The clang reverberates up the silken length all the way back to my spine, vibrating my bones.
Rip moves sofast. Before I can tug my ribbon back, he curves his arm and twists the length around his sharp spikes. Trapping it, he pulls it so tightly that it pullsthe base of my back, dragging me toward him like a dog on a leash.
With a screech of frustration, I send four more ribbons lashing out, but the bastard somehow catches them all. He crumples them in the ball of his fist, my ribbons thrashing against his fingers, like trapped fish in a net. His hold is so strong that I can’t yank them away, a glimpse of his fae strength coming out to play.
He wrenches the ribbons hard, making me spin around, nearly toppling me over. Then he pulls me toward him, my feet skidding against the snow, heels digging in, until my back slams against his chest.
“Enough,” he says.
I elbow him in the gut. The asshole doesn’t even grunt, though, which pisses me off. His free hand traps the rest of my loose ribbons at my spine, cinching them off before they can even try to attack, trapping them between us.
His scratchy jaw scrapes against my ear, and all at once, I become aware of how our bodies are pressed together, how I can feel the heat of his chest sinking into my back.
“Enough, Auren.”
His order is spoken deeply enough, calmly enough, that it seems to reach beneath my rage and lift me out.
Panting, I blink past the fury that had wholly consumed me. I glance down at his arm that’s now banded around my middle, spikes gone, hand cupping my hip.
I can feel my ribbons pulled taut in his grip, but he’s not hurting them. My heart is pounding so hard that it’s just a war beat in my ears, thrumming through my veins and pulsing at my temples.
I don’t know how long we stand like that or when exactly the fight flees me. But it does, slowly, like syrup dripping down through my feet, leaving my soles stuck to the ground.
My ribbons go limp in his hand, and as soon as they do, he lets go of them and peels his arm away from my body and steps away. I shiver from the loss of contact.
I’m suddenly exhausted.
He slowly walks around to face me while my ribbons curl up, winding around me in retreat. I flick my gaze up to his face and brace myself.
I expect gloating. Or taunting.
Instead, he shocks the hell out of me when his face pulls into a smile. Not a cocky smirk or a patronizing grin. This smile is soft. It’sproud.
“There it is, Goldfinch,” he purrs, and that dark caress is back in his voice. “You’ve finally found your fight.”
Chapter 25
AUREN
The fire has gone out.
It seems telling, that its flames were snuffed just as my own anger fizzled, just as my show of strength petered out.
I feel like those charred logs, aching with smolder, still smoking from the intensity of burning heat.
When I look up to watch the gray tendrils rise in the air, I see a rare star in the sky, poking out from the clouds like it’s watching me, the Divine cracking open an eye.
I look back down to the ground.
“Why did you do that?”
Rip hasn’t said a word for the last several minutes, maybe because he noticed that I needed time to think. Or maybe he’s just silently gloating because he got what he wanted.
We’re still in the fighting circle, but Osrik, Judd, and Lu are gone, though I have no idea when they left. I don’t even know if they saw, if theyheard.
My ribbons tingle from the ghost of his grip, like I can still feel them caught in his hold. He picks up my torn feather coat from the ground and passes it to me, as if he can sense that I need something to hold onto. I’m certainly not holding onto myself. I quickly take it, folding it over my arms.
“You mean why did I push you,” he guesses.
