CHAPTER 18 #2
“I heard your…” But had it been Kilian’s voice I’d heard? To be fair, I hadn’t been the most clear-headed in the first challenge.
“I spoke to you before you went into the cave, but not while you were in there. I felt your pain when the creature attacked you and then the link went silent. Remember?” Kilian was giving me a strange look, like he was trying to figure something out.
“Maybe I’m mistaken.” I gave an airy laugh, hoping it concealed my unease.
Perhaps it had been the same voice I’d heard on the summit, when practicing with Septimus?
But if it wasn’t from Kilian, then where did it come from?
I was too disturbed to think more on it and Kilian was eyeing me like I was mad. “Anyway. You were saying?”
He was still looking quizzically at me, but he said, “I’m going to send a small shock through you. You’re going to draw on the link. Since you’ve handled shadows before, I’d suggest using that to smother the current.”
“Is it going to hurt?”
“It shouldn’t, if you diffuse it correctly.”
I inhaled deeply, letting my eyes drift shut. All it did was heighten my other senses. And he invaded each and every one of them. His hand, callused against mine. His scent. The power radiating from him. It made thinking of anything else very difficult.
A tingle jolted through my palm, and my eyes flew open in surprise.
“You’re not concentrating.”
I frowned. “That hurt.”
“No, it didn’t. You need to focus.”
Focus. I needed to focus. My life was quite literally dependent on me learning this skill.
Mine and the other candidate’s lives. I had to pay attention so I could tell them all how to do it.
I needed to not imagine his hand sliding up my arm and trailing down to my waist. If he might pull me onto his lap after and let me straddle him.
How he’d feel beneath me. If he’d suck on my pulse point until–
“Fucking hell, Lirah. You’re going to kill me.”
“I told you we shouldn’t practice together,” I said churlishly.
“If you could keep your thoughts out of the gutter, this would be a lot more straightforward.”
“Maybe you should stop breaking into my head and let me concentrate.”
“Maybe if your thoughts weren’t so fucking loud, I’d be able to ignore them.”
“Maybe–”
“Shut up.” His hands were on my waist then, and he drew me toward him so quickly I hardly registered the movement. My knees fell on either side of him, and he closed the gap between us instantly. His lips were on mine, unhurried. A gentle reunion after last night’s hasty departure.
“Don’t tell me to shut up,” I muttered, running my hands through his hair.
“Never shut up.” He pulled me against him, deepening the kiss.
I rocked my hips against his and he groaned into my mouth. He dropped his head to my neck, his tongue laving over my pulse, better than anything I’d imagined.
“This isn’t the sort of practice I thought we’d be doing today,” I gasped.
“Tell me to stop.”
“Never stop.”
“I need to teach you how to channel the magic.”
“Teach me tomorrow.”
“There are important things we need to speak about before I do the things I want to you,” he murmured against my skin, his nose tracing the curve of my jaw.
“More important than this?” I punctuated my question with another roll of my hips, my fingers twisting around strands of his hair.
“I wanted–” He pressed a kiss to the corner of my mouth, “–to clear the air between us.”
“Consider it cleared,” I responded definitively, unable to remember why I was supposed to not be enjoying this.
He drew back with surprising self-restraint for someone who couldn’t seem to keep their tongue off my neck seconds ago. “We need to talk.”
I sighed heavily, leaning back slightly but making no effort to remove myself from his lap. “Fine. The floor is yours.”
He stared at my wrist. “You haven’t been wearing your protection charm.”
I huffed. “Not this again. I told you. I’m not interested in wearing a relic that belonged to your ex-lover.”
“I didn’t take you for the jealous type.”
“I would have to care to be jealous. And I don’t.”
He eyed my body, the point of contact where our hips met.
I gave him a sour look. “We don’t need to talk about this. I get it.” I gestured between the two of us. “This is a temporary thing. Next decade, you’ll find another mortal to play with, but forgive me if I don’t want the hand-me-down jewelry as well.”
“You’re so dramatic.” He rolled his eyes.
“I’m not going to sit here and pretend I didn’t care for Elena, because I did.
I met her during the third decade of the Trials.
She came from Kraventhorn. She was quiet, but she had a fierce passion for the rights of mortals.
