Chapter 42
The memories came back in fitful dreams. Not just memories of his drunken father in the doorway holding that blood-crusted whip in his hand and beating Dominic into oblivion, his sister screaming and crying for help, until she, too, suffered the same fate.
Only she did not make it out alive, as he had.
No, these memories were worse. They were the ones he’d tried so desperately to forget.
The memories came back to him as if induced by Adara’s story, urging him to finally connect the pieces with his own.
They crashed back with the force of a tidal wave and Dominic realized Ace had been right all along.
He did not want to remember the way his and Adara’s story fit together in such jagged, mangled shards that pierced his chest.
Dominic jolted awake. The old, rickety bed beneath him was uncomfortable.
The tattered fur blanket hardly fought the biting chill of the desert night, but it was better than nothing.
He rolled to his side to face Adara. She was such bliss and such agony, and she would destroy him if he didn’t kill her first.
Dominic refused to focus on the past. Instead, he gazed at Adara’s tranquil features, finally at ease, an expression he rarely saw her wear around him.
A strand of hair lay over her face, and he gently moved it behind her ear, not wanting anything to cover her beauty, despite the blood and sand sticking to her.
He’d been with plenty of girls—the number of keys he’d collected over the years told him that much—but none had ever tugged at him the way she did.
Adara had this pull to her that always drew him in, like the waves of the ocean.
No matter what, they always came rushing back to shore, just the same as he would run back to her.
Dominic ran a hand through his hair. As he watched the breath leave her parted lips, feeling the steady thrum of her pulse beneath his fingertips along the soft skin of her neck, he wanted nothing more than to press his lips against her.
Against her pulse, to feel a heartbeat, so foreign since he lost his.
Against her lips, to steal the breath—the life—she consumed with each inhale.
He was utterly screwed.
Adara had made him want to live. Not survive like he’d been managing all these years, but truly live. Feel the life he’d been given—the life he’d ripped from himself and wanted back. All so she could one day look at him the way he looked at her right now and want nothing more.
Dominic pulled away before he did something he’d regret. He’d already lost his heart to Adara once. He couldn’t lose more of himself to her.
He finally knew what it was to feel what all those poor souls whose hearts he manipulated, whose keys he stole, felt.
None of it was real.
None of it was ever real. Whatever he felt was merely an illusion.
Dominic slipped an arm around her waist, pulling her back to his chest. She shivered in the cold breeze floating in through the broken slats, but stilled once she felt his warmth.
In that moment, he made the decision to hold her like one would hold their breath to stop from drowning—as long as he could before the pain became too much to bear and forced him to let go—leaving him gasping, begging for more.
But the problem was that the more he got a taste, the more it left him yearning for.
It was a curse to be able to feel something he could never hold onto forever.
“Would you stop doing that!” Adara yelped as she awoke and practically threw herself off the bed, out of Dominic’s arms.
“But you’re warm,” Dominic replied, already missing her body.
“Gods, I can’t wait to get back to Andreilia just to have my own bed again,” she muttered, hands brushing at her rumpled tunic and pants, as if she could wipe away the taint of his touch.
“Just wait,” Dominic said, folding his hands behind his head and leaning back, “you’ll be begging to sleep with me once you’re without me for one night.”
Adara scoffed, a crude smile playing at her lips. “As if I’d be the one begging.”
He shot her a smug smile. “I’ll have you crawling back to me in no time.”
“I should have left you to die last night,” she said, arms crossed over her chest. Then she assessed the room—his childhood bedroom.
Books were stacked beneath the broken leg of the bed to make it even.
A blanket was draped over the holes in the ceiling.
She suddenly relaxed, a hand drifting to her shoulder, peeling aside the bloody lapel of her beige tunic to reveal the bandage Dominic had placed over the nasty gash on her shoulder.
The wound had been healing by whatever otherworldly power she possessed along with the antidote he’d given her, but he’d taken it upon himself to apply a salve and bandage when he’d woken in the middle of the night.
