16. Chapter 16
sixteen
I’d had no time to scream. To cry out to either the guards or to Pae, who couldn’t have entered the cave anyway.
And now I was going to die. At the hands of the man I loved, no less. But then…this wasn’t Rye.
An expressionless face peered down at me through the mottled, rippling surface of the green glowing waters. But those eyes. They did not see me. What did they see?
I thrashed to no avail. Rye was a warrior, a former assassin. Possibly, an assassin reborn.
So, even as his hands clenched my throat and held me under, I stilled and gripped his wrists. I again grasped for my powers, though I didn’t know yet what to do with them.
Those eyes, though. Void of any emotion at all, even anger—they made me want to see what he saw. So, squeezing my own shut, that was where I drove my intention.
A vision surfaced. That of a girl my age—beautiful, with porcelain skin and silken white hair.
My lungs burned, begging to expand. Darkness teased at the corners of my fading consciousness.
The girl began to flicker out along with my awareness.
Whoever she was, she was who Rye thought he held beneath the surface of the water. She was who Rye was trying to kill. And in his mind’s eye, the woman laughed at him, even as he held her under the water, killing her.
That laughter, and the woman’s eyes. They evoked something in Rye I wouldn’t have thought could exist in him. Fear.
He wouldn’t show that fear. Not to this…creature.
This creature who had snapped his mind. Bent it to her will. Used him…
Somehow, I’d done it again—connected with Rye when he’d become unreachable. This time, though, he wasn’t unconscious. And this connection—it was more than it had been the last time when I’d spoken to him in that vision while he’d lain unconscious on the plinth in the bell tower. This time, I was inside Rye’s head. Privy to his thoughts. A mental breath away from his emotions.
I wanted to dive deeper into him, to extract more from him. To understand him.
But that would kill me.
In the time that took, he would kill me.
Already, oblivion lapped at my mind.
I had seconds.
I…
Rye. Stop. It’s me!
Just as suddenly as Rye had plunged me beneath the water, he drew me up. I emerged with a gasping intake of air. Dizziness took over, but my disorientation didn’t matter since Rye still held me in his grip. I coughed and sputtered, hands clinging to his open jacket.
Rye’s eyes remained white as he backed me toward one rock wall. And though I kept waiting for this trance—or whatever it was to break—he remained in its thrall.
Instead of cold nothingness, confusion now clouded his features along with those white eyes, which searched mine, his brow pinched.
While I gasped for breath, he gripped me hard by the upper arms, fingers digging in. But…at least he was no longer actively attempting to murder me. Which meant I’d reached him somehow, on some level.
He’d also yet to revert to his scarecrow form, which shocked me. We’d remained in contact and stayed connected still, but my concentration hadn’t been the thing holding him in his human form this time. Instead, something about the waters must be suspending the magic, my magic—aiding it.
“Rye,” I whispered between shaky and labored breaths, too terrified yet to call out for help.
Nothing good could come of a battle in such close quarters. Especially not between Rye and Nick’s men. Technically speaking, Rye’s men.
“Rye, please wake up.”
Rye said nothing, but his hand went to my cheek, and his expression asked who I could be. He was trying to connect his mind to my voice. Or else place my face.
I pressed a palm to the bare portion of his chest and forced into him a vision of me.
Maybe he still saw the beautiful woman with the white hair, and maybe my powers would do nothing to jar him out of…this. But I had to do something. Because inside this cave, I was the only one Rye had. I was the only one I had.
“Rye,” I said, “it’s me. Tip.”
Shutting my eyes again as I continued to breathe hard, I tried to connect once more with what he was seeing now. A new vision surfaced. And Rye…he did see me now. From his vantage, though, we weren’t in this cave. Instead, in his mind, we’d been transported back to his chambers in the Emerald City Palace. Also, we’d hurtled back in time to that night I’d entered his rooms. The night he’d seduced and tricked me, securing me into the bracers and, in so doing, binding the powers that had not been so bindable.
Rye pulled me to him, and when his mouth found mine, my eyes fluttered wide.
His lids had fallen to half-mast but still, only whiteness showed beneath the fringe of his lashes.
This… What did I do with this?
Well, he wasn’t drowning me. So, I had to count it as a step in the right direction.
Softly, I broke the kiss. Before I could utter Rye’s name again, though, his fingers threaded through my hair. Then he tilted my head back, his mouth crashing into my throat.
I could not help the gasp that escaped me when he began kissing me there, tongue sweeping flesh, lips trailing sinful caresses toward my collarbone, and back up again.
A moan I had no control over echoed in the chamber. And then Rye lifted me onto a nearby rock ledge, the way he had lifted me to perch on the edge of that table in his room.
And just like that, we were on replay. He was.
“Oh, Rye, wake up,” I whimpered, though mostly without meaning it as his free hand swept up my side and down again. From there, his palm snuck beneath my skirt and trailed my thigh. Hooking the crook of my knee, he drew my leg around his waist even as he invited himself against me.
His scent, that of a smoldering autumn forest, invaded my senses and swam through my veins, beckoning me toward abandon. But I couldn’t afford to unwind in his grasp, no matter how intoxicating his caresses. I needed to snap out of this spell he’d cast over me so that I could snap him out of the one cast over him by these waters. Like moments ago, when he’d nearly killed me, he had to have no idea what he was doing.
Right…?
Rye’s kisses trailed lower, down my collarbone and to the swells of my breasts.
