Chapter 18
Chapter
Eighteen
Ash stood there, frozen, all the air punched from her lungs.
Tartarus?
Even the name tasted vile on her tongue.
“I read about that place,” she whispered, her gaze fixed on his taut, waxen features. “I always thought it was a myth.”
Race stopped his restless pacing and scrubbed his face with one hand. “It isn’t.”
She wanted to reach out and hug him, take away the bleakness from his eyes, but didn’t know how. “I’m here if you want to…talk.”
His chest rose and fell. He stared at her, his throat working as if his sky-high walls might crack. Then his expression shuttered again. “Why the fuck would I ever dredge up that horror—especially to you?”
She flinched, as if he’d slapped her. “I see—”
“No, you don’t.” His voice roughened. “I don’t want you picturing the horror, the degradation…” Agony bled through every word, slicing her to her core. “I want you to see who I am now, not what Tartarus wrought or how helpless I was.”
“Nothing you say could change how I see you,” she whispered, realizing he wasn’t shutting her out at all. But the torment on his face gutted her.
And she knew too well how it hurt to be judged for things beyond your control—to have others decide who you were before they even knew you.
“You are one of the strongest people I’ve ever met. If what you say is as bad as it sounds, you could’ve turned cruel, but you didn’t. You saved me from being burned alive, and then many times after that, remember?”
“You didn’t deserve that persecution. Besides…” A ghost of a smile flickered, like the rays of the sun pushing through the storm. “I liked you from the moment I saw you.”
“There you go. You didn’t have to do any of that.” She drew in another breath, then huffed as his other words sank in. Liked her? Her own defenses wavered. “See? You chose to help. That tells me everything.”
He exhaled, his shoulders loosening a fraction. Then he shook his head. “No one knows about that part of my life, not even the other Guardians who were also imprisoned.”
“You were imprisoned together?” she asked, her brow creasing.
“Nothing so merciful. I didn’t know them back then, but I assumed we were all kept isolated in cells barely big enough to stand.” His fingers dragged along the hard line of his jaw, betraying his tension. He started pacing the small room again.
Ash stayed silent. Waited.
“One moment I was fighting Malcarion’s rebels; the next, an arrow struck my spine.
” His words were stripped of emotion, and Ash shuddered, wrapping her arms around herself as he spoke.
“I woke in darkness, my wrists, ankles, chest, and throat locked in molten void-iron. Null-sigils burned the power from me. Every breath felt like fire poured into my bones…”
His steps slowed, his voice flat. “The demon-wraiths whispered the horrors they would carry out…then did them, until my mind bled. When that didn’t break me, they left me in a stone box so small I couldn’t even stand.”
Her stomach twisted, each reveal scraping her raw, and her eyes burned. Still, she kept silent because he needed to speak—and she needed to hear it.
He told her of an agony that never allowed him an escape into oblivion. “Every breath was a torture as I burned from the sigils, inside and out. Centuries of that brutality and being bent double in a stone box, I was slowly going mad in the dark…”
Ash swallowed hard, throat locked with unshed tears.
“Kaelthar, my dragon, was dying. I was no better, could barely speak, so I reached for him mentally…” He stopped in the middle of the room, staring at nothing, every line of his face carved in anguish.
“You call your dragon, Kaelthar?” she asked softly.
He nodded. “Naming him was instinct. Survival. I didn’t feel so…alone.” His fingers curled against his thigh. “I had to keep talking to him—remind him we were still one. If he died…” his throat worked, “I would have gone insane.”
Her arms ached from holding herself so tightly, but it was nothing compared to the anguish ripping through her when another truth struck like a gut punch.
“Is that why you prefer the outdoors—and those enormous caves—to being inside a building? And why you immediately opened the window the moment we came in?”
He sank onto the bench once more, hunched over, and scrubbed his face. “Aye,” he said, voice rough. “As long as I can see the stars.”
Her heart simply broke. Tears blurred her eyes.
No words could make right what he’d suffered. So, Ash did the only thing she could. She slipped between his thighs and wrapped her arms around him, offering him comfort.
For a heartbeat, he didn’t move. Then his arms locked around her, his face pressed to her sternum as if he needed her heartbeat to anchor him—to breathe.
This was why he hid behind sarcasm and wielded humor like a blade. It was all a mask to cover the horror he’d endured.
She rested her cheek on his hair, the tears dripping. “You kept your dragon alive,” she choked. “You kept yourself alive. That’s strength, Race.”