Not an otherworldly power, he noted, but a combination of science and magic. A result of the Shadow Empire’s experiments to make her and the other heirs into the ultimate weapons, able to heal quickly. That was what she’d said in her story.
Her eyes softened as she glanced at the dressed wound, then to him, then around the room again.
“I see you weren’t expecting me to extend the same courtesy to you as you did to me,” he said.
She frowned, unresponsive as she began gathering their dwindling supplies scattered around the decrepit house and shoving them into Dominic’s rucksack.
She was avoiding him, like she couldn’t meet his eyes after telling him her life story.
Was she afraid of his judgment? That he’d never view her the same?
Think she was something broken in need of replacement?
Or was it because she saved his life, and therefore feared for his death?
Could she not look at him for the same reason he couldn’t help but look at her?
Because deep down, they both knew that this war would only end in bloodshed and heartbreak because there was something other than hatred simmering between them.
“Why’d you do it?” he inquired softly.
“Hmm?” Adara hummed in response, not bothering to even turn her head in his direction as she tossed some cured meat at him.
Their provisions were dwindling, especially with her pack lost in the desert.
They needed to make it back to the oasis before sunset, or they’d run out of supplies and the Andreilians would leave them.
“Save me?” he clarified, brows furrowed. His voice echoed across the walls, as if even the Ruins was savoring the sound of Dominic Nite admitting he needed help. “Why’d you come back for me? After I left you, why didn’t you just let me die?”
Adara turned toward him. The austerity in her gaze did nothing to help the lump forming in his throat as he continued to tear off small pieces of meat, eating slowly.
She padded to his side and cautiously sat on the edge of the bed. “I didn’t do it just for you. For one thing, the Andreilians need you. Not only because you’re their leader and you protect them, but also because no one knows for sure what happens if you die.”
She was right. His life was tied to the island, their entwined magic—and the healing abilities he stole from a Med’s key—was what kept his blood flowing without a heart.
But that didn’t mean he couldn’t die. There were still plenty of ways to kill him, bleeding out being the possibility he faced last night.
Andreilia’s curse was linked to his life and magic, slowly sucking it away from him, weakening him, killing him.
But that wouldn’t harm the island because its magic was returning to the land.
However, if Dominic died before the island reclaimed its magic, died with it still inside him, he wasn’t sure what would happen to his home.
None of that mattered because he’d take Adara’s key, drain her life, transfer it to him and all would be well with a new life essence and Andreilia’s magic returned to him.
“Second, I—we—made a promise to keep each other safe. I don’t go back on my word, Dom,” she explained.
Despite the stern, determined tone she spoke with, every time she called him that, her words were filled with such tender sweetness, making everything in him threaten to completely unravel at the sound of his name on her lips.
“Either way, thank you,” he said, gesturing to his bandaged wounds.
Adara rolled her eyes and stood. “We’re even now. You won’t be thanking me when I take your key and kill you.”
He hated the way she did that. Talked so passionately and full of emotion, showed her most vulnerable parts to him, then slipped right back beneath that mask like nothing happened. It seemed he had finally met his match in this twisted game of love.
He wanted to hate her. He wanted to take her key and kill her and be done with her for the rest of his life.
He also wanted her to sit back next to him, take his hand, mend his wounds, and tell him stories until the end of time. He wanted her to love him as he had once loved her. Then destroy it all as she had.
Dominic rose to his feet, twirling a strand of her hair around his finger. He laughed softly and responded, “Don’t get too cocky, love. I could easily do the same for you.”
“Is that so?” she replied, tone scornful yet taunting. She stooped to retrieve his travel pack. “Let’s get the ashes and leave . . . before the others move on without us.”
Dominic stepped forward and grabbed his rucksack from her, slinging it over his shoulder.
He winced, pain shooting through his back as he adjusted the pack and followed Adara out the front door.
Blinding light struck him the moment they set foot outside, his hand shooting up to shield his eyes from the sun reflecting off the gleaming sand.
His skin burned beneath the sun’s scorching rays, sweat immediately forming on his brow.
