I couldn’t breathe. Adrenaline injected my heart like nitrous gas, forcing it into fight or flight. Yet there was a third choice—freeze. I was frozen and trapped inside my head. And Danne was there, and I couldn’t get him out. I couldn’t find a way free from the limousine.
“Nelle, take a breath…”
I scrambled to latch onto the voice, the soothing timbre, and followed the thread, inching my way back to awareness, breath by breath.
Slowly, so slowly, like color spreading across a Polaroid, sparking life into a black-and-white photograph, vivid bright colors stained my surroundings. Sound returned. Every day, normal sounds of humming insects and birds flying overhead.A soft breeze rustling leaves. Low conversation and children’s joyful laughter.
Graysen stood in front of me, eyes wide and flickering with worry.
And my hand was pressed across his heart, the pulse a gentle rhythm against my palm. This time his heartbeat urged mine to followitspattern. While a large warm hand covered my own, his other hand cupped my cheek, and my fingers gripped his wrist like I was drowning and I’d grabbed hold of him to save me.
“Take another breath—slow and steady.”
I followed his instructions. Took a breath, then another, until the shaking in my limbs subsided, the panic seeped away, and my heartbeat matched his.
I was in Tabitha’s garden.
Danne wasn’t here.
He could never hurt me again.
My mouth was dry as paper when I croaked, “That’s not how twenty questions works. You need to ask meyesandnoquestions.”
Something like relief relaxed his features. His thumb gently brushed across my cheekbone slick with sweat. “We don’t have to do this.”
I wet my lips with the tip of my tongue. “No. There’s a lot I want to ask.”
But even though I wished to stay out here for a bit longer, to haunt the Heart of the Keep with its knowledge, most of me wanted to retreat to a place I knew well, where I knew where my exits were, a place I could recenter myself. I loathed myself for asking. “I want to go back to the tower.”
He nodded. Dappled light danced across his forehead from the sunbeams poking through the leafy embrace of the willow we were tucked away beneath.
I let go of his wrist, and he withdrew his hands. But I lingered, keeping my fingers spread across the curve of his chest, the soft t-shirt and warmth from his body heating my palm. I opened my mouth to thank him, but I couldn’t push out what I wanted to say.
His blacks warily scanned my grays.
I gently squeezed my fingertips across his heart, speaking to him in the only way I could at that moment. His gaze softened as one side of his mouth curved up.
Briefly closing my eyes, I took my hand away and flexed the crackling energy from my skin. Drawing in a deep breath, I straightened my spine and nodded to him to lead the way back to the tower. Right as I stepped forward, the soft sole of my foot scuffing through lush grass, he stopped me. His rough-padded fingers latched onto my upper arm. I stilled, scanning his face, wondering what he wanted to say. He chewed on his bottom lip, the fine skin around his eyes feathering as his gaze narrowed in thought, as if he needed to choose his words carefully. “If you… If you ever need to talk about it…”
My gaze hardened. I didn’t want to talk about it.
He spoke softly, but there was steel beneath his tone. “You’re strong and brave…”
And going to die. So what was the point?
I cut him off with a wave of my hand, then pushed into motion. He reluctantly let go, his long-legged stride carrying him past as he led me back into the copse of trees a different way from the way we’d come. Sage trotted beside me, kicking up pebbles.
We walked along a longer trail that cut through the trees and their moist, earthy air. Sage nudged my thigh every so often with his muzzle. Graysen pointed out things his mother had planted, a seating arrangement, and a few magical spots for children. But I’d tuned him out, uncomfortable in my own skin, in the way my dress stuck to my sweat-clammy body and chafed. Mysenses were on high alert. I suppose what happened back there in Tabitha’s garden was always going to happen. I’d stupidly expected too much of myself to believe I’d walk away unscathed.
After a while, I began to hear Graysen and became distracted by his gentle probing, breathing easier, mildly intrigued with all the special places Tabitha had created within her gardens, asking a few half-hearted questions and trading knowledge of plants I knew.
It wasn’t until we’d made our way back through the gateway and across the cobblestoned inner courtyard to the graceful arched entrance of the tower that I figured out what he’d done. He’d purposely taken me on a longer route to give me time to piece myself back together the best I could. I also didn’t realize how closely I’d stuck beside him until we’d finished climbing the spiral staircase and my arm brushed up against his. Both of us glanced at one another at the same time. Me in surprise, and him not so much.
After we’d left the gardens and traipsed back through the Keep, he’d reverted to his cold indifference, but I’d felt his gaze on me often, a worried stroke of concern sliding across my profile. As I stared at him, there were so many emotions tumbling in his dark eyes. Worry. Rage. And guilt too. It weighed heavier than anything else in his gaze.
He didn’t know how to fix this. Fix me.
What Danne had tried to do to me hadn’t been his fault. It wasn’t my fault either.