I threaded my hands in his hair, my head falling back. God. I did not want him to stop. But…I needed him to.
“Rye, I—”
His fingertips delved into the bodice of my dress, then tugged down, taking the fabric with it, and tearing the collar. And I might have been shocked at the unceremonious exposure of my breast if pleasure hadn’t exploded through my form the next instant when he captured the whole of my nipple with his mouth.
“Oh, God, Rye.”
Reflexively, I arched, heat rising to my face, painting my cheeks crimson.
I’d never been with a man this way. Never been touched to this extent. And my body cried out for his in every place our forms met, its needs unbridled, the intensity itself as delicious as it was unfamiliar.
Rye moaned into me, and the reverberation of his voice through me summoned a myriad of sensations I’d never experienced before. First and foremost was the longing for his hands and lips to continue to surprise me. Then came the yearning for what would happen after that. For all the moments this one would soon evolve into if I didn’t—couldn’t—find a way to stop him.
But…despite my mounting desires—his—I couldn’t let him unravel me like this. Not so long as Rye wasn’t really here with me. So long as he was not himself. Not truly.
And didn’t we have a kingdom to save?
“Rye,” I pleaded through another gasp as his hand replaced his mouth, cupping and working the tender flesh of my breast even as his lips returned to my throat. He pressed into me, too, hips aligning with mine. Causing other things to align, too.
Dizziness threatened to cancel what was left of my cognizance, to turn me over to him utterly. My own hands braced his shoulders. I willed myself to push him back. But…that just wasn’t going to happen so long as he was nipping at my neck like this, teeth grazing, tongue teasing.
Instead, my fingers dug in.
But then the layers of my loosened dress shifted, and out toppled Rye’s ring. The heavy piece rolled over the knuckles of the hand kneading me into submission and plunked into the water. The quiet plop made Rye pause. And the moment he pulled his lips away from my flesh shocked my system almost as much as the moment he’d first made the connection.
Still holding me, he peered toward the water and down to where the ring lay, nestled between two silvery rocks.
I dared not move while he studied the ring, in case doing so triggered in him a return to violence. A danger that stood so long as those eyes refused to wash clean of their alien whiteness.
Something about the ring, though, captivated him. He released me, arms unwinding me, his form parting from mine.
Freed, I gasped for air more readily, sucking in the oxygen my addled brain needed to formulate coherent thoughts. I’d been waylaid by him twice within minutes, and both incidents had stolen my breath in different ways.
While Rye had his back turned, I tugged the bodice of my dress back into place. I next threw my sodden skirts down over my legs as he dipped beneath the surface of the water to retrieve the ring.
I edged toward the entrance to the cave while he remained submerged, half tempted to dart out since I didn’t know what Rye would be when he emerged again. Who he would be.
He surfaced, the ring—glowing more brightly than ever—clasped between his fingers. I froze as he stood there examining it. But then I must have moved because his head jerked my way.
At last—at long last—I found myself caught in the gaze of a familiar blue-eyed stare.
“Tip,” said Rye, his voice low, soft—cautious.
I blinked at him, still uncertain. Still trepidatious.
He went quiet for a long time, eyes darting from one corner of the cave to the other while that brain worked to unravel the puzzle of his surroundings.
“This…is The Silver Mountain Spring,” he said.
I only nodded.
“Nick sent you here with me,” he said, right again. “But…it’s hidden.”
He touched his shoulder, fingers searching for the wound. Then he went still all over.
“Tip,” he said at last, his voice even quieter than before. “Did…I hurt you?”
The way he asked… It was almost like he already knew the answer.
Still, I shook my head. Because he hadn’t hurt me. Not really. At least, I’d stopped him before...
Slowly, he pivoted toward me, his eyes, his demeanor, his face his own again—awash in the glow of the green waters—still human, on top of everything else.
“You’re soaked and your dress is torn,” he said, his voice catching like he hadn’t wanted to utter the words aloud.
I gestured toward him. “You…were…”
His expression darkened while I searched for a reply that wasn’t a lie but could save him—both of us—from the truth that didn’t matter now anyway. Not now that he was back.
But Rye leveled me with a glare. “Tip, what did I do?”
His question suggested he already suspected he’d tried to kill me. Perhaps because he’d been here once with someone else—had endured something similar since, that time, he’d been the one in my position. Which hinted that Dorothy might have been violent upon waking as well. Also, that she did not remember either. Or else she would have said something—warned me.
God. Dorothy.Rye didn’t know she was back.
But now he was back, too. From the brink of death.
I started toward him, and though his eyes remained cold and severe as ever, his arms opened slightly—the motion both minuscule and involuntary.
I rushed to him, throwing my arms around his neck. Rye let me hold him, pull him to me, but he did not embrace me back.
“At least tell me which of my friends are dead,” he said, “and who, if anyone, is left.”
And wasn’t it just like him to ask for the worst up front? I squeezed him hard, reticent to let him go, even if that’s what he must want, since he could not bring himself to embrace me back.
Moments ago, though, he’d nearly devoured me whole…
I released him, dropping to my heels with a light lap of water.
“So far as I know,” I said, “everyone left yet lives. And Rye…”
I opened my mouth to say the name that would lift his spirits out of their depths, to tell him that Dorothy was back, that she was waiting for him with Nick, and that she had returned to Oz to save his life.
A strangled cry arose from outside the cave, though, cutting me off.
It was followed by Pae’s shout. “Ambush!”