Chapter 15 #2
“You do the honors of carving out the eye. It was, in fact, you who knew how to find this thing,” she said, watching him steadily.
He glanced from her to the Whisperer’s head in his hands. Across its forehead were the letters A.R. and D.N.
“We leave it here when we’re done. Lest anyone forget who we are and what we can do,” she told him.
The corner of his mouth twitched upward as his eyes met hers again, fiery, unwavering in the face of imminent death, promising.
Removing his dagger from its open mouth, Dominic carved a smooth line around its eye, then plucked its eyeball from the socket, leaving nothing but a dark, gaping hole that matched the other side of its face. He dropped the head, wiped his bloody hands on his pants, and pocketed the eyeball.
If Adara opposed that he kept the eye for himself, she said nothing about it. Hopefully, he’d gained her trust enough to soothe her worries about him using the Realm Fracturer for himself. Or maybe it hadn’t occurred to her that with only one eye, only one of them could use it.
Dominic didn’t care. The less she knew, the better.
“Let’s go,” he said, voice barely more than a whisper.
They walked through the forest in silence.
No more sinister whispers assaulted their ears.
It was strange, peaceful, save for the blood that dripped as they walked.
Adara cradled her arm against her chest, her skin torn to bloody ribbons.
Dominic limped slowly beside her, lightning shooting through his side where the Whisperer’s claws had slashed deeply.
He would heal on his own, thanks to the healing powers he stole from a Med’s key, albeit slowly.
But he wondered how long Adara would last before the effects of her injury would start to show. Exhaustion weighed heavily on her shoulders and in her eyes as the adrenaline faded. Other than that, she displayed no signs of pain.
Something glimmered in the distance. A reflection of light against a clear blue pond that had pierced the thicket of trees.
Dominic let out a breath of relief. His throat was dry, aching.
Their wounds needed to be cleaned. They had brought no supplies with them to the Whisperer’s cave—it would have weighed them down.
They had only hoped they would make it out in time to return to the ship, or their corpses would have had no use for bandages.
Dominic did not hesitate to peel off his blood-soaked tunic, wincing as the fabric stuck to his skin.
Then he tossed the shirt, followed by his boots and trousers, leaving him in his undergarments, onto the ground.
He stepped into the water, shuddered at the sweet relief of the chill that swept over his burning wounds.
Adara’s tired eyes remained downcast. The slight downturn of her lips indicated that she wanted to argue against stripping down to near nakedness in his presence, but she merely lowered herself to the forest floor at the edge of the pond.
She reached for the laces of her boot, and Dominic stopped her.
“Let me,” he said softly, glancing at her bloodied arm resting limply in her lap.
She winced as she peeled the fingerless glove off her right hand, revealing marred skin beneath it.
Her fingers trembled as she tried to pry off the glove on her left hand, her wounded arm making it impossibly difficult.
Dominic took hold of her left hand and slipped off the glove.
Their fingertips brushed, sending strange but pleasant sparks through his skin.
He tried to ignore the feeling as he placed her glove next to the other.
She didn’t fight him as he undid the laces, slipping off her boots one by one.
Adara moved her arm, grimacing at the motion as she attempted to take off her shirt.
His hands found the hem of her tunic and she gave him a curt nod.
She kept her eyes downcast, like she couldn’t stand to see someone offer help.
His eyes remained locked on her face. But he was tempted to let his hands slide across her stomach, trace the curve of her waist, outline the slight swell of her breasts as he gently guided her shirt up over her head, but he refrained from making contact with any part of her exposed skin.
Adara’s lips pressed tightly together, holding back a moan of pain as he peeled her sleeve off her injured arm.
He glanced down at the dark pants hugging her thighs, and waited until she slowly nodded, giving him silent permission to help her remove them.
He made sure to keep his hands low and his eyes lower as he tugged at the fabric around her knees until he could pull them completely off, leaving her in underwear and a simple brown band of fabric around her breasts.
Adara lowered herself into the pond, shivering at the water’s chilly embrace.
She sighed, lifting a hand to wipe the blood from her face, walked away from him, and dipped her head beneath the surface.
Dominic did the same, wanting nothing more than to be rid of the sweat and blood clinging to him, though being entirely rid of the blood would have to wait until they got back to the ship, where they could properly bandage their wounds.
Adara slicked her hair back, pulling it over her shoulder to comb through it with her fingers. Without her long mass of hair in the way, Dominic had a clear view of her upper back, sculpted with lean muscle and ink.
And scars. Thick, jagged scars that lined the edges of her shoulder blades, parallel to one another as they plunged down her back, beneath the fabric around her chest. Something inside him lurched, his throat going dry at the sight of them, breath catching in his lungs.
So deep, so harshly carved into her flesh, like someone had hacked away at her back, sawing through skin and bone until there was nothing more to destroy, then left to heal terribly on its own.
Inky black flames painted her back in the shape of wings folded against her skin, stemming from those gruesome scars.
“It’s rude to stare, Nite,” Adara uttered, glancing at him from over a bare shoulder.
