Gods, I want to turn my face into his throat and breathe in the scent of his skin. I could lose myself in his arms. Simplysurrender to his touch, knowing that nothing can hurt me here. And it strikes me that this is the first time I’ve felt safe in… forever.
“What are you doing to me?” I rasp.
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing.” My thoughts are as much of a mess as my body is. “Nothing.”
He captures my face between his enormous hands, his amber eyes coming into frame. “Zyla? Are you truly alright? Are you ready for the next part of this?”
“Always.” The words sound right, but I don’t feel them.
And I can’t afford not to feel that certainty.
“Is there cold water somewhere?” I ask.
“There’s a cold pool over there.”
“I need to clear my head.”
“This way then,” he says, helping me out of the pool like a newborn filly, still learning her legs. He snatches up a bag. “I have more clothes for you. And your knife.”
Chapter 15
Zyla
Dreimates will often consummate the mating with primal play, marking their other halves with either bite or claw marks. It’s considered rude to note these marks verbally.”
—KARI SILVENDALE, AUTHOR OFA HISTORY OF THE DREI
The cold water does the trick. My mind is clear as we re-enter the main chamber.
Kari’s chained to the wall above us, her red hair hanging limply around her face, Despair’s written all over her.
There are dozens of guards between us. Rhykus sits on a throne on the small cliff ledge near Kari, smiling as he sees us. Daring us to try and take her.
“It’s a trap,” Bael says. “The baron must have known who we are.”
Guards circle through the crowd nonchalantly, but there are too many of them.
I search desperately for a way out, my gaze sliding over a pair of men fucking, more of them wrestling, women kneeling in abasement, and?—
My gaze jerks back.
There’s a woman bound to a spinning circle. Several hunters laugh as they watch her spin, standing by a bushel of arrows and a bow. One of them nocks his bow loosely. His friend sends the woman spinning as she screams.
“I have a theory,” I tell Bael.
“What?”
I draw the knife, the rose on the blade gleaming coldly. “Lean down.”
Bael frowns, but he complies. I run my fingers along the collar at his throat, the one that binds his powers.
“This blade was consecrated to Amara,” I whisper, finding the faintest of crevices in the torc. I jam the tip of the knife between it. The handle seems to throb in my hand. “I don’t think it’s just a knife, Bael.”
He glances at me through the spill of his hair.
“If I can get this off”—I feel something shifting—“then you can change forms. Get Kari and get her out of here.”
