I should really suffocate him with a pillow.
Rubbing my forehead, I heaved a sigh, and my shoulders slumped. As much as I wanted to prove Penn wrong, she was right, I wasn’t a cold-blooded killer. And I wasn’t sure now. Practically speaking, if I took Graysen’s life, it might very well mean that I’d trapped myself in this tower forever.
I headed back to the kitchen and popped the box of crackers away, filled a glass of water and quenched my thirst.
It was the movement I heard first before I mentally registered that Graysen had shifted in his sleep. Peering over my shoulder, I discovered he’d turned toward me.
Curious, I drew closer with hesitant steps and angled myself to watch him through the curves of the bedposts. I drifted slowly from one side of the bed to the other. Graysen’s head shifted, upper body following as he rolled over to face me, and then slowly adjusted back the other way, unconsciously seeking me out as I reversed my path.
Wyrm and Tamer.
This strange connection we had with one another,alwayshad with one another since we’d met as children. Always knowing where the other stood, even without looking.
I pivoted and headed to my bedroom.
It was a low growl—a deeply wounded sound.
I froze.
The fine hair on the back of my neck rose.
It hadn’t been Sage.
My wraith-wolf stared at Graysen’s slumbering form. I heard it then, the whispering. Low, so low I couldn’t make it out.
My heart thumped in my chest as I slowly turned around. I moved to the edge of the bed, watching Graysen’s eyes rapidly move beneath his eyelids and his lips murmur. Sweat beaded on his skin, and his body twitched as he talked in his sleep.
I leaned closer to hear. My dangling hair brushed over his arm, and I watched his flesh prickle and a shiver ripple through the taut, veiny muscles.
He spoke again.
At first, I thought it wasmyname he mumbled.
I jerked straight. My spine ramrod. I drew back, one step…one more…then another.
It wasn’t my name.
He was trapped in a nightmare, calling out for his mother.
He’d been there when the Horned Gods had come for Tabitha.
And Graysen, I imagined, would be standing in front of her and his baby sister, only thirteen years old and wielding a sword to defend those he loved.
And he’d failed.
I had vague memories of him when I was younger. Tall and lanky, his hair just as messy as it was now, but longer. He’d watched me as I’d watched him, but neither of us had desired to speak. He’d been a strange presence in my life…but now I knew, as he had said in the aviary, that he’d kept watch over me, keeping my secret safe. Something he’d known from the moment we first met as children.
I didn’t want to think about Tabitha Crowther.
I didn’t want to think about whatIwould have done in Graysen’s position. What I would do to save my own mother.
That if there was a choice, and everything was reversed between us, would I give him up for my mother? Would it be me sending him to the Witches Ball?
And the terrible, awful truth was cruel and agonizing, like a splinter of glass slicing through flesh. Because I thought I would.
Graysen’s eyes fluttered open slightly, glazed and still caught within the dark, torturous dreamworld. He stretched his hand over the mattress, once again reaching for mine. And I think he murmured, “Please…”
I didn’t hesitate. I kneeled and leaned over the mattress. My palm slid along the soft blanket and reached for him. As the side of my hand brushed along his, a whispering touch that coursed through my nerves like a bolt of electricity to stutter my heart. I slid my little finger around his, tightening our grip, and though I closed my eyes, I heard him expel a weary sigh, his heartbeat settling to match mine as he fell into a calmer sleep.