He shook his head, as if waking from a trance. “Sorry,” he muttered. “I was just curious about your tattoo.”
Adara chuckled, the sound hollow and exhausted, and shook her head. “Honestly, so am I.”
His brows furrowed. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, I don’t know anything about them,” Adara explained.
She turned to face him, pointed to the fire on her chest. “I know I was born with this”—blue flames danced across her fingertips before dwindling to smoke—“for obvious reasons. But that one appeared one day after . . . I’m not sure why I have them,” she admitted.
There she went again, her cryptic nonsense about her past. Like a home that he’d never seen on any maps and those mysterious tattoos.
He silently questioned if she hated them, if they felt like an invasion of her skin, showing up with no way to be rid of them.
“The gods must have given them to me to remind me of something.” Her reasoning eased his thoughts, knowing that she believed they were something she needed.
She turned her back on him, continuing to wash away the grime sticking to her.
He wondered if it still hurt, the maimed skin of her back.
Wondered what sort of injury—no, not injury, torture—she’d endured to receive such savage punishment.
Whatever this was, was meant to hurt, to last forever.
His chest ached to imagine her, so young, enduring such torment.
Who would do such a thing to leave her so irreversibly damaged?
He would, he reminded himself. The King of Keys would leave her in such despair from a broken heart that could never be healed.
Dominic waded closer to her. His fingers drifted up her back, lightly tracing the flaming wings, but straying away from the scars. She shivered beneath his touch, but did not move away.
“Who did this to you?” he whispered. Whoever it was, he wanted to know. It could be valuable information to help him in this war.
No, it was deeper than that. Deeper than needing to learn all her weaknesses so he could expose them.
Adara would surely want revenge on whoever hurt her, and Dominic would be willing to help her take it, if she would let him.
He, too, had scars that marred his back.
Deep, unhealed from being broken open too often.
By the way she shuddered at his words, he knew that whoever it was, she was afraid of them.
Just as he was afraid of the hand that had given him his scars.
Adara shouldn’t have to face the same thing he did alone.
She looked at him over her shoulder, eyes glossy but filled with rage. Not at him, at whoever caused her this pain. “The same person I’m going to kill once we make the Realm Fracturer.”
Sensing she wasn’t going to tell him more, Dominic decided against pushing the subject. “Then we’ll have to survive our search for the other relics.”
Adara turned toward him and nodded with determination.
Then her gaze softened, drifting down to the center of his chest, heating his skin.
He felt so bare, so vulnerable beneath her gaze, not because of his naked chest, but because it felt like she glimpsed right through him.
Like she knew his darkest secrets with nothing more than a simple glance.
Like she would reach inside him and find permanent residence, filling the abyss where his heart used to be with her light.
Her eyes landed on the scar that marred the flesh where his heart should have been. “And who,” she started, voice gentle as her fingers skimmed over his chest, “did this to you?”
His magic thrummed in a rhythmic response, pounding against his ribs as if it wanted her touch. But his heart was no longer in that cage. It was at the bottom of the Plagued Sea.
Dominic grabbed her hand forcefully and removed it from his chest. He hated that she dared to so tenderly reach for something that wasn’t there. So many people had grasped for something he could never offer. His jaw tensed as he ground out, “I did.”
Her eyes snapped back up to his face. Shock flashed in her irises. She quickly blinked it away. He let go of her hand. Thankfully, she made no move to touch him again. Though his heart was no longer there, he loathed the thought of anyone being remotely near where it used to be.
“The rumors are true?” she asked. “You really did carve out your own heart?” Her brows knitted together, eyes assessing him as if trying to figure out why he would do such a diabolical thing to himself. She gazed at him with confusion mixed with something like pity.
He nodded slowly. “Of course.”
“Why?” she breathed incredulously.
Life was so much easier without the burden of all the pain and suffering.
Without any guilt. Without any joy or love to be ripped away from him.
“So I wouldn’t feel anything,” he responded simply.
“So I wouldn’t feel love.” His voice turned harsh.
“So when people like you came along, trying to manipulate me into loving them, I knew I wouldn’t fail. ”
Adara’s expression hardened, no longer feeling sorry for him.
He sensed the trepidation in her features as she discovered that she’d thrown herself into a war she never had a chance at winning.
He relished that feeling of someone’s fear skating along his bones, so palpable, so fragile. Dominic chuckled darkly.
“Now you’re getting it,” he said. “You can’t win a war of hearts against someone who doesn’t have one.”
Adara’s lips twitched, on the brink of a knowing smirk as the fire returned to her eyes, unyielding.
“Yes, I can,” she countered. “The heart isn’t what holds all the emotions.
It’s the head. That’s where all the memories and the feelings that come with them are stored.
I don’t need you to have a heart to make you fall in love with me, so long as you haven’t lost your mind, too. ”
Dominic smirked. Laughed bitterly, once again.
“I not only freed myself of my heart but also a portion of my memories.” He’d rid his mind of all those emotions when he drank the elixir that erased some of his memories.
Any part of his mind that was capable of love was utterly destroyed along with his heart.
“I hate to break it to you, love, but I lost that a long time ago, as well.”