Chapter Twenty-Four
Fallyn
Darkness descended over the realm bringing with it a deception of peace.
Too many things went bump in the night in Inithilia.
Too many terrors dwelled just beyond your view, but somehow you were never out of view from them.
We made camp in—of all things— a shallow cave nestled in the trees, most likely a forgotten mining entrance that looked long sealed off.
I was grateful that every nook and cranny in this cave was visible.
There was no worrying about something being home and sneaking up on us.
But on the other hand, if something came in the night, we had nowhere to run either.
When I voiced this, Ash didn’t seem concerned.
So, while he kindled a fire, a skill I didn’t possess, I sat back against the wall with the blades I had taken from home and my father’s whetstone, grinding the blade to a honed lethality that even caught Ash’s attention.
“What are you doing?” Ash asked, his voice softer than I’d remembered it.
I peeled my eyes away from my task to pin him with an unfriendly stare.
I wasn’t thrilled about being forced to sleep in close quarters with him, much less knowing my screaming when my nightmares inevitably struck would most likely bring danger to us.
I didn’t want to engage with him more than necessary, so I sighed and went back to my task.
“I’m readying myself for a fight,” I answered pointedly, keeping my eyes on my task.
I just didn’t say how that fight was likely not far away.
He grinned at me, the flames that illuminated the cave washing his face in a stark, orange glow.
His raven-colored hair came alive in the flames, but it was the gold flecks of his eyes that were particularly piercing.
“You have to ready yourself?” He clicked his tongue against his cheek. “And here I thought that was just your natural state.”
“A fight, yes. I don’t need to ready myself to give you a tongue lashing,” I warned in a frosty tone.
His smirk turned sinful. Daring. His tone dropped, following suit, and I hated the way my heart picked up its pace in my chest as a result. “Do I get to lash my tongue on you after?”
The mental image of him between my thighs, of that wicked stare looking up at me, made heat erupt along my spine. I sat up straighter as I banished the thought with vehemence.
“Not interested.” I made a show of dismissing him and returning all my attention stoically to my task at hand, but a dark chuckle told me he wasn’t terribly dissuaded.
“Keep telling yourself that,” came his voice, smooth as spiced bourbon.
If I kill him, does it kill the curse?
The ugly thought was oily and slick against my mind, refusing to be swept away to the back of my subconscious like all my other unpleasant thoughts, coming back every time I turned my attention.
Worse, it came back with renewed urgency each time.
My knife was at my belt. Inches from my hand.
My curse touched hand with its shadow raising to my wrist, as if I’d dipped my hand in an inkwell.
Adrenaline hit me with a zing, pumping my blood faster. He lay. Right. There.
Before I could think, I grabbed my knife, swinging my knees over him to pin him to the ground. His snarling lips had me wondering if I had just made a fatal mistake.
“What’s your plan exactly?” He had the audacity to not even sound alarmed. The cold, black steel against his throat didn’t concern him. His eyes remained steady on me.
“I kill you, the curse goes away.” I strained, begging my body to follow suit with my mind. My hand shook, infuriatingly refusing to follow my demand.
He shrugged, dislodging my logic. “Perhaps. Or perhaps you doom yourself to suffer alone with no way to end it. At least wait to kill me until we know all the details.”
Blood.
I hadn’t even realized I’d pressed it so hard into his neck. Revolting from the sight, I hurled the knife away. Biting my lip on an apology until viewing his smug expression, I glared at him, almost wishing for the knife back. “Serves you right,” I spat at him.
“I’m not sure about you, but where I come from, a beautiful woman holding a knife to my neck is just foreplay. I’m quite content here.”
To punctuate his point, his hands gripped my thighs and wiggled his hips upward into mine, the bulge there letting me understand exactly how much he was enjoying this interaction. I hurtled myself after my knife with everything I had, desperately vying for some distance. But I went nowhere.
My scalp burned where his hand had easily been freed from beneath my knee and came up to grip my hair. Not enough to hurt so long as I didn’t struggle. I stilled. The ground pressing uncomfortably into my knees wasn’t enough to move me as I glared down my nose at him.
“I’ll make something abundantly clear.” His roguish grin widened. “You cannot overcome me, little shadow. Though you’re welcome to come all over me.” He lifted his hips into me again had me parting on a harsh exhale.
I hissed at him, ignoring the shiver down my spine. A shiver that was too heated to only be fear. “Unhand me, you scoundrel.”
His eyebrow ticked, and a laugh vibrated in his chest. “A scoundrel, am I?”
“Yes. And I can’t stand you.” That tick in his brow again. My breath left me when his grip on my hair directed me until I hovered over him, my lips mere inches from his.
“Good thing you’re on your knees then.”
Tears prickled my eyes and my scalp burned, though his hold slackened. He didn’t hurt me, despite my palm flying up to greet his face, somehow missing my own in the process.
“The sooner this is all over, the better,” I spat, hurtling myself away from him the moment my hair was no longer in his grip, hauling myself to the far side of the fire.
