Chapter Forty-One
Fallyn
Ihadn’t even opened my eyes yet and there was already pain, as if my entire body had been scraped out, right down to the very marrow of my bones. Then there was the warmth that kept me from moving, besides my leaden limbs.
It took massive effort to blink my eyes open against the heaviness begging them to stay closed. Panic lurked beneath my awareness, like water closing in around me while I heard chaos from above. The world slowly swam into focus—soft, golden torchlight, blood, stone, and Ash.
For the second time, I was surprised to see his eyes open.
He was too still. Too quiet, his dark galaxy eyes devoid of any emotion I could read. Instead, I was met with a myriad of emotions, too stormy and ever-changing for me to read. My hand was still tangled in his hair. A flush over my cheeks. I hadn’t remembered doing that.
“You’re alive.” My voice was a rasp.
Ash’s face fell dangerously into the territory of a scowl. “You should have left. You should have run.” An admonishment.
“What was it you said to me before?” I dropped my voice into the worst possible imitation of him. “Someone needs to keep you alive.”
His gaze darkened again, absorbing the light in the room, something unspoken burning, crackling the air between us.
He huffed a humorless laugh. “You’re different when you’re not afraid of me.”
“If you’d like me to put a knife to your neck again, all you have to do is ask. Though it might be a bad time to tell you that I did have to stab you.”
He froze for a heartbeat, tension coiling between us. I panicked, worry seizing me that I’d said something terribly wrong. “You…” A dark chuckle. “You what?”
“I had to.” A sheepish laugh tumbled from my throat before I could stop it. “To draw the poison out.”
“You use a knife on me and I’m not even awake to enjoy it?” His sarcasm was quieter now, but it still made my lips twist upwards. “Speaking of which, you can manipulate poison?”
I shrugged, my newfound smile falling away and my awkwardness growing like a weed.
“I poisoned someone when I was a child. It was an accident. I spilled a poison over a blade, not realizing what it was, and before I could do anything about it, the man who commissioned that piece from Father grabbed it from me. I felt the poison hit his bloodstream.” I choked my confession out.
No tears came, but my eyes burned, nonetheless.
“I didn’t save him. I didn’t even know if it was possible.
I felt the poison in your veins…. No matter what type of poison it is, it’s almost always bound with something organic.
” I shrugged sheepishly, “Something I can apparently control.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Apparently?”
I shrugged again, a dry smile forming on my face, “It worked, didn’t it?”
Silence stretched between us. The tears that didn’t come earlier prickled my eyes now. “I was terrified. I didn’t want to lose you.”
I felt him tense and I knew I fucked up. A thousand apologies began bubbling up my throat, a thousand sarcastic comments, biting remarks when he broke the silence, his hand touching my cheek in a flash of tenderness I’d never expected.
“I was terrified for you,” he admitted, the words spilling from his mouth almost against his will. “I can’t live with myself if something happens to you. You’re a light in the darkness, Fallyn. I refuse to be the reason you’re extinguished.”
My breath stuttered, halting in my chest—not steady enough to be a gasp. More like my body simply forgot the rhythm. I go still, my pulse loud in my ears as something soft, tender grips my heart. Something I can’t afford to feed into.
“Can you move?” I asked him, mostly to take my mind off the fact his hand still radiated warmth onto my cheek, and I resisted the urge to lean into it. Was it the now absent adrenaline that had me acting like this or the fact that one or both of us almost died?
His smirk reappeared, arrogant and handsome as ever. “I can.”
“Then make yourself useful and help us get out of here. I don’t want to have saved your life for nothing.”
His response was a hollow, humorless laugh before he got to his feet, and with an outstretched hand, hoisted me to mine.
We found no other usable hallway. Part of this place had been caved in, so whatever entrance that used to be here was under a pile of rock and marble stone. Completely impassable. And we lost who even knew how much time?
My magic had recovered just enough that I could scrape enough together for vines for us to climb out, but we were both exhausted once we hit the fresh, sweet-smelling forest air. I wanted to bathe and sleep forever simultaneously.
But I was also starving.
Something my stomach felt the need to exclaim at that very moment.
Ash dropped down in front me, grabbing my legs and hoisting. I gasped, not finding any fight in me as he picked me up in a piggyback.
“What are you doing?” I asked even as my head rested heavily on his shoulder. “You don’t need to do that.” Yet I yawned and my eyes sagged closed against my will.
“Sleep, little shadow. You’re safe.”
Safe. The word echoed within me.
I’d never felt fully safe. All my life, I’d searched for someone who made me feel that way and Thaddeus, Rowena, and Odessa were the closest thing I had to that. But even they were ripped away from me. Father too.
But Ash was so strong he survived even hydra venom.
Maybe he was safe enough to put my faith in, if only for the moment.
I sighed contentedly.
Safe. At last.