Her legs began to tremble as she tried to put more distance between herself and Morkai.
“Maybe you’re even worse than me.” With a flutter of his fingers, the room began to dissolve again, this time under swirling shadows. They crawled down her throat, filled her lungs, raked talons over her heart. Black filled her vision as she struggled to free herself from the strangling dark mist. No matter how she fought, where she turned, she was pinned in place. The shadows refused to abate. They simply pressed harder. Harder. Squeezing her lips like a kiss of death.
Cora.
Cora.
“Cora!” The sound of her name made her body go still.
Her muscles ached as if she’d run for miles, as if she’d thrashed and raged in her sleep the same way she’d done in her dream. She blinked into the night, but her eyes were glazed with tears, casting everything under a blur. Something heavy was still pressed to her mouth, the smell of sweat and soil filling her senses. It was wrong. Foreign. Her mind struggled to remember.
Where am I? Where am I?
Then she remembered. Somewhat.
Her body went limp, and the heavy thing left her mouth. A hand. She waited only a beat before reaching for her belt and unsheathing her knife. With her free hand, she thrust outward, striking blindly with her palm. A gasp followed, then a thud, and she shoved all of her weight into the other body until she felt it collapse beneath her. She blinked again and again to rid the glaze of tears from her eyes. When her vision finally cleared, she found Teryn looking back at her, eyes wide with surprise. He was flat on his back while she straddled his stomach, her knife at the base of his throat. She felt a slice of wind beat her cheek. As she turned her head to the side, she caught sight of a dark shape darting for her.
“Berol, no,” Teryn said.
The falcon pulled out of her dive and lifted into the sky. Cora saw Berol’s shadow cross the moon as she circled overhead.
She returned her gaze to Teryn, her chest heaving as she struggled to catch her breath. Their eyes locked.
“What are you doing?” Teryn asked, voice low, calm, steady. His eyes, however, revealed a tinge of fear.
“What wereyoudoing?” she said, her words uneven, frantic. “You had your hand over my mouth.”
“You were screaming.”
She shuddered, reminded of her dream, the shadows that had tried to strangle her. “You had no right to touch me.”
The fear left his eyes, replaced with indignation. “You wouldn’t wake. Your screams nearly gave me a heart attack. I thought you were being murdered.”
“So you decided to smother me in my sleep.”
“I called your name a hundred times. The last thing I could think to do was muffle your shouts while I tried harder to wake you. Would you rather I let you carry on? I’m sure the hunters we’re supposed to be sneaking up on would only be too happy to follow the source of a distressed woman’s cries. And not to aid her, either.”
That sent a spike of alarm through her. She lifted her chin, staring down at him with a glare. “Don’t you dare touch me like that again.”
He scoffed. “Do you think I wanted to? Do you think I took pleasure from it?”
The word pleasure sparked the memory of how his palm had felt on her shoulder. Her heart thumped heavily in her chest and sent a wave of heat to her cheeks.
His eyes landed on the very shoulder in question. When his eyes returned to hers, his lips quirked with a suggestive smirk. “Trust me, if I wanted to touch you, you’d know. And if I took pleasure from it, so would you.”
Her breath caught, and something trilled low in her belly. She was stunned silent, her knife trembling in her hand. Without her permission, her eyes dipped to his lips, taking in their sensuous curve, the dimple at one corner. His smile slipped, an uncertain expression crossing his face. She was entranced as his lips parted, some word poised on them?—
“Oh, for the love of the seven gods, get a room.” Lex turned over on his bedroll.
Cora’s eyes flew to the other man. Valorre stood off to the side, rippling with something that struck Cora like a snicker.
“No canoodling,” Lex muttered, back facing them. “If I hear gasps or moans or even kisses, I’m going to throw rocks at your heads.”
Cora returned her gaze to Teryn. She stiffened, realizing the impropriety of their position. He was on his back. She was on top of him. Sure, a knife’s blade was between them, but…
She had to stifle her gasp of surprise when she realized where his hands were—at the base of her waist. Had they been there the whole time? He could have shoved her off him, and perhaps that was what he’d been prepared to do. But also…
Also…
