Chapter Twenty-Two #3
A memory stands in front of me wearing the shape of my world. My old world.
The ridge opens up to the cliffs beyond. There—cutting across the black rock like a blade through silk—is—me.
It’s me, but not the current me.
Then me.
Hair longer and wilder, clothes torn differently, and blade in hand—I move along the cliffside with that restless edge.
My whole body goes still while my mind sprints in circles trying to make sense of it.
Another figure steps into view below.
Legend.
Oh, well. That explains the pressure behind my ribs and yank in my chest.
He stalks the cliffs like he owns the damn planet, every line of him sharp and poised. Every bit of him looks the King he is. I’ve never noticed more than now how much he doesn’t belong on these lands.
This place is just not enough for a man such as him to even grace it with his presence.
My mate is fucking delicious. Even from here, I can feel the heat of him. The singular focus that made him terrifying the first time somehow looks worse now that I know what I’m looking at. And not in the sense of fear, but self-preservation.
There is no preserving when it comes to Legend Deveraux.
The man was made to eat you up and spit you out. And I was made to want him to do exactly that.
Man, I’m a fucking—what am I again?
My train of thought refocuses when he crouches down like the hunter he is, nerves sparking to life under my skin.
“What the fuck am I watching right now?” I whisper, the scene replaying in my mind.
Past me goes rigid before fully turning.
I realize right then what I’m seeing.
It’s the day Legend came to the island and claimed me as his.
I’m seeing through the eyes of the Island; and it’s as freaky as it is fascinating.
My heart thumps in my chest. What if my being here disrupts something, or sets something back? I can’t take that chance.
So, I stay silent and wait, watching.
She, or past me, senses him before she sees him, and my lips twitch because I know now what that feeling is.
That strange awareness that curls down the spine, hooking deep in places you never knew existed.
That warm, heady need, that sense of home that makes no sense until it’s the only fucking thing that makes sense at all.
Then Legend moves toward her, slow at first. I can’t hear every word over the distance and the wind, but I don’t need to.
The bond between memory and body is strong enough that the shape of it fills in where sound doesn’t.
I remember the way his voice hit me back then: too rough and cocky for a king who’d just crossed realms to chase down a girl he’d barely known and already acted like he owned. Little did I know, he did.
I take a step sideways along the rise, following the path from above.
Below, past me uses her words like knives but Legend just keeps coming.
My mouth twitches.
My mate is fast.
That was the first thing I thought then, too, right after fuck off and who does he think he is. He moved like the cliffs were his own damn design, like the Island itself owed him solid footing. Cocky bastard.
Still, I’m faster. I’ll have to remind him of that when I’m done stabbing him for all the shit that’s happened. Preferably naked.
Legend vaults a broken stretch of rock with that infuriating ease of his. My own grin sharpens when past me glances back and smiles at him over her shoulder.
Oh, I was absolutely asking for it.
“That was reckless, girl,” I tell the memory of myself. “But he loved it.” I don’t even have to guess at that anymore.
The bond in my chest pulls hot and steady while I watch him. It feels different here where it’s stripped of all the lies that came later. Free of all the manipulation, betrayal, and politics and people who decided they knew better than the fates themselves. Here, it’s simple.
The jewels at the edges of my temples pulse with heat, and my fingertips start to tingle as little black flames dance across them from one tip to the next.
You weren’t made for simple, Haide.
The thought has my eyes slicing up, landing on Legend.
You were made for a King.
He came for me that day when he didn’t have to, and he looked half-mad the entire time.
A low laugh pushes past my lips, and I shake my head. Thank the gods he’s a spoiled brat and takes without asking.
The sheer force of him that day was rage-inducing. The way he looked at me like he’d already crossed the line between wanting and needing and didn’t particularly care who saw it.
When past me is finally caught by Legend, he hauls me up and, after some tenacious effort to get away on my part, Legend jumps off the cliff with me in his arms.
My body goes rigid as I watch, a small part of me worried that when he leaves with past me, I’ll be stuck in this place.
Wind slams into me hard enough to toss my hair back off my face, and I have to throw my arms up to keep my footing as I keep track of Legend and past me.
I don’t remember the wind that day when—
My mind goes quiet in an instant, air whooshing past my ear and with it, a low whisper.
The flame has yet to break free, leaving now shall tear he.
I freeze.
The words move through me in a way that sound shouldn’t: old and feminine and vast enough to make my bones feel borrowed.
“Where the fuck?” I murmur, stretching my senses the way I’ve learned.
Below, the scene slows. Legend and past me move inch by inch farther over the cliffside as the stone beneath my boots cracks.
Darkness begins to crawl from the ground from which Legend leaped with me over his shoulder.
Only it’s not smoke or shadow, like back in Rathe. It’s oil.
The wind whispers again, “The soul stones shall perish in the absence of their queen, so I must keep the strongest piece of her king.”
Legend’s body lurches midair, his head snapping back.
That oil, thick and shining, begins to rise from the dirt of the island in slow, obscene pulls that make my pulse hammer.
Horns breach first, long and cruel. Then, shoulders too broad and wrong to belong to any man I’ve ever seen.
Red eyes open in the center of the dark like embers fed fresh air, and the shape keeps unfolding until he is there in full.
The Nightkin.
I jolt forward at the sight of him, palm pressing hard against my chest as if somehow it will make me feel his presence.
He stands where the island is cracking open, body slick with that tar-dark shine and old blood and something so inhuman it makes every protective instinct in me go silent just to watch.
He is beautiful in the worst possible way. The most stunning thing I’ve ever seen.
And fucking terrifying.
And mine.
His head tilts, watching Legend steal me away, and the island shudders harder.
The black surf rages below the cliffs and the island speaks to him. “I had to keep the next strongest thing.”
The Nightkin doesn’t move, the red of his eyes brightens.
“Without her, I would have died,” The island explains to the demon, “But without you, he will too.”
He? What does she mean he—
Oh my gods.
Legend…
The ground heaves under me and I stumble back, the whole of Exile coming apart at the seams. Cliffs split and sand falls away in sheets. The old blood in the shoreline darkens as water claws farther in.
The Nightkin slowly turns his head. I swear he looks right at me, but in the next fraction of a second, everything shatters.
Light slams over me so hard I flinch.
I blink my eyes open once the brightness subsides.
I’m not on Exile anymore.
I’m back at the dinner table, the royals of Rathe staring right at me.