Chapter 36 #3
“Don’t look away,” he commanded, reaching out to her, only to halt before touching her face. A whine rattled up his chest – high, pained, and animalistic – as he withdrew. “So close, yet so far, untouchable darkness of mine.”
His gaze never left her eyes as he said those words.
Clapping broke the tension, and she watched his pupils contract into tight, menacing slits.
“Well, I imagine with all the silence you are quite done, Nightmare.”
His nose crinkled as his lips peeled back to bare his teeth and fangs, and a snarl so foul bubbled up his throat that it was feral and bestial. He pushed himself from the ground, disappearing from her line of sight as he stood.
But something snagged in Carwyn’s mind, and she turned her gaze to Harietta standing on her porch. The candles from within her home haloed her in warm, beckoning light, stretching her shadow across the distressed timber.
She called him Nightmare. Carwyn’s eyes widened as understanding dawned. She’s known who he is all along.
That he’s a dragon.
Carwyn lowered her gaze to the murdered witch next to her. She didn’t tell them. She’d sold them both and kept the most dangerous card hidden. Let these men believe they faced two witches, knowing one was a nightmare in stolen skin.
She wanted them dead.
“I would appreciate your help, Carwyn. I doubt I’ll be able to settle him.”
Kier approached the woman, who didn’t move, staring forward with an inability to see her own death coming when it was prowling towards her.
“Unless you don’t want the answers I promised you.” She shrugged. “Your choice, really.”
Carwyn’s next breaths sawed in and out as she fought her bonds, wiggling and squirming to stop Kier before he killed her.
Before he took away her only chance for the life she wanted.
The dagger glinted in her periphery. She rolled to it until she was on her back above it and could clutch it in a shaking fist. She sliced it between her bound wrists and the rope split apart.
Her arms protested against the ache from her prolonged position as she climbed to her trembling legs.
“Kier, stop!” she yelled, chasing after him.
He didn’t slow, didn’t stop. His bare foot slammed against the only step leading to Harietta, who backed up with her forearm rising to protect herself. Carwyn leapt onto his back and hugged his neck from behind. He stumbled under the surprise of her weight.
His skin was furnace-hot, slick with blood, and the muscles of his back vibrated with barely contained violence.
“Kier, please don’t.”
His snarl was lethal, yet his prying at her hold was careful, cautious.
“Release me!”
“Cease your illusions!” She covered his eyes with her gloved hand. “This will all make sense, surely. Please calm.”
When the side of her jaw collided with the searing heat of his sweat-coated neck – bare skin against bare skin – emotions, heavy and sickly, erupted through the contact like venom injected straight into her bloodstream.
Her sight flooded with blotching darkness, dazing her so absolutely that she gasped.
It had texture, had weight, had the feeling of something alive pressing against her from the inside out.
Her heart seized, then slammed into a rhythm that wasn’t hers – driven by aggression so pure it was almost ecstatic, rage so acute it threatened to engulf her, and a madness so twisted it bordered the broken tethers of reality to warp her mind.
She’d never felt anything so harrowing.
Rather than the intensity of it all fuelling her, Carwyn’s body lost its strength. Her head fell forward against his bare shoulder, and she stayed trapped in the feeling.
Her lungs squeezed so hard that it strangled her.
“Kier,” she wheezed, barely audible.
“Shit! Don’t touch me!”
The blue flames blew out. Kier pried her off and pushed her back, and Carwyn crumbled to her knees.
She struggled to catch her breath, but she felt his craze in her blood, in the marrow of her bones, and in her very essence.
She shivered in agony, in disgust, in the memory of what it felt like to be inside a mind that had made peace with carnage.
She flinched when Kier knelt beside her and recoiled even when he didn’t reach for her.
She met his gaze and slowly watched his pupils pull in tight, only to then spread and widen. Each blink seemed to lessen the frantic bounce of his eyes, offering clarity, and each breath was slower than the next.
He winced. “Carwyn...”
“I understand,” she rasped, shaking her head. “You already explained this.”
No wonder he refuses to hunt us. The exhilaration of bloodshed mixing with his illusions truly blinded him with a craze. How long would it have lasted had she not been here? Minutes? Hours? Perhaps until the death of Harietta, the last perceived enemy standing?
Was this his own nightmare? His own powers devouring his sanity?
She shuddered even as it started to fade, but she’d always remember how it felt.
Terrifying.
As much as she could see that his expression was blatantly apologetic, her gaze slid past him to the woman standing right at his back.
“You have some explaining to do,” she told Harietta. “Or I’ll kill you myself.”
The woman gave a wry smile, and although it was also apologetic, it was much less sincere.