,” he interjected.
His observation of me was a little disarming. To have this male say something so real. I expected another jab, but it didn’t come.
As the rain began to fall, his eyes hummed blue in the night’s luminescence, and his lips were painted as if the moon herself had kissed him.
And I was staring at the worst type of demon. The type that could ensnare with just a look.
He tugged the shadows around my wrist and urged me forward. I resisted on instinct, and he pulled a little harder. “I will throw you over my shoulder. Don’t test me.” He barely turned his head back to me as he spoke, that scar flashing in the pale light.
My insides rippled at his words, and I felt all the blood in me rush a little lower than I was prepared for.
We walked in silence, and my eyes took in only what the moonlight allowed. I wondered whether his fae sight offered more than I could see.
As we neared the gates, a half dozen soldiers slouched at their posts.
“Don’t try anything stupid.” He turned to me as he released my wrists, the shadows fading into the darkness around us, as he tugged my hood up onto my head to cover my ears.
I forced myself not to pull back from his nearness as he gripped the fabric of my cloak tighter around me.
“Are you going to hurt them?” The muscles of my neck were tense as I looked at him. I didn’t know these people. I didn’t owe them anything. But no one deserved to be hurt because of me.
“No one needs to get hurt if you do as you’re told.” The command grated on me, but I bit down on any retort.
The teeth of the portcullis gaped before me.
Don’t do anything stupid … I repeated the words in my mind as we headed towards the soldiers. I was surprised to see human and fae ears from beneath their helmets.
I could just call out. Scream. Run to them.
Don’t do anything stupid …
As we approached the gatehouse, the soldiers straightened from their listless stances as they took in the sight of the male before them. Whether they knew him or his reputation simply preceded him, they stood to attention. Two of them took a couple of steps back, their faces going a milky pallor.
My breath caught in my chest as I waited for them to notice me behind him. Or for him to attack them out of spite. My hands were unbound, he was distracted, and we were out in the open with eyes on him.
Maybe I could run. Ice crept up my spine. How far would I actually get before he caught me again?
But no one was attacked. No one was bleeding.
He spoke to one of the guards, too low for me to hear, and we were ushered through.
The streets of my prison shone with the falling rain, and I followed my jailer.