15. Chapter 15
AMARIA
I woke up warm.
Gone was the sharp, alert waking of a survivor. This was slower. Syrupy. The kind of waking that belonged to someone who felt safe. My body was heavy with it. Drugged. Like I'd been wrapped in silk and told I never had to fight again.
I didn't open my eyes. Didn't want to. There was a heartbeat under my ear—steady, slow—and a weight across my waist that felt like an anchor in the best possible way. I was pressed against something solid and warm, my leg thrown over—
Oh.
My leg was thrown over his hip.
My face was buried in his chest.
His arm was locked around my waist like a vise, his other hand tangled in my hair, and his breath was warm and even against my temple.
The tether purred between us. Soft. Drowsy. A narcotic hum that whispered stay, stay, stay.
I didn't move.
For ten heartbeats—maybe more—I let myself have it. The safety. The warmth. The way his body curved around mine like it had been designed to fit there. I breathed him in: steel and the warning of a storm encroaching.
This is what it could be, some treacherous part of my brain whispered. This is what it would feel like to belong to someone.
His arm tightened—a small, unconscious pull that drew me tighter against the firm lines of his body. His nose brushed my hair, and I felt him inhale, slow and deep, like he was memorizing me in his sleep.
That extra pressure tipped me over the edge. A moan tore from deep within me. My fangs elongated, and my vision began to white out.
Want. Ripping through me like wildfire.
I rolled my hips harder into him, needing to relieve the tension building at my core.
Once. Twice. Let me feel you…
My fangs were inches from the tender spot on his neck.
Let them sink in. Let them claim.
I allowed my eyes to roam down his body, unrestricted. His shirt was lifted and crumpled in his sleep, exposing the V line descending straight to my own personal buffet.
I growled and whined, shaking my head. It’s taking over. Don’t let it take over.
I flexed my hands over his abs trying to stop them from digging in—
Then I noticed the vines.
They'd grown overnight. Wrapped around our tangled limbs like living rope—wrists bound together, ankles intertwined, flowers blooming along the length of our joined arms. We weren't just holding each other. The forest had tied us in place.
I should have moved. Should have woken him up. Should have started the humiliating process of untangling.
But he was so warm. And the tether was so quiet. And for the first time in weeks, my chest didn't hurt. And the want. A growl vibrated through my chest.
He was here—unguarded, solid, wrapped around me like the forest had delivered him straight into my hands. What had all that restraint ever given me except emptiness?
Just another minute, I told myself. Just one taste—
The Crownforged woke.
It hit me through the bond—the sharp spike of consciousness, the flood of awareness. His body went rigid against mine.
For one breath, he didn't move. Then his heart rate kicked up beneath me, his arm tightened reflexively around my waist. Fingers digging into bare skin.
And then his eyes opened. Found my face—inches from his throat, lips pulled back, fangs out.
His pupils blew wide.
My hunger hit him through the tether like a wall of heat. The full, uncut force of my desire slammed into him, and his whole body seized, every muscle locking at once. A dark snarl ripped out of him, and for one searing second the bond sang both ways. His want answering mine, raw and starving and—
He killed it.
With the same brutal control he brought to everything else. The door slammed shut so hard I felt the impact in my teeth. His arm stripped away from my waist. His hand tore free of my hair. Every point of contact vanished in one precise, surgical withdrawal.
"Don't move," he commanded.
He wasn't looking at the vines. He was looking at my mouth. At the fangs still bared, still aching, still inches from the vein in his throat.
His nostrils flared once, sharp and controlled.
Then he dragged his gaze to the vines. Like it cost him something to look anywhere else.
"Eryndor—"
He reached for his belt. Drew his dagger.
My stomach dropped. For one feral, irrational second—with desire still baring all my worst instincts and his horror still ringing through the bond—I thought it was for me.
He turned the blade on the vines.
He sliced through them ruthlessly—severing the tendrils that bound our wrists, our ankles, the flowers that had bloomed between our intertwined fingers. Petals scattered across the platform like pale confetti.
I scrambled back as soon as I was free. My fangs wouldn’t retract.
I clamped a hand over my mouth, wildly trying to force them down.
