Chapter Five #2
“Fine,” I agree grudgingly. “Then put me to work some other way. I am not entirely useless with a bow. Let me help Mabon with the perimeter patrols. Send me to the front lines with Jac and Cadogan, so I may—”
He cuts me off. “Out of the question.”
“Penn—”
“You are no soldier.”
My eyes narrow on his profile, still turned away from me. “I’ve done battle before. I’ve taken lives. I’ve fought side by side with your men.”
“That was not the same.”
“What does that mean?”
He is silent for a long beat. “It means I want you safe. You have done enough already. Besides, you have your work at the infirmary to keep you busy. You are needed there, not on the battlefield.”
“Most of our cots are empty. Only a handful of patients from Fyremas remain, and those will soon be discharged. Lestyn and Osain can handle whatever cases of summer croup arise without me.”
“No.”
I rear back at the flat rejection. “No? Just…plain no? We can’t even discuss it?”
“Rhya, please. I did not bring you here to spar.”
“Ah yes, I’m only here to giggle at the fire salamanders like a dim-witted schoolgirl.”
“Skies,” he snarls. “You’re utterly impossible, you know that?”
“Rich, coming from you.”
“Bringing you here was a mistake. I thought I might give you a few hours’ respite from your misery. Foolish of me to try. It won’t happen again.”
“Penn—”
“No. I was right before, to retain some distance between us. I do not have the energy to fight with you, and I do not have time to worry about you meddling in matters that do not concern you.”
My hands plant on my hips as my eyes narrow to slits. My temper is flaring and, with it, my maegic. Air currents charge beneath my skin, struggling to burst forth in an all-consuming vortex despite my attempts to calm the raging storm within.
“Forgive me,” I hiss, my voice cold as the wind that chases away all traces of spring warmth. “I did not realize my continued presence in your city was such a burden.”
“Do not put words in my mouth.”
“I would not need to put words in your mouth if you ever volunteered what you are thinking.”
“You truly want to know?”
“Well, I did not ask the question merely to revel in the sound of my own voice.”
His head turns as he finally looks back at me. When I see his eyes, I realize why he’s been avoiding my gaze. They are so full of emotion and maegic, it steals my breath. His voice is raw.
“I worry about you. Is that what you need to hear? I worry about you. More than my city, more than my citizens, more than the fate of all Anwyvn. Every day, I worry what will happen when Efnysien returns. Every day, I worry that when he does, this time he will succeed in taking you away from me.”
My anger dissolves, swamped by stronger emotions.
I try to battle them back, but I am no match for them.
“And what do you think I worry about, Pendefyre? My patients? My lack of purpose? My role in Uther’s death?
My ruined friendship with Carys? My future as a Remnant?
The prophecy? The salvation of our entire realm?
” My voice breaks on a brittle laugh. “No. Those are the things I should be worried about.”
I take a step closer to him. My eyes never shift from his.
My voice drops to a shattered whisper. “Instead, I worry about you, Penn. I am plagued by visions of you locked away in that ward chamber each night, a man possessed. Killing yourself by giving too much, just like King Vorath. I cannot sleep at night, tossing and turning, wondering where you are. Wondering if you even still live, or if you’ve finally succeeded in what seems to me a suicide mission. ”
“I will not repeat Vorath’s mistakes.”
“No?” Tears gloss my eyes. “That is little consolation when I have seen for myself how close to the edge you are walking. When I have pulled you back from the brink with my own two hands.”
“I told you—”
“I don’t care what you told me! Gods, Penn…
” One more step brings us face-to-face. My neck cranes to hold his eyes, which are burning with flames that seem to ignite hotter with each word I rasp.
“I cannot eat. I cannot sleep. I cannot focus on my tasks. I cannot even breathe, thinking that you may not. So please, do not speak to me of misplaced priorities. You are not the only one who lacks the luxury of choosing the things they care for, the reasons their heart beats, and the motives for which they want our world rebuilt.”
His expression is a portrait of desperation, though his words are determined. “But I can choose. I do choose.”
I flinch. “Your precious control.”
“My city,” he corrects, jaw tight as a vise. “My people.”
I cannot fault him for that. I cannot even be surprised by it. For he has sung this refrain before, has made his position on this—us—more than apparent.
Emotions are a liability.
