There is no going back now.
CHAPTER20
Rysethk
I follow her, following the scent of her body. I can smell her juices, her sweet sex, but mingled with the scent that makes mykrythboil is something that makes me rage: the scent of Zethki. His sweat, the aroma of his pleasure, his seed, hiskrythbleeding from his pores and his cock. He hasn’t emerged but once in days, and I see in his eyes the feverish hunger that I feel for Anya Mann. He tries to hide it, but he cannot hide it from me.
Her shadow flickered in the dark windows of the practice arena, moving quickly, catching my eye and making me turn to attack. But she was moving in the shadows, sneaking around, and it took only moments for me to see that the dark robe she was swimming in contained a small figure and not its Kerz owner.
I slit the throat of two guards ahead of her, for I instantly devised that she was attempting to run away. The little fool. The stupid, insolent little fool. She could not possibly believe that she could escape the reach of Zethki, or me, for that matter.
And yet, I admire her in many ways. She is exactly what I sensed she was when I took her from her father: strong-willed, almost Kerz by nature. Brave. Ultimately indomitable, even by Zethki.
And stupid. So, so stupid.
She goes, as I predicted, to the old fortress, crossing the glass bridge like a ludicrous suicide soldier. I’m already in the forest below, my claw slicing through the neck of the guard who stands by the far exit and who would see her. It’s dishonorable, and I regret that I must do it, but protecting her supersedes all.
Stupid. I’m angry, angry in a way that I have never been before. This is no ordinary boiling of mykryth, and I detest it because I cannot control it. I run through the trees and leap over the gorge at its most narrow part. Simple for me, but dangerous in the semi-darkness.
I curse and scramble up the rocky cliff, so that when she emerges, I will be in the shadows, waiting.
My breath and heart are calm by the time she appears. I must concede some admiration for her passage through the dungeons, with no light to guide her. I wonder how long she has planned this, and I wonder if she would do something different if I had not erased her memory of our love, time and time again, in order to protect her.
It doesn’t matter. All that can be done now is for me to stop her.
Stop her, because I must protect her.
Stop her, because she has my child in her belly, I’m sure of this.
Stop her, because she’s mine, and I will not let her freeze in this cursed forest or drown on the beach, or starve as she tries to make her way to… where? There is no telling what Zethki will do to find her when he realizes that she’s gone. But I can guess. I know what I would do.
She pauses when she steps into the dark. I wonder who has helped her; she seems to know where she must go, her hands in front of her in the darkness, headed to the silvery light of a guiding tree.
I move silently toward her. She stops, and I realize that she has sensed me. We stand in the darkness, trees shining in the damp air and tinged yellow with the glow of my burningkryth.
“Do not scream,” I say, moving behind her paralyzed body. It’s a plea, my voice is strange to my own ears. I remind myself that she doesn’t remember me as her lover, she doesn’t know that I will protect her to my dying breath.
She is frozen for a beat, and then exhales, her breath a cloud in the cold air.
“Rys,” she says.
I don’t know what colors her voice when she says my name. It isn’t terror, and she’s not screaming. I encircle her with my arms. What must happen now must happen quickly; I must get her back to Zethki before he realizes she’s gone. And I must somehow convince her to wait, to wait for my plan to unfold.
“No. Sound,” I say. My English is suddenly primitive, the only thing I can think of to say.
I pick her up and put her over my shoulder. My fingers hold her thigh, and they tingle as I remember the sweet silk of her pussy, the softness of her human flesh as I sink into it, claiming her for my own.
“Wait,” she whispers.
But it’s a false protest, and she has nothing else to say. I cannot wait; I have to get her inside. At least if she’s caught there, I stand a chance of inventing a plausible story for Zethki to keep her safe.
“I’m not going to kill you,” I tell her, walking toward the hot spring. I don’t know why, and yet I do, however dangerous it is, I must explain to her, I must have her, I must make her remember me.
She has collapsed anyway, against me, surrendering.
CHAPTER21
Anya