Adara stopped a few paces away from the house, then turned to ask, “So where are these ashes we’re looking for?”
Dominic gestured over his shoulder. “Burn the house, and we’ll have them.”
She raised a brow. “That’s it?”
“I’m guessing one of the reasons no one has ever forged the Realm Fracturer before is because they get this part of the riddle wrong. The Ruins”—he gestured to the barren desert around them—“is the most obvious place to search. Except people die or go insane and forget what they’re looking for.”
Adara stared blankly at him, her face a picture of bland annoyance, silently telling him to get to the point.
“But what people don’t think about is how they want nothing more than to reverse the clock and fix things when their own life’s in ruins.”
Adara cut in, “You said the ashes of the Ruins were a sacrifice? Not a sacrifice of old kingdoms or destroyed land, but of something personal?”
“Precisely,” he replied. “The remains of something that ruined someone’s life. And typically, nothing has the power to ruin you unless it is something you love.”
“So the people who do understand the riddle can never go through with it. They don’t want to sacrifice what they love,” Adara finished. Brows furrowing, her gaze flickered between him and the house.
“Go on,” he urged. “I’m sacrificing my home for us, the remains of my sister, and all objects I used to hold dear to me.” It was like peeling open a scab, baring his bloody wounds to her and praying she wouldn’t throw salt in them.
Adara showed no sign of shock, meaning she’d already pieced together that much of his past. He would be a fool to think she wasn’t clever enough to figure it out. He only hoped she never made the connection between them, for he’d have no shot at winning her heart if she remembered him.
Blue sparks crackled along her forearm, between her fingertips. The embers popped and sizzled, growing bigger and brighter. Then she unleashed them, sapphire flames shooting out toward the house.
It was ablaze the second her magic struck.
Dominic leaped back from the heat, hissing at the sweat already sliding down his back from the desert sun beating down on them.
It was only a matter of seconds before she waved a hand, the flames rushing back to her in a stream, coiling around her arms like a fiery serpent, and slipping beneath her skin.
Nothing but ash remained. Dominic hurried forward, fished a small glass vial out of his pack, and knelt on the ground to scoop the ashes into it.
He stoppered the vial, then stuffed it in the rucksack.
Adara had already begun walking away, Infinova in one hand, dagger in the other, eager to leave before anything could attack. He quickened his pace to catch up, sidling up next to her without a word.
“So, you’re a princess, huh?” he said. She’d mentioned her kingdom before—Ignatius—but Dominic had assumed she meant her home, not actually her kingdom that she would one day rule.
A lost princess, banished to another realm, desperately trying to claw her way back to finish what the gods started.
What Adara, the Goddess of Courage and Fire, started centuries ago.
“Does that mean I have to bow in your presence now?” he joked as they continued hiking across the dunes.
He was parched, his throat dry, and his lips cracking beneath the blazing sun.
He shouldn’t have spent his energy speaking, but he’d do anything to get his mind off the pain shooting through his leg with each step he took.
Dominic gritted his teeth, the sweat and weight of the rucksack making the wounds on his back sting excruciatingly.
He wondered how much of his back was soaked with sweat or if it was blood dripping down his shirt.
To his relief, the weight lightened when Adara grabbed the rucksack, slinging it around her uninjured shoulder.
He only nodded in thanks, sighing at the sweet relief.
“No,” she huffed a laugh, wiping sweat from her brow and slicking back loose strands of hair that escaped her braid. “But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t mind seeing you on your knees before me every now and then.”
Dominic choked, not expecting her to reply so indolently with words so lewd.
She reached into the bag, pulling out a canteen of water and passing it to him. Dominic took a sip, then handed it back to her. Adara did the same. She placed it back in the bag. At least if they ran out of water, he could refill their canteens with his magic. Their food, however . . .
“Almost there,” Dominic muttered, wiping sweat from his face as they trudged up a steep dune.
“How could you possibly know—” She stopped talking when they crested the dune, eyes on the bone arch in the distance that marked the entrance of the Ruins . . . and a copse of trees, an oasis on the horizon.