The things we want most in this world, the things that make us feel the most intensely…those are the things we cannot have.
Perhaps it is selfish of me to push the issue.
Perhaps it is futile to ask him for things he cannot give me.
Perhaps it is shortsighted to long so hopelessly for an ephemeral fix to an everlasting problem.
But I cannot care about that. Not with him standing an arm’s length away.
Not with his eyes searing into mine. Not with the bond a live current of power and pining.
The emotions between us are a jumble—love, hate, regret, resentment. I cannot begin to sort out which belong to me and which stem from him.
A single tear streaks down my cheek. “You are many things, Pendefyre, but I never thought you were a coward.”
Jerking my gaze from his, I turn my back to him and wrap my arms around my middle, as if to contain the relentless grief.
My watering eyes fix on the salamanders basking by the viridescent pool.
They blink back at me, translucent eyelids moving horizontally across angular pupils, turning their vibrant eyes opaque.
As I watch, several of them scurry out of sight, retreating to burrows in the pitted rocks or slipping under the viscous surface of the pools.
The sun has retreated as well, a dense bank of clouds swiftly casting the entirety of Blister Bight in heavy shadow.
The hot, sulfuric air is suddenly thick with impending rain.
“Take me back,” I say, my voice flat.
Not home. Just as Penn said, Caeldera is his home—his kingdom—not mine.
Two arms slide around me without warning.
I do not resist as I am pulled back against a warm, strong chest. The bandolier of blades presses tight to my spine through my thin novitiate uniform.
And though I try my damnedest not to listen, to shore up my heart with anger, a levee within me breaks wide open anyway as soon as I feel the brush of his lips against my lobe, as soon as I hear his deep, rasping voice in my ear.
“Skies, Rhya, if I could, I would lose myself in you. Utterly. But in doing so, I would lose my grip on everything that allows me to wake up each day and walk the ruined streets of my city without cowering. I would lose my determination to set things to rights.”
His lips skim the column of my throat, where my pulse pounds double time. His tone pitches even lower. “If I bury myself in you…” I shiver against him, powerless to stop the heat that furls through me. “I will never come up for air.”
“So it must be all or nothing?” I whisper bleakly. “We must either be everything to each other or nothing at all?”
A low, tortured groan rattles in his throat. “Yes. Gods help me, yes. That’s how it has to be.”
“For how long?” I ask. “Forever?”
“Do not ask me that.”
His clear devastation stirs mine. I feel it in the bond as plainly as I hear it in his voice.
“Infernal hells! I can’t be—” He breaks off, control slipping. His fingertips dig into my skin. “I don’t want—”
“You don’t want what?”
He spins me around in his arms, the movement so fast I see stars. His expression is at war with itself, a plain divide of self-castigation and unflagging need. I cannot predict which will win out. Not until he mutters, “Forever can start tomorrow.”
Then he yanks me fully against him, one arm a steely band around my waist, the other delving deep into the thick coils of hair at my nape. Before I can make a sound, his lips come down on mine.
Penn’s mouth is hard. Unyielding. Almost angry. He kisses me like a punishment—whether for me or for himself, I’m not sure. Perhaps it is for both of us. Me for driving him to this state, him for caving to it.
For this is an unacceptable lapse of his rigid self-restraint, an abhorrent deviation from his plans to hold me at bay. A tiptoe into a forbidden pool of lust we’ve only just sworn never to submerse ourselves in.
And, gods help us, that makes it all the more glorious.
His lips set me aflame, fan the swirling ache inside me to a blaze that soon becomes a wildfire.
Every kiss I’ve ever had before Pendefyre’s pales in comparison.
Not that I’ve had many. Tomas, the baker’s apprentice back in Seahaven, was sweet.
Kind. Slow, drugging kisses on summer nights, a flurry of buckles and bodice laces, quiet reassurances in the aftermath.
His boyish love was a secret whispered into my skin.
Penn’s touch is no murmured sweet nothing.
No whisper. It is a scream. A shriek. A desperate heat that sinks into my bones.
His fingers sear trails of fire across my skin.
His mouth bruises. Passion ripples through me like supercharged air over a steaming kettle.
I think I might begin to breathe pure flame like one of the fymandridae as our tongues and teeth dance together; as our heads slant this way and that, warring even as we yield.