Chapter 17 #2
“I do not hide,” she said, turning her hands under her own gaze as if searching for something.
“If you wish to see, then see.” She held her hands out for him to take a good look at.
Definitely burn marks. “If people wish to see what I’ve been through and think it a weakness, then that shall be their downfall. ”
He inspected her hands more as she held them out to him, bared to the world.
He even went so far as to grasp them in his, the heat of magic beneath her skin warming him.
Had she harmed herself with her own flames?
It was the only thing he could imagine that would leave such maimed skin behind, twisted and gnarled.
Adara suddenly pulled her hands away, settling them in her lap over her crossed legs.
She regarded him with such intensity that he felt she would light him on fire with only her gaze.
“I collect scars to remind me that all the pain I’ve endured cannot be for nothing.
I must keep going.” She glanced down at her mangled hands once more, and whispered, “Itryla al rone yi mon taka.”
“What does that mean?” Dominic asked, slowly registering the foreign language spilling from her lips. The saying was familiar, but he could not decipher it.
“Life is a risk I must take,” she answered.
Dominic didn’t want to know what horrors she had faced that had made her wish for death when they first fought.
Kill me, she’d said the night of the duel when he’d had her pinned down with his sword against her throat.
Yet here she still stood, still fighting every day for her life.
She wasn’t fighting for herself. She was fighting for something bigger. Or someone.
“May I?” Adara nodded at his hand covering the wound on the back of his leg. Blood trickled between his fingertips, tiny droplets staining the deck.
“Why do you get to torture me while treating my wounds, but I don’t get to repay you?” Dominic said as he tore the cut on the back of his pant leg open to give her access to the injury.
“Because Asher already did that.” Without another word, she threaded a needle, propped his leg up on her knees, and began stitching the wound.
Golden light caught on the red streaks of her hair as Adara angled her head down to see as she worked. He wondered if the color was another marking, like the tattoos, since it never showed any sign of fading.
Once she finished the sutures, she opened a tin of salve, dipped her fingers in the ointment, and reached out to him. Dominic tried to take the tin from her, too slow as she ripped it away from his grasp.
“I can do this on my own,” he said, exasperated, holding out his hand. He didn’t want her fingers grazing his skin. He didn’t want her touching him, too afraid that he’d never want her to stop.
Dominic swore in his head. He had to stop thinking like that.
Those thoughts, he knew, came from a time when he’d known Adara before.
He was still trying to piece together the images of her the Whisperer had shown him, but his head throbbed.
He was too fatigued to try to untangle that mess right now.
Adara swatted his hand away. “This may be the only time you get help from me. Appreciate it while I’m healing your wounds and not causing them.”
He let out a huff, dropped his hands to his side, and let her apply the salve.
Chills ran through him at the first stroke of the cool ointment against his skin, soon warmed by Adara’s touch as her fingers grazed him.
He leaned back on his hands, head tilted up, gazing skyward past the sails filled with a gentle breeze.
Fluffy clouds, gilded in the dying sunlight, floated by in the darkening sky.
It was all he could do to keep his attention from drifting back to the girl in front of him.
The girl who—despite her hatred toward him and his twisted morals—trusted him blindly and even saved his life.
She should have left him for dead. Should have let the Whisperer speak his name, killed it, took its eye, and set out to find the rest of the relics on her own. Yet Adara let him live.
What could she possibly need his key so desperately for?
From what he gathered, she had no one to fight for, no place to return to, no family or friends who cared.
And even if she did, why fight for them?
Clearly, no one had their hearts set on finding her, bringing her home—wherever the Hel that was.
“What did you see?” Her soft voice suddenly pulled him out of his thoughts as she screwed the lid back on the tin and set it in a bag of medical supplies.
As he tilted his head forward and sat up straight, Adara looped her arms around his torso, wrapping a bandage around his abdomen.
He’d been dreading that question. “Nothing important,” he muttered, intent on keeping those secrets to himself. It took everything in him to ignore how close she was, the proximity of her arms around his waist.
She looked up at him through furrowed brows, a pointed glare that told him she didn’t believe his lie. Shaking her head, she sighed. “Fine, I’ll find out why you fell to your knees screaming in agony some other way. Perhaps Ace knows a thing or two. I mean, he is your second.”
“Ace doesn’t know shit about what I’ve been through,” he grumbled.
Though Dominic trusted him entirely, not even Ace had the privilege of seeing him weak.
His second knew that Dominic had lost everyone he cared for and set out on a journey to make a name for himself.
Ace never pried more into Dominic’s life, which he was incredibly grateful for.
A jolt of pain shot through his abdomen as Adara wrapped the bandage over it with more pressure than needed.
“Sorry,” she murmured innocently, anything but apologetic.
“Trying to torture the answers out of me now, Rhyes?” he drawled. She drew a dagger from the sheath on her arm, sliced through the roll of dressing, and tied it off, securing it around him.
She flicked the knife between her fingertips, dragging it up the center of his bare chest. The cool metal bit into his skin—not enough to draw blood—leaving a tingling sensation in its wake.
“No, but that could be arranged if you’d prefer,” she purred, raking the knife up over his scarred chest, his neck, all the way to the underside of his chin where she stopped and held his gaze on her with that dagger.
“What did you see?” Adara repeated, her voice sweet and silky, but her eyes held something much more lethal.
He rolled his eyes. In the blink of an eye, her wrist was in his hand, dagger angled toward her. His iron grip threatened to snap her bones in an instant. “Such dramatics,” he drawled. “Such violence.” Dominic shoved her hand away, sending the dagger clattering to the deck, and Adara reeled back.
