Instead, the tremors eased.
“The dreams will pass,” he said, his breath warm against my hair. “Your magic is still settling, learning the boundaries of what you can and cannot do. Nightmares are... common, during the transition. Especially after pushing yourself like that.”
“How long?”
“For the dreams? A few weeks, perhaps longer. For the magic itself...” I felt him shrug, the movement barely perceptible. “That’s harder to predict. Shadow fire is ancient power, Isara. It doesn’t follow the same rules as other gifts.”
The tremors were slowing now, my body finally beginning to relax despite the chaos in my mind. Whether it was his presenceor simple exhaustion, something was winning the war against my frayed nerves.
“The dragon,” I said, my words slurring slightly as sleep finally began to pull at me. “You promised.”
“Tomorrow,” Varyth replied, dragging a hand down my spine. “Sleep now. I’ll keep watch.”
Without quite meaning to, I turned in his arms, my face finding the warm hollow of his throat. His hold tightened slightly, one hand coming up to rest against the back of my head as I burrowed deeper into his chest. The steady rhythm of his heartbeat was hypnotic, drowning out the echoes of nightmare screams that had been haunting me.
For the first time in months, I slept without dreams.
20
Arms were around me. For a blissful moment, still caught between sleep and waking, my mind conjured Navaire.
The familiar weight of an arm across my waist, the steady rise and fall of a chest beneath my cheek, the intimate tangle of limbs that came from sharing a bed for years.
Then consciousness crashed over me.
The chest beneath my face was broader than Navaire’s had been, the heartbeat different—slower, more controlled. The scent was wrong too, missing the earthy warmth that had been uniquely his. And the arm wrapped around me was pale where Navaire’s had been dark, the fingers long and elegant instead of calloused from smith work.
Varyth.
I was in Varyth’s bed. In his arms. My face pressed against his throat like I belonged there, one of my legs tangled between his, my hand splayed across his chest where I could feel the steady beat of his heart.
I tried to move, tried to pull away before the wrongness of it could sink any deeper, but Varyth’s arm tightened around me. Instinctive.
Horror ripped through me like a blade finding all the tender places I’d been trying to protect.
No. No no no?—
I scrambled back so violently that I didn’t register the edge of the mattress until I was already falling. My hip hit the floor with a crack that sent pain lancing up my spine, but I barely felt it. All I could process was the need to getaway, to put distance between myself and the bed that smelled like someone who wasn’t Navaire.
“Isara?”
Varyth was there instantly, moving with that unnatural speed that made him more predator than man. He knelt beside me, one hand reaching out, eyes wide with something that looked dangerously close to panic.
“Don’t touch me.” The words came out savage, raw. I pressed myself back against the wall, my chest heaving like I’d just run a marathon. “Please.”
He froze. His hand hung in the air between us for a heartbeat before he lowered it slowly. Like he was trying not to spook a wounded animal.
Which was probably accurate.
“Alright.” His voice was soft, stripped of everything except quiet concern. “I’m not touching you. See? Hands to myself.”
But I could still feel it, the phantom warmth of his body against mine, the way I’d burrowed into him like he was safety incarnate. The way some deep, animal part of me had recognised his heartbeat and decided it was good enough to sleep through the night without nightmares.
“I shouldn’t—” The bile rising in my throat tasted like betrayal. “I shouldn’t have?—”
I shouldn’t have felt safe. I shouldn’t have slept so soundly. I shouldn’t have forgotten, even for a moment, that the body I was meant to wake up against is ash and memory.
My skin felt like it was on fire, shame burning through my veins hotter than any shadow flame. What kind of person was I? What kind of wife?