My body was still running hot—skin flushed, every nerve ending scraped raw and screaming for contact that wasn’t coming.
The tether recoiled at the sudden distance.
Cold rushed into the space he’d left behind, hitting my overheated skin like ice water on a burn.
He wasn't looking at me. Wasn't looking at anything. His hands were shaking as he sheathed the dagger, and his face had gone blank.
"I was—" His voice caught. His knuckles were white around the dagger hilt. He tried again. "Stabilizing the bond."
The lie hung in the air between us. My fangs finally slid back into my gums. The ache they left behind throbbed like a bruise.
"Right." My voice came out smaller than I wanted. "Stabilizing."
He finally looked at me. Just for a second and guilt flashed in his eyes.
"It won't happen again."
He swung down from the platform before I could respond and before the regrowing vines could snag him. Left me sitting there in a scatter of severed vines and dying flowers, the phantom warmth of his body still pressed into my skin. The fiery need for him doused in the most savage way possible.
The tether whined. Confused. Hurt.
Hot rage shot through my chest and my fingers curled into the severed vines hard enough to sting.
The river ripped me from my mother's arms. Soldiers dragged my family out of mine.
Every hand I'd ever held had been pried loose, and I'd learned—I'd learned not to hold on—and then this male wrapped himself around me in the dark and let the forest knit us together and I'd stayed.
I'd stayed because his heartbeat said stay.
And now he was standing on the ground below with his dagger out and his jaw set and the same look every person wore right before they left.
The rage tasted like iron and it lived in my fists and it lasted exactly three breaths before it did what it should. Turned inward. Found its real target.
I looked at the cut stems. At the flowers wilting where they'd fallen. At the punishing efficiency with which he'd severed every point of connection the forest had made.
Smart. Get out before I ruin this too. Get to Liraeth. Break the bond. Then he never has to wake up next to the thing that drained the world.
The thing was, I'd been fine. I'd been completely fine before I fell asleep in his arms. I'd had a system—six feet, mandatory contact, impersonal, survivable. I'd been managing it.
And then I’d woken up wrapped in him and hadn’t moved.
Stayed there like the warmth of him was something I’d earned.
Like the weight of his arm across my waist meant anything except temporary proximity and bad luck.
I’d let myself sink into it. Let the quiet of the bond and the flowers twined between our hands and the steady beat of his heart trick me into forgetting who I was for one stupid, unguarded second.
That was the part I wanted to cut out and bury. Not the loss. The wanting. The fact that I'd been half-asleep and still reached for it like something I was allowed to have.
He'd woken up and looked at the vines like they were a trap.
I looked down at the severed stems going brown at the edges, the scattered petals already wilting, and the anger was there but it didn't have anywhere useful to go. Because he wasn't wrong to leave. That was the thing I couldn't argue with. He'd just been braver and faster than me.
I climbed down and didn't let myself look back.
The Sensorium shifted as we walked.
Gone were the silver willows and glowing fungi of last night's camp.
Here, the trees grew in spirals—trunks corkscrewing toward a canopy that seemed to breathe, expanding and contracting in slow, hypnotic rhythm.
The light came from everywhere and nowhere, diffused through leaves that chimed like glass when the wind touched them.
The path beneath our boots was thick with leaf litter. Our footsteps made no sound. Even our voices seemed muffled, swallowed by the forest before they could travel far.
No one had spoken much since we broke camp.
Eryndor walked ahead, spine rigid, carrying himself with a distance so deliberate it turned the tether between us into a leash instead of a bond. He hadn't looked at me since the damn vines.
I stayed at the edge of our six-foot radius and pretended not to care.
Serenya had her nose in the Codex again, navigating by instinct while her quill scratched across the pages. Dreadscale ghosted the rear. He hadn't stopped watching the treeline since we entered, and he wasn't blinking enough.
And Maxx—
Maxx was too quiet.
He'd been cracking jokes all morning, but they'd landed flat. Forced. His usual shine had dimmed somewhere between last night's vine revelation and this morning's silent march.
"Alright," he announced suddenly, stopping in a small grove hemmed in by spiral-barked trees. "I can't take it anymore. You're all radiating misery so loudly I can taste it."
"We're fine," I lied.