CHAPTER 14 #2
I took one small bite and forced myself to chew.
The dough was light and fluffy and just the slightest bit sweet.
On my second bite, I made it to the filling.
I moaned, and Teke laughed in triumph. It was salty, sweet, savory, and packed with so much flavor and spices that it was nearly overwhelming.
With the airy bun to tone it down, it was a masterful balance.
All it needed was a dash of heat, and I would have called it pure perfection.
I took another bite, savoring the mix of flavors dancing on my tongue, and closed my eyes.
Something slammed into the back of my head. Pain blazed through me.
I pitched forward, bun flying, and collapsed onto Teke in a heap. We went careening to the dirt. Laughter erupted around me. Laughter.
Air whipped my hair as someone jumped over me, and before my vision could clear, angry shrieks and the thuds of landing blows filled the air.
The laughter on the street cut off, replaced by murmurs of disapproval.
Turning my head throbbed. Focusing my eyes was worse.
Helene threw punches and kicks, but her strikes were only glancing.
I tried to sit up, but the world spun, and I fell to the side. My fall was cushioned by a puddle of thick mud.
“Stop it!” someone shouted, and it took me a moment to recognize the mud-covered Teke as they jumped into the fray.
“Listen to your betters,” a cold voice taunted. A voice I knew. My fucking challenger.
Protective instincts reared within me. She’d gotten the better of me three times now, but she would not hurt my friends.
I blinked—and the world changed. Colors swirled around me.
The mud on my hands morphed from dark brown to rivulets of red, green, purple, and blue.
The wind itself whispered in my ears. Raw power surged through me, and I stood—pain gone—ready to face my attacker.
“Enough,” I commanded, thrusting one hand toward her from several strides away. Vines erupted from the earth and coiled around her limbs. She struggled against them, one arm breaking free, until a thick root secured her middle and pulled her to the ground.
Around us, no one else moved beyond gasps and pointed fingers.
“She’s been blessed,” one woman hissed to her companion.
“A bierla? For an Inraen?” her companion responded.
“Truly, look!”
Calm washed over me. Then, she spoke through me, using words that were not my own. “Threaten my Bound at your peril.”
I dropped my hand to my side, and everything around me snapped into motion. I swayed on my feet, but someone steadied me. Warm hands gripped my cheeks as Callagh peered into my eyes.
“Concussion,” she said, then two sets of arms lifted me. I was sandwiched between them, one arm gripped by each of my rescuers.
“That was no concussion,” Helene countered. There was a touch of reverence to her voice, making that thing inside me purr.
“This way,” Callagh beckoned. “Let’s get you back.”
As we walked, Teke shouted rapid-fire commands in Rihtish behind us. The only thing I could make out was, “Get Dane.”
I WOKE in my bed, again, clean and dressed in a simple nightgown, with very little memory of getting there. I was getting sick of these gaps in time. I sat up and scanned the room. My head throbbed as the light from the fire stabbed my eyes. I squeezed them shut.
“She lives.” Teke looked up from the book in their lap, grinning and sporting a fresh black eye.
“What are you doing here?” I croaked.
“Watching over you while Callagh gets a few hours’ rest. It was the only way I could get her to leave.”
“What happened?”
“Just a little tumble in the mud, nothing to worry about.”
“And I hit my head?”
“Sort of.”
Pain blazing from the back of my head. “She attacked me. Why?”
Teke shrugged. “She was stripped of her role as Marr of Dowsae. Dane gave it to Kahvrah—a thousand times more deserving, if you ask me—after that little stunt she pulled at your Sun Trial. She probably blames you.”
I doubted it. She hated me from the moment she laid eyes on me. Flashes of food and Helene flitted through my brain next. “And Helene?”
“Fine, fine. Her pride’s probably a little hurt, but everyone’s good. You just rest.”
I nodded, then winced. Going back to sleep sounded like a wonderful idea.
“Drink some water first.”
A tray next to my bed was set with a glass and pitcher. My glasses had been pushed off to the side. I drank deeply, then sank into the pillows. I hoped morning was a long way off.
“IT’S LIFELIGHT, Small One.”
“How can I see it?”
“You see it because I see it.”
“And my eyes?”
“Your vision is my vision. You will see clearer than almost any human you meet.”
“Almost?”
“Almost.”
“What should I do with it? What is its purpose?”
“Life, Small One. Together, we will look upon all life and see their truths. To control life is to first understand it. Our journey in this has begun.”
MORNING brOUGHT with it an ache in my head as well as my heart.
My back wasn’t doing too great, either. My fingertips ghosted over the sizable lump that had formed on the back of my skull.
The lump was the least of my worries. I had remembered a great many things as I slept.
The attack, the jeering of the crowd, Helene and Teke jumping to my aid, and Callagh helping to clean and dress me before laying me in bed.
Their care was touching, but it didn’t erase the laughter.
I was hated here. First poison, and now this.
“Don’t get up,” Callagh said, rising to her feet. Her dress was rumpled and her braid unraveling.
“You’re still here? Did you get any rest?”
She chuckled. “Don’t you worry about me. Just take your time. I’ve got a tray waiting for you. You’re taking the day off.”
She had no idea how much I needed it.
After eating enough to satisfy her and swearing I’d stay in bed, I forced Callagh to leave and get some rest of her own.
But my mind wouldn’t quiet. I moved my useless glasses to the small drawer in the bedside table, though I still reached for them every morning out of habit.
