Chapter 10 #3
He seems to grow—shoulders broadening, the muscles in his arms and chest straining against his shirt, the tattoos standing out like black fire against his skin.
Something ancient rises behind his eyes.
Something chained and enormous and barely, barely contained.
The air pressure around him changes. The temperature drops.
The shadows under the oaks lean toward him like they're being pulled.
He grabs me. Hauls me off the wall and against his chest and his arm is a band of iron around my waist and his other hand is in my hair—fisted at the root, tilting my head back—and our noses are touching and his eyes are wild and I can feel every inch of him against every inch of me.
The rage. The heat. The centuries of something compressed into a body that was never built to hold it all.
His chest heaves against mine. His grip in my hair is tight enough to sting and I should be terrified—I am terrified—but underneath the terror my magic is pouring toward him like a river that just found the sea and my skin is electric where we're pressed together and there's heat in my belly again, that traitorous, unwanted heat, and I hate myself for it so much I could scream.
His mouth is right there. An inch from mine.
I can feel his breath—ragged, uneven, tasting like copper from his own bite—and for one suspended, airless second I think he's going to close the distance.
His eyes drop to my lips. I watch them do it.
I watch the wildness behind them sharpen into something more focused, more specific, and my pulse hammers so hard I know he can hear it.
My lips part.
He doesn't close the distance.
"You don't talk about things you don't understand.
" His voice is barely human. Shaking. The words ground out between clenched teeth, his mouth so close I feel each word against my lips.
"You don't know what I am. You don't know what I've done.
You don't know what it's like to be a prisoner in your own—" His throat closes around the word.
His eyes squeeze shut. "—in your own skin, for centuries, and you can't even die because your body won't let you and nobody asked if you wanted to—"
He stops. Cuts himself off. The wildness recedes—the chains snapping taut, the ancient thing being forced back into its box. His breathing is ragged. His eyes are wet when they open. His mouth is still one inch from mine.
Then, slowly, he loosens. The iron band of his arm around my waist unlocks. His hand slides out of my hair. He sets me down—I didn't realize my feet had left the ground until they touch dirt again—and steps back. One step. Two. Creating distance like it costs him something.
He reaches out. Tucks a strand of hair behind my ear—gentle, absurdly gentle after everything, his fingers brushing my temple with a tenderness that makes my chest crack.
I smack his hand away.
He almost smiles. Almost. The scar tugs his lip but his eyes are still wet and the expression that lands is closer to grief than amusement.
"I love watching you tick, Hex." Quieter now. Broken. The voice of a man who just showed someone the locked room inside himself and is already regretting it. "But I can't stand the sight of you right now."
He reaches out and shoves me away—his hands on my shoulders, pushing hard enough that I stagger. My body goes cold where it remembers his touch. My magic recoils, snapping back into my chest like a rubber band released. My scalp stings where his fist was just seconds ago.
"Go." He turns his back. His shoulders are heaving. "GO."
I go. I run.
My legs carry me across the field without my permission—fast, unsteady, my healed arms swinging at my sides, the ghost of his blood still thick on my tongue. Zeva materializes at the edge of my vision, falling into step, and I don't acknowledge her because I can't speak without screaming.
I make it to the path. Then the oaks. Then the bend toward the cottage.
Then I stop.
I turn around. He's still at the shed. Standing where I left him, back to the field, head down. From here he's just a dark shape against the wood—shoulders curved, fists at his sides, the posture of a man who's been hit so many times his body defaults to bracing for the next one.
The compliance walk. I saw it the first day and recognized it. The body obeying while the mind screams.
I put that walk on him just now. I aimed for his weakest spot and I fired because he took something from me and I wanted to take something from him.
And looking at him now—hunched and still and alone at the edge of a field he's been cleaning for longer than I've been alive—I feel the victory turn to ash in my mouth. Right next to the taste of his blood.
"Leave me alone, Kage," I whisper. Even though he can't hear me. Even though I'm not sure I mean it.
I turn toward the cottage. Zeva follows. The morning light is golden and warm and I'm walking through it with healed skin and a ruined stomach and the bitter understanding that two broken people don't make a whole one.
They just make sharper edges.
And I can’t afford any more of those.