He drew back, his thumb brushing the wetness on her cheek as if surprised. “You cry for me?”
With a trembling hand, she brushed back a silver strip of hair that had escaped his loosely braided mane, then trailed her fingertips over the black streaks woven in the front. “No one deserves the horror you suffered. If I could, I’d kill Malcarion.”
“No!” A growl erupted. “I don’t want you in his sights.”
Ash patted his back, understanding the fear beneath his fury. She crossed to the washstand, splashed icy water from the jug into a tin mug, drank, then pressed the chilled metal to her hot cheeks, trying to calm the fire in her blood. “How did you escape Tartarus?”
“Still a mystery.” He shrugged. “In that half-mad state, I remember the ground shaking, the wards dying, the cell doors flying open. Then a force unlike any I’d ever known hauled me through the darkness and into sunlight.”
She took another sip of water. “Who freed you?”
He lifted a shoulder. “No idea. Perhaps Michael? Never asked, didn’t care, as long as I was free.”
Setting the mug down, Ash crossed to him, pushed his cloak aside and sat next to him, resting her cheek against the solid warmth of his biceps.
He scooped her up onto his lap and just held her.
Ash tenderly caressed the sculpted lines of his jaw, needing the contact. Despite everything he endured, he still carried an air of effortless magnetism—otherworldly and beautiful. Or perhaps it was her own growing emotions that made her see him that way.
“You look at me like that,” he rumbled, “and all I can think of is kissing you again—putting my mouth anywhere you’d let me. Hell, you just have to be near me for me to want you.”
She huffed. “It goes both ways, you know?”
“Indeed.” He trailed kisses along her jaw and finally claimed her mouth, slow at first, tasting, then sucking her lower lip—
“Race, wait, wait.” She pulled back.
He groaned. Much as it pained her, she had to face the truth. “Look, I know whatever this is between us can’t be forever—”
“What the hell are you talking about?” His eyebrows clashed together. “I want you—only you. The dark gods only know how much. But there’s something you must know—”
“I know.” Her stomach curled into itself, and she forced herself off his lap, a chill rushing in where his warmth had been.
Confusion flickered in his striking eyes. “You do?”
She nodded. Much as it terrified her, she couldn’t pretend the elephant in the room wasn’t there. “Vaesarra. You care for her.”
One beat of silence. Then Race surged to his feet, a column of fury. Ash stumbled back in surprise, her legs hitting the bed behind her.
“I don’t know how many ways I’ve shown you this,” he snapped, his eyes pinning hers. “You think I would be with you—have my mouth on you—and want to kill those fuckers who so much as breathe in your direction, if I cared for another?”
“Skaldr said she loved you!”
“So, that’s your take on this? You decided I’m still pining because of his words?” His flat stare scorched her. “And you, vixen? You’ve brought up your ex enough times. Am I your rebound?”
She scowled, her face burning, hating his acrid tone, hating the walls slamming back into place between them again. “You know that’s not true. It’s been several months since we broke up.”
“Do I? Oh, right. Because you say so?” Sarcasm laced every word.
Her mouth tightened at the accusation.
“Then answer me,” he snapped. “Rebound, yes or no?”
“No!” she yelled. “And why won’t you tell me yes or no?” Tell me you don’t care about her.
“Yes, Vaesarra and I were lovers, but that was millennia ago. Not your little several months.”
“But she’s still in love with you. You will see her again and realize what you felt for her is still there.
Why else would you kiss me, be intimate—then stop midway and put up walls between us?
” Her fists shook, power prickling under her skin.
“When you see her again, you will remember. Well, I don’t share—I won’t bloody do it! ”
Ash shouldered past him, the room suddenly too small, too hot, everything spiraling out of control. I have to get out of here.
“Where are you going?”
“Away from you!”
He caught her arm before she neared the door, forcing her to face him, his anger seeming to drain. “Wait.”
“Why? All I asked was if she mattered. I didn’t expect this—” She waved her hand between them. “This argument. I’ve been there—different situation, but I’ve been there. Daft me, thinking just maybe I mattered a little.”
“Don’t you get it?” he rasped. “I’ve never told a soul about Tartarus. Then you came along, and I could finally breathe, because you saw me—not this.” He flicked a finger over himself. “You saw what’s underneath the brokenness, the ugliness, and you didn’t even flinch.”
Ash rubbed her chilled arms. “But if she were here—”