I stood and dressed, trying to ignore the pain, rejection, and humiliation of the previous day.
With nothing else to do and not yet feeling hungry, I moved through a few easy dowsae in painstaking slowness, careful not to jostle my throbbing head.
I was three movements from finishing when a knock sounded at the door. I had expected it to be Callagh, coming to check on her invalid, but instead, Wep entered. My heart clenched at the sight of him. His hair was loose, and damn did that tight shirt look good.
He smiled—actually smiled—at me. Or, more likely, he was happy to see someone practicing dowsae without being told. I couldn’t find it in me to reciprocate.
“You’re back,” I said, flatter than I meant.
He nodded, closing the door and leaning back against it, arms crossed left over right. “You can’t be rid of me that easily.”
“Are we training then?”
His head cocked to the side. “If you’re ready. I was told you’re hurt.”
“It’s nothing.” I rubbed the back of my head and winced.
Wep frowned. “What happened?”
“Teke can tell you.”
He gave me a hard look. “And yet, here I am, asking you.”
I groaned, not in the mood to rehash it all. “I just need rest.”
His lip quirked up in that way I liked. No, not liked. There was nothing likable about this demanding grump of a man. “There is no rest for the Riht.”
“I’m not a Riht!” I shouted. Pain exploded through my head. I clutched it as I staggered. Colors popped and swirled behind my eyelids. My body crumpled to the ground.
Power—I remembered the power.
Wep was staring at me, frowning deeply. He raised a single eyebrow in question.
And he was glowing. I gasped. It was the purest, whitest light I’d ever seen.
It was so white, it was silver. Wreathed in this glow, he was stunning.
He pushed off the doorframe utterly unaware he was shrouded in a god-like light.
He knelt in front of me, but he didn’t reach for me.
A war waged behind his eyes, and he searched my own as if he thought they might give him an answer.
The light dimmed. And I remembered how we had left things, with me walking away from him in the Relaxation Room. He must be here to make amends. I don’t know why that made my shoulders dip.
“I don’t remember everything,” I whispered, trying to calm the storm whirling inside me.
“Tell me what you do,” Wep said with his usual air of command, still kneeling before me.
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me.”
I held his gaze. There were a thousand things I could scream at him, like how awful his people could be and how it wasn’t my choice to be here either, but no words came. I knew how pathetic they would sound given voice, and the last bit of fight in me was gone. “Never mind,” I breathed.
Wep kept his eyes on me as he stood, extending a single hand. His gaze could have pierced straight through me if given a physical force.
I looked away, like the coward I was, as I took his hand.
He pulled me to my feet. “You need food, water, and rest.” He didn’t let go of my hand.
I rolled my eyes, though the motion hurt.
“The body feeds the mind. Take care of your body, and you will feel better.”
“Spare me.”
Wep’s eyes never left me. His hand slid up my arm, ghosted over my shoulder, and softly cupped my cheek.
I might have pulled away if I weren’t so desperate for a kind touch.
It was a chaste thing, almost tender, and so at odds with what I knew of this stern man.
I’d sooner have expected him to slap me across the face than touch me like this.
I looked up into his steel-blue eyes and wondered if maybe I did like his little smirk after all.
“I’m trying to,” he said simply.
Some temporary madness overtook me. I turned my face up to him, and the next thing I knew, I was pulling him into me.
My eyes fluttered closed as his lips met mine.
The kiss was soft but lingering. That is, until it wasn’t.
Heat exploded through me. I was burning up with sudden, desperate need as flames licked through my every crevice.
A small breath escaped me when our lips parted.
Some crazed animal inside me was taking control—gripping his shirt and kissing him again like I couldn’t live without his lips on mine.
His hands gripped my waist as I threaded my fingers through his hair and moaned, deepening the kiss.
The sun-scorching fire pooling in me was unbearable, and I was desperate for more, more, more.
The firmness of Wep’s grip on my waist tightened, but instead of crushing me to him as I wanted, he slowly, deliberately, pushed our bodies apart.
“We don’t have to continue,” he said. His eyes were wild as he took a step back.
I had never hated a single step more in my life.
One step forward was all it would take to get back to that blissful place where mouths and hands and hearts might meet.
The Martyrs knew my body was calling for it, still aflame with need.
But this was not a place I could go. Not when a ship bearing my betrothed was headed back to the Riht at any moment.
Not when another kind-eyed man across the sea waited for me to take my place at his side.
The thought of Tam should’ve been the bucket of ice-cold water I needed, but not even the knowledge of what I might have done—the mistake I might have made, would still be making if not for that one step—could dissipate this heat inside me. It was burning me alive.
I tried my best to force my head to quiet and my mind to focus. Nothing, not even this chiseled, magnificent man before me, should stand in the way of my true purpose. I was here for one thing—information—then I’d be gone. Even if I hated it, I meant to see it through.
I took a step back. “You should go.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“Go.”
Wep scoffed. “Fine. Enjoy your headache.” He turned and wrenched the door open.
The latch had barely clicked shut when flame engulfed me from within.
The paltry heat of desire fled, replaced by something else entirely.
A power as old as the sun and expansive as the sky.
Everything around me erupted in a blinding blaze as magic surged through my veins.
I was the beginning of all life, and through me, Jaeda itself turned.
The fire consumed me, and I succumbed to it.
It lapped at my skin, flesh, and bones until there was nothing left.
The me I used to be was devoured, and in its place was something ancient, infinite, and new.