“Just so we’re clear on what happened, I was sleeping when you attacked me.
I woke up to steel at my neck. Don’t act like I’m the bad guy.
” His relaxed tone was entirely out of sync with the tightness of his shoulders.
His smile fell away to something akin to a warning.
“A good girl with a vicious side is really something to behold, but Fallyn, if you ever pull a blade on me again, know that either you’ll be successful in killing me, or it’ll be the last thing you ever do. ”
With that ominous warning sitting firmly and heavily between us, he closed his eyes, the picture of relaxation.
I didn’t sleep, didn’t move, that entire night.
Something that wasn’t quite fear—a cautious awareness— kept my nervous system thrumming at his proximity.
What I wasn’t expecting was the tremendous guilt that came with it.
I’d held a knife to his neck. I tried to kill him.
And for what? To make my own life better?
What a moment of weakness. A shameful moment that compounded my grief.
And I would have to sit with it in silence.
ASH
Her eyes were an unusual shade of greyish green, bringing to mind a spring meadow in bloom while a storm waited just beyond. Storm meadow green. When she was awake, the storm was readily apparent, not just for the grey hue her eyes had, but for the flickers of lightning her temper wrought.
She was tempestuous as much as she was a rare bloom.
Fuck.
Her head turned away from the fire towards me, revealing her dampened brow. Her chest began rising faster. A sob escaped from her lips, quiet, and gutting, and laced with grief.
My heart lurched in my chest, something that hadn’t happened in recent memory.
This female must have faced something truly awful for it to latch into her mind this way. I saw it even before the trauma that was Thaddeus. I know she fought closing her eyes a long time before shock and exhaustion pulled her under, and now I understand why.
Reaching for her hand, I summoned my magic to calm her racing mind.
To soothe. My shadows slipped silently under her skin to chase her consciousness, darkening her mind to any horror that dared reveal itself to her.
The effect was immense and immediate. Like a piper whose strings had been cut, the tension roiling off her ebbed as she sagged back towards the fire.
I knew the black void of sleep I’d brought her would be bliss compared to whatever monster she saw inside her mind.
I rubbed circles into her palm, not quite done.
The lines of her face eased, her heart-shaped face lightening at last. Her brow receded. Her lips parted on a deep, slow breath. She was blissfully asleep.
And most importantly, quiet.
My thoughts were sharp and puncturing. I was kind to her so she wouldn’t scream and attract fuck knew what monsters crawled nearby.
So we didn’t have to fight the dangers that lurked in the darkness blissfully oblivious to our presence.
I convinced myself of this several times as I got up to the other side of the fire and relaxed against the stone wall.
FALLYN
The heat from the fire warmed me so thoroughly that I felt smothered.
But that wasn’t the first thought I had.
It was the first time I could remember that I’d slept without waking from a nightmare.
No cold sweat. No terror. No screaming. No male stalking me from the edge of a nightmare.
I checked myself for wounds more out of habit than anything else, but I found nothing.
My heart thumped wildly in my chest. I’d not slept near someone else, even in the same room, for fear of my nightmares revealing me for my weakness.
Ash had been across the fire. But he was obviously none the wiser.
But why didn’t I wake up screaming tonight?
I woke in earnest, blinking at the dawn meeting the foggy horizon in all its pastel watercolors.
Ash was seated close by, watching the beginning of the sunrise.
He hadn’t yet noticed me, so I stole the moment to observe him.
In the quiet of the morning, he was relaxed.
Unguarded. His jaw wasn’t permanently clenched, his night and golden star eyes were calm, his posture as loose as one can be when reclining against stone.
Seeing him like this made me peer closer, as if I were seeing just below the murky surface for a moment and wanted to explore further.
“Sleep well, little shadow?”
I blinked. His head swiveled to face me with that increasingly familiar, lopsided grin. I shook my head to center myself, to see him for what he was loathsome. “Sweet dreams?”
Now that got my attention.
“You.” I didn’t mean for it to come out as a hiss, but I couldn’t stop myself from feeling vulnerable, more so than ever. “You did something.”
“Me?” He raised his eyebrows innocently. “What did I do?”
“I didn’t have a nightmare. I didn’t—” I cut myself off, not wanting to reveal too much. His face softened, starting with his eyes.
“You’re safe, Fallyn.” In a movement too smooth to be mortal, he got up to sit beside me. I bristled, unsure what to make of him. “What happens in your nightmares? What is it that haunts you?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” I turned away from him to look at the fire, but his hand, warm on my skin, tilted my chin back to him.
“Maybe I would.” The intensity of his stare made me swallow thickly, a movement he tracked.
I opened my mouth on a biting retort and was surprised when one didn’t come. Instead, I shoved away from him, yanking my resolve over me like a protective cloak.
“We should go.” I said, quickly busying myself in packing my bedroll.
“The sooner we break the curse, the better.” His face darkened, falling into a casual nonchalance as he pulled away.
He wasn’t cold exactly. He said nothing as he put the fire out and eliminated the signs of our camp. As if we were never here.