“King’s Keep,” I answer, my whisper a hollow shell of devastation, because the last time I was here, I watched my mother, my brothers, and my father being butchered.
My breaths grow shorter, and my heart rushes between beats until the cadence is one constant thrum of foreboding. Ants crawl through my veins, and I run a finger down my scars to try to ground myself, but they’re still hidden by the charm, and that disconnect between what should be there but isn’t, it sends me spiraling.
All at once, I can see it. Smell it. Hear it.
It’s like I never left.
“No,” I tell myself, clenching my hands into tight fists to quell the shaking. My broken and jagged nails dig into my palms, the small kiss of pain helping to focus my racing thoughts. “You’re not there,” I chant quietly. “They’re not being torn apart. You can’t hear them screaming. It happened already. It’s over. You’re not there.”
But suddenly I am, and the horror of it all once again seizes me so fast I can’t do anything but survive it all again.
Enslee burrows deeper into my lap, the fabric of my skirt helping to muffle her cries. They found our brothers. We thought they escaped, but the drakes are dragging them back into the room. The queen is screaming. Father is pleading. He’s trying to bargain, to beg, but the armored drakes won’t listen. Brooks is crying, he’s so scared.
I should close my eyes.
I should look away…but I can’t.
“I am not there,” I chant to myself. “I survived.”
Ronin and Novak scream when the drakes pull Brooks away. Their terrified wails join the agonized bellows of my father and the queen. My mother’s lying in a puddle of blood just behind them. Her body has stopped twitching, she’s gone still. I think she’s dead.
Brooks screams, the anguish and agony searing through me, eviscerating everything I am.
I am not in that tower. I am not watching them die!I snarl at my mind, fighting back, refusing to succumb to the horror. Not here. Not now. It’s not safe. I can’t afford to be vulnerable. I can’t show them my weaknesses.
Ishove out of Aeson’s arms, needing space, to be sick, to pace, to shatter…I don’t know. I make it a few steps, but my blood loss and battered body put a quick end to my hasty retreat. My vision dims and my knees suddenly give out. A pair of capable arms are quick to catch me, to keep me from falling, and then I’m being cradled against a wide, hard chest.
A warm hand strokes my hair, and a sonorous voice picks up my mantra, repeating it back to me in perfect synchronicity. “You’re not there,” he whispers against my uninjured temple. “You’re safe,” he adds, over and over again until I can almost believe him.
I want so badly to believe him.
I whimper as the screams echo in my mind, but I refuse to look at the haunting specters of my family as they’re ripped limb from limb. The smell of blood tries to fill my nose, but I hold my breath against the phantom invasion. I know it’s not real. It happened, but it isn’t happening now. Yet even with that certainty, it’s so fucking hard to kick free of the violent torrent and find the surface.
I don’t know how long I sit, murmuring in harmony that “I’m okay” when it couldn’t be further from the truth. I tread through the trauma until I begin to find my way out. Slowly, my breaths grow even, my heart finds its proper pace, and my eyes adjust. The merciless memories are shoved back into their box and reburied within my tattered depths. I know they have no intention of staying there, they never do, but that will have to be tomorrow’s problem.
I open my eyes, spent, depleted, but ready to face the world again. Chagrin colors my cheeks. I can only imagine what everyone around me must think. I feel alarmingly exposed and frustrated that I can’t do anything about it.
I turn to face Aeson, not sure what to say, or how to even explain what just happened, but a different pair of blue eyes meet mine. Aeson isn’t the one offering me comfort and coaxing me back from the dark.
The warm arms and gentle voice cradling me are Lorn’s.
Chapter 12
LORN DOESN’T SAY ANYTHING AS I stare up at him. He also doesn’t move me out of his lap or unwrap his arms from around me. We just sit there, watching each other, waiting. For what?
I don’t know. Maybe he’s waiting to see if I’ll break again. To be fair, I’m wondering the same thing. I’ve never considered myself to be an overemotional person, but I guess forced captivity and torture can really change a girl. It’s clear my time with the Tainted—and now being here with The Horde—is kicking up things best left buried.
Up close like this, I can see the lines and shadows of Lorn’s dragon mark through the fabric of his stark white shirt. The black flames start low on his torso and crawl up his ribs and chest, but only on his left side. More lines of onyx fire run from his wrist up his arm before that blaze meets the one on his chest, and the two pyres climb up and over his shoulder, but that’s really none of my business, so I stop looking.
“Here, drink this,” someone next to me orders.
I look over to find Jori. The Render from Lairwood, the one boasting shades of brown—from his hair to his sun-kissed skin, and even the armor protecting his body. He tries to hand me a cup filled with some kind of liquid. A look of confusion washes over his face when I don’t instantly take it.
“It’s just water,” he reassures, his hazel eyes encouraging and his smile kind.
He tilts the cup so I can see the contents, before offering it to me again, as though I’m stupid enough to take his word for it.
I’m not.
