Her mouth twitched on the cusp of a grin, but she bit it back with her teeth.
I was true to my word and scrubbed myself furiously with soap and water in a whirl of speed. I was washed, dried, and in fresh clothes within a minute, re-entering my rooms.
Nelle stood by the doorway, half-bent over, patting Sage, who sat on his haunches, his large bushy tail wagging. She’d fixed her hair into a fish braid, and the tail hung over a shoulder. Hercheeks were filling out, and she looked a lot healthier than she had almost a week ago.
She straightened when I joined her in front of the heavy wooden door. I silently called on the wild magic in the tower and simply allowed it to let her come and go as she pleased. It strummed through the room, the adamere walls shimmering in response.
I opened the door. Nelle’s big eyes flared even wider, her thick gray lashes fluttering with her building excitement. She stepped forward…
…and I slapped my arm across the open doorway, preventing her from leaving. She flashed me a dark look, one that was tempered with confusion.
“Three rules,” I said, holding up one finger at a time, counting them off. “One: keep that temper of yours in check.” She rolled her eyes. “Two: Sage is with you at all times, and if anything should happen, he’s to give you enough time—”
“For what?”
“To run,” I replied, hoping to hells it would never come to that. I was going to be with her, but I didn’t know what would happen out there with my family. “Three: you run fast and get back inside this tower. No one can come in here. Not my family. Only you, me, and Penn.”
She nodded and said softly, “I know.” When I frowned, because I hadn’t told her, she elaborated, “Penn told me last night.”
“My brothers are messed up,” I confessed.
She cocked her head, raising her brows. “And you’re not?”
“I’m as fucked up as they come.”
She patted my chest, and it sent a shockwave of electricity right through me so hard it punched the air from my lungs. Her freckled cheeks rounded as her mouth twisted to the side, andher eyes narrowed. Not mean, but playful. “Yes, that is the first true thing you’ve said.”
She turned a sparkling gaze to stare out the open doorway, grinning her crooked grin with excitement as she jittered on the spot. She glanced up at me, waiting expectantly.
I grinned back.
Her smile faded, and her features hardened. “I’m not smiling at you, Crowther.”
My smile faltered for a split second as part of me died a little bit, but the other part of me kept grinning. She hadn’t called me dickface. Small victories and all.
I dropped my arm and gestured for her to leave the tower.
Resuming her broad smile, Nelle pushed off, Sage by her side, and stepped out onto the stone landing. I followed and hoped to Zrenyth I hadn’t fucked up by letting her out earlier than I’d intended to do.
17
Nelle
The Crowthers’ fortress had been a dark, foreboding place that first night they captured and imprisoned me. A night I wished I could forget. It had been only a week and a half since I’d been trapped in Graysen’s tower, and in only a few more weeks I’d turn twenty, when the Alverac would bind my will to his forever.
But right this moment I was free.
As free as I could be.
The tower’s spiral staircase was shadowed, with only a little light slipping through the arrow slits set in the curved walls. Our downward footsteps echoed the beat of my heart. With every step closer to the arched entrance of the tower, Graysen shut down. I could feel the ice radiating from him, chilling my bare skin and raising gooseflesh. Stiffness entered his body. And the impassive expression returned.
There was nothing in his gaze when it landed on mine as he curtly gestured for me to go move ahead and step outside the tower.
I passed from the gloomy inner staircase to the outside and came to a standstill. The morning was balmy even though summer had turned to fall. Just for a moment, I closed my eyes and let myself bask in the sun’s warm rays, my body sighing in contentment as I soaked up energy that fueled the wyrm.
Freedom, even though I was still confined.
“Wychthorn…”A quiet murmur beside me.