She caught herself with her injured arm, clamping her lips shut against a cry of pain as she reached for her fallen weapon, prepared to fight.
“Relax,” he demanded as she fisted the dagger in one hand.
She cradled her injured arm against her abdomen, muscles tense.
“I’ll tell you what I saw,” he paused, baiting her, knowing how desperately she wanted answers.
She leaned toward him, as if his secrets would be swept away with the wind if she allowed too much space between them.
“If you tell me what exactly you need the Realm Fracturer for.”
Adara chewed her lip. After a moment of contemplation, she said, “I’m from Blemythia.”
“I know,” he responded, a bit irritated.
“You said you’ve never heard of it,” she continued.
He nodded. “It’s not on any maps, so it was a lie—”
“Not a lie,” she interrupted. “I am from a kingdom called Ignatius on the Continent of Blemythia, but it has magically disappeared from existence. I’ve tried everything—maps, tomes. It doesn’t even exist in people’s memories, except for mine.”
A frown creased Dominic’s features. He opened his mouth to object.
She cut him off. “I’m not crazy,” she said. “It’s got to be some powerful spell to hide my home within the folds of the universe. I’ve tried portal orbs, and they won’t take me home.” Hope glinted in her eyes. “But maybe the Realm Fracturer will.”
Hope was a powerful, almost indestructible thing when it grew.
But once it was broken down to nothing, it was elusive, fading away into nothingness.
He needed to direct her hope toward him.
Not the Realm Fracturer, not the power his key held, not some home that suddenly disappeared.
Him. That way, he could break it down into pieces, mold it into something he could use.
Dusk settled around them, the last slivers of light barely lingering along the horizon.
The first glimmer of stars poked through the dark sky.
A spark flickered between Dominic’s fingers as he cast out a flame to light the oil lantern set beside them.
The fire danced inside the glass cage, shadows falling away as it illuminated the area around them.
Adara’s gaze caught on the lantern, then came back to his face. Waiting.
Dominic took a breath, willing the images of Valen and Saige to stay in the dark depths of his mind. “I watched the ones I loved die. Something I’m sure you’re familiar with.” A shot in the dark.
When Adara bristled, he knew he’d hit home, but he decided not to twist the blade any deeper.
“Then I saw—” he stopped short, remembering the image of her in the past, wreathed in shadows, screaming at him to run.
If she had any idea that they knew one another in the past, she never let it show.
So, as of now, Dominic planned to keep that little secret to himself, at least until he could figure out how their pasts fit together.
Whatever it was, it couldn’t be good. Not if it had hurt him enough to erase his own memories.
“Saw what?” Adara urged, spinning the silver and sapphire ring around her finger. She peered at him through her lashes, listening intently.
“I saw you,” he tried again.
Her eyes widened almost imperceptibly, lips parting in silent questioning.
“In the future,” he clarified. “You looked . . . ” Dominic trailed off, brows furrowing deeply as he tried to piece together the information the Whisperer had shown him.
“Pale, weak. Like you were sick,” he said with a frown.
He didn’t know what to make of the future with Adara, but since the first day she came to Andreilia, she’d never looked so fragile, so horrified as she had in that vision. “You seemed scared.”
Adara stilled, muscles going taut as she twirled that ring around her finger. She blinked once, clearing away any trepidation that flickered in her eyes.
She knew something. Something she clearly wanted to keep hidden.
Then she continued, as if there was nothing to worry about. “What else happened?” she asked, her tone even and calm.
Dom, I don’t want— Her sobs echoed in his mind. The image of her helplessly stumbling into his arms replayed in his head. Dom. She’d never called him that. He should be worried about what she was about to say, but for a second, he fixated on the adoration she’d said that nickname with.
“Nothing,” he replied. “The Whisperer cut the image off and tried to kill me before I could see anything important.”
The muscles in her jaw ticked as she bit the inside of her cheek, looking anywhere but at him.
“Do you know what could have caused you to look so weak?” To look like she was on the brink of death.
Her eyes flicked to the dagger sheathed in the vambrace on her arm.
Perhaps a comfort to remind her she was never without a weapon—never weak.
She shook her head. “No,” she said softly.
Her features pulled into a frown, eyes downcast as she picked at the dried blood beneath her nails.
“No,” she repeated, voice filled with something Dominic could only believe to be despair.
“Let’s hope that it’s not as bad as what it showed you. ”
Indeed, the Whisperer could have only shown him one small piece of information that made the situation appear worse than it was. After all, the image had been ripped away before he could tell what was happening. All could turn out to be fine.
At least that was what he kept telling himself after Adara retired to her room to get some rest, and he made his way to the captain’s quarters. Through the porthole, the sky seemed depthless tonight, a void of impenetrable darkness. A reminder of what he needed to be.
The sea crashed against the ship, restless and angry, as if the monsters had awoken determined to rage at his cracked composure.
He never should have told Adara anything, never should have thought about her in any way that didn’t involve plotting her demise.
He should not still be ruminating over that vision.
The Plagued Sea rumbled beneath the boat, rocking it, as if some great beast lurked right beneath the hull, poised to devour them.
The creature was steady, constant, pounding against the bottom of the ship, allowing more time between each strike.
Like a beating heart—slower and slower until death finally ceased it.
Dominic wondered what monstrous thing had consumed his heart after he tossed it into the Plagued Sea.
Wondered if it had enjoyed the taste of his rotten heart and had come back for more.
Or perhaps it was merely reminding him of why he’d gotten rid of his heart in the first place.