And when she spoke, there was fire in her eyes. She made you want to listen.”
His words felt like glass against my skin, rubbing and chafing to the quick. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I want to tell you the truth. It’s the only way we’re going to move past this.
I gifted Elena the protection charm because I hoped she would make it through the challenges and pass the Rite.
But she didn’t. When she died, I grew… cold and detached.
There were no mortals after her. I dissociated myself from the other candidates, decade after decade.
I didn’t want to know about the lives we had taken them from, the homes we had destroyed, what kept them up at night.
And with each passing decade, I grew harder. I cared less. Until… I met you.”
I could only stare at him, transfixed.
He brushed a lock of hair behind my ears, fingers catching around a curl.
“You’re stubborn and rude and swear like a sailor, but I can’t stop thinking about you, Lirah.
I can’t stop looking for you, waiting for you to spare me a glance, even if it’s only to scowl at me.
I want to hear your voice, even if you only use it to curse me.
You’re always there, like a tune I can’t get out of my head.
I feel you through the link every second of every day.
I feel your pain and your grief. I feel the love you have for your friends.
How much you miss your mother. How much you hate what I’ve done to you.
And I hate myself for it too. It is the worst torture. ”
I stared into his eyes, the weight of his confession burning a hole through my heart. My treacherous heart, which thumped and galloped so furiously I thought it might explode.
He loosened a ragged breath, like his words had taken something from him. “I needed you to know that you are not just another mortal, or some sort of distraction. Not to me. You have crawled beneath my skin, and I cannot dig you out. It is most inconvenient.”
His words clawed at something ancient inside of me and my chest felt like it had split, buttery light leaking from the cracks. “But I am just a mortal,” I whispered. “And even with the training, passing the Rite is not guaranteed…”
Pain flashed across Kilian’s eyes, and I felt it acutely.
A sharp stabbing that gutted and wrenched.
A blade twisting deep in my chest. “You once said I do not have humanity because I am not capable of feeling or caring, but you were wrong. When the Rite comes, I will be grateful to have known you. And the only thing I will regret is not telling you how I felt sooner.”
My eyes shuttered, frustration ripping through me at the impossibility of the situation. “Septimus told me about the curse.”
Panic flared through his eyes and his mouth twisted into a grim line. “Can no one keep a fucking secret these days?”
I didn’t smile. “I know you’re trying to find an elven capable of restoring your powers, but how can it be worth this cost?”
Kilian’s lips pressed into a thin line. “I came here today intending to give you the whole truth, but there are some things you won’t be able to understand, Lirah. Not right now, at least. I know it’s a lot to ask, but can you trust me enough to settle for as much as I can tell you?”
I swallowed. It didn’t sit right with me. The secrets and mystery surrounding it all. How could he intend to be honest, while still concealing part of the truth? A very important part. One that defined how I viewed him.
“No. You haven’t earned my trust yet. People have died here. They’re still going to die. You’re asking me to forget–”
“I’m not asking that. But there are things bigger than you and I. And the greater good of humanity relies on the restoration of my powers.”
“Humanity? Septimus didn’t mention anything about that. He just said you pissed off someone and they stripped your powers.”
“That is what happened. But I didn’t act on a whim.
There was a plot I’d overheard, crafted by someone I hope you never have to meet.
A plan with disastrous consequences… The humanity-destroying kind.
One that makes the loss of thirteen mortals every decade look like nothing, harsh as it sounds.
And I was the only one able to stop it. Septimus and Syrina, they helped.
Except, we only managed to execute half of the plan before we were caught and stripped of our powers.
The Trials… they’re not for sport or entertainment, glory or fame.
They’re a necessary means to an end. A careful method to select the strongest: those most suited to pass the Rite.
We’re searching for someone with a particular skill to break this curse, so I can finish what I started. ”
My questions multiplied with each sentence that left his lips. If what he was saying was true… If humanity really was at stake, hinging on the outcome of the Trials, our roles were far larger than I’d ever imagined.
And Kilian… What did that make him? It challenged everything I thought I knew about him.
“I want to help you,” I said. “Tell me who did this to you. Tell me so I can try to help.”
“I’ve already said too much, Lirah. It’s not your burden to bear right now.”
“But it’s yours? How can that be?”