“Good.” She stands and turns to stalk away. “Now, please leave.”
Her sudden about-face leaves me winded. I’m so full of questions that I may well fall apart.
“Wait!” I gasp, clambering to my feet like a newborn colt. “Please, wait—”
“Now!” she bellows. “I will not be saving you from your recklessness again.”
I give chase, no longer concerned by my state of nudity. I’m desperate to know more about her, desperate for answers.
I attempt to take her hand as I plead, “My lady, please—”
She lunges at me with ferocious speed, her sharp nails grazing past my cheek. I barely have time to pivot out of the way before she backhands me across the side of the head and sends me flying to the sandy ground.
The woman leaves no time to breathe, to think. She throws all her weight behind her next strike, missing my head by only an inch. The rock wall behind me crumbles beneath her mighty blow, pulverized dust billowing into the air.
I stumble out of the way, heart pounding in my throat. “I’m not trying to hurt you! I only wish to talk! I think you might be my—”
Faster than I can blink, the woman whips around and sends me flying with a hard kick to the chest. I land on my back, wheezing for breath, though I’m surprised I’m not as tender as I could be. Considering her inhuman strength and speed, she could decimate me within seconds.
She’s holding back her attacks… They’re only a warning.
But why save me, only to harm me?
Holding my hands up in surrender, I glance at our weak gray thread. This certainly was not how I imagined meeting my other half, but I refuse to let the opportunity pass me by. I have spent all my five and twenty years wondering if I would ever find her, and now that she’s here, I’m equal parts terrified and in awe.
“Please,” I rasp. “I think you’re my Fated One.”
“I know I am,” she says. Her green eyes are cold. “Now leave me the fuck alone.”
Part 2The Green Dragon
13
She grumbles to herself underher breath, her words incoherent. The woman steps out into the oasis, anxiously pacing around the sparkling pond of crystal-clear water while rubbing at her temples.
“Damn it! Why am I such a fool?”
I hastily throw on what little remains of my clothes. My outer robe has been torn to shreds, and my tunic and pants are heavily stained with crusted blood.Myblood. It’s no wonder she stripped me bare.
“My lady?” I ask as I follow her around the edge of the water.
She doesn’t hear me, too absorbed in conversation with herself. She curses in a language I don’t quite understand—a dead dialect?—but I don’t need to know the words to feel her distress pulsating over our thread.
It leaves me nauseated, my guts tying themselves up in sickening knots, causing my stomach to lurch. Is this what she is feeling? Why is it that I can sense her emotions so clearly that I almost confuse them for my own?
“My lady?”
“What?”she snaps, turning on a point.
My Fated One is so spellbinding that I can hardly find any words. I fixate on the severe press of her rosebud lips, the curl of her long lashes framing her icy glare. I’m especially fascinated with the small beauty mark just below the corner of her left eye. I won’t do her the injustice of comparing her beauty to the stars, for she is far more radiant than anything in the Heavens, the earth, and the spaces between.
“I—I wanted to thank you,” I say, heart hammering in my ears. “For taking care of me. And rescuing me, too. Thatwasyou, was it not?”
She grinds her teeth, her fists clenched. When her lip curls back in a snarl, I can’t help but notice how her teeth are the slightest degree sharper than most humans’. She looks terribly upset. “You… need to go,” she says, shoulders trembling with tension. There’s a note of hesitation in her tone, but force in her words nonetheless. “Right now! As far as your legs can carry you.”
“As far as my legs can…” I shake my head. “But we’re in the middle of the Western Wastelands. I’ll certainly die of thirst before I make my way home. And I have so many questions, besides.”
“Not my problem.”
