I probably wouldn’t have noticedanythingbut the steady thump of that black heart beneath my cheek, had the distant sounds of merry laughter not reached through the fog. Alicia and Marco had gone, left to do whatever it took to ensure Sasha’s sacrifice wasn’t for nothing.
The silence made my teeth ache. “I have nothing,” I whispered, and spread my fingers. Palming his heartbeat. “Not even my thoughts are my own. Not really.”
He stiffened when my manicured claws caught a pebbled nipple, but made no move to stop me. Didn’t speak or contradict, merely worked his thumb at the base of my skull. Unwinding years of knotted tension, only to create it elsewhere.
Melting against his heat, twin rings of gold and scabs caught my eye—but I hadn’t the energy to ask why he’d mend my palms and leave the rest. Didn’t much care, not when he pinched my nape between forefinger and thumb and stepped closer, wrapping his free arm around my waist.
“I can’t even hate Sasha for abandoning me withoutyourknowing it,” I whispered, voice scarcely audible. Forcing the words through a throat lined with broken glass. “And now there’s no High Priestess to protect you from all the hideous, ugly bits no one else is supposed to see.”
It was his turn to swallow too hard, but still, he didn’t speak. Fingers drawing familiar, lazy circles, he flexed. Squeezing tight enough to keep me from falling apart.
“She taught you our ways. Gave you the education I lack, and maybe that’s why you think my fight isn’t over. That I have something left.” Lids heavy, I blinked. Submitting to his lazy massage as I traced a circle of my own through the light smattering of hair on his chest. “But you haven’t really looked. I’m not even really here.”
His hand landed on my hip, just above the curve of my bottom, skating the edge of exposed skin at my lower back. “Where are you, little hunter?”
Heart thick, I swallowed it down before the silly thing crawled free of my throat and left me to die of humiliation. Leaving it to stew in darkness where it belonged.
WhereIbelonged.
Asher hummed, moving my hair to one side, the blunt tip of his finger catching at the edge of my shoulder. “Sasha knew,” he said, and I felt him smile. Felt the melancholy seep through his skin into mine. “Knew what I am—even had a name for it when I didn’t. She sensed the truth I’d been trying to hide since the moment I came into my power. And she knew it with little more than a touch.” He traced the exposed skin beneath my ear—shoulder to jaw—then cupped my cheek. Thumb feathering over my lower lip. “She could have ruined me five years ago. Could have used her leverage knowing she was all but untouchable as a general’s slave. But my death or imprisonment would have left a certain forest demon without a counterbalance to contend with darkness so powerful, it stained the forest black. So we formed an alliance.”
I flinched, scalding hot tears spilling over my lashes.
“Back then, I was barely holding on to the Berserker,” he continued, and eased the crease bunching tight between my brows. Breath spicy and whiskey-warm. “I was in the market that day searching for a jeweler who could replace the Glaith in my ring. A Tritan jeweler who’d worked the ore and whose silence could be bought with Empire gold. Instead, I found a scrap of a girl playing seductress, flaunting ki unlike anything I’d ever tasted. Risking everything for a worthless trinket.” His lips crinkled—I saw it through watery lashes. Watched him lift his pendant and caress the ugly little stone with the pad of his thumb, exactly as I had done thousands of times before the Fall. “I slipped when I lost you. When youescapedinto that cursed wood and worse,” he laughed, breath filling my lungs, “when you refused to go with the other Priestesses into the mountain. Taunting me day and night with the possibility that you’d be taken by an Elite like my cousin, or that someone wouldfinallyput it together and realize there was another. An unclaimed Trila-Glís unknown to her own people, distorting the forest with her sorrow and grief—for what else could contend with that much power? What other being could command the very trees to swallow soldiers but leave the way open for refugees?”
I tried to twist away. To hide the salty burn streaking blotchy cheeks, but he caught my chin. Pressed his forehead to mine.
“Sasha taught me control,” he whispered. “Freed me from dependence on ‘dirty Glaith’, and faced the Berserker time and again without flinching. I fed her my excess when I could. Practiced her techniques when I couldn’t. All of it so I could tame a girl more wild than not. More lion than woman. Because, much as I wanted to storm that haunted wood and drag you from the trees, I knew my moment would come. Knew it was only a matter of time before you slipped too, and there was onlyonewho could face you without flinching. Only one who could claim to match the infamous Wood’s Menace and dare to bring her to heel.”
A watery hiccup bubbled from my lips, and I twisted. Pressing my cheek to his chest. Wrapping my scarred fingers around the Glaith glimmering between us. Holding that power without touching it.
But my bonded wasn’t finished. “Without your ki, youshouldbe nothing.” Jostling me, he captured both of my wrists in his left hand, fingers an iron shackle I didn’t try to break, knowing it to be impossible. “You have no physical strength.” His free hand circled my throat, tilting my head back. Inky eyes drilled clear through the back of my skull. “No training and no direction. Without your ki,” he whispered, threatening my airway with a gentle, harmless squeeze, “your only resource is your saucy mouth and devious, reckless little mind. Plots spawned from a cornered animalshould benothingcompared to an Elite Trila-Glís trained by both sides of the Blood.”
I could only blink. Gooseflesh prickling every millimeter of my skin.
Lips hovering too close, he stalled at the threshold. “At times you make me so angry I can’t decide whether I want to throttle you or bend you over my desk and spank the obedience directly into your skin.” Something hot and heavy plucked at the bond—though it was impossible to discern its origin, so tangled were our minds. “But if I’ve learnedonething, Miss Tannovic, it’s that you’ll do exactly the opposite of what I expect and move mountains to defy me.”
I couldn’t swallow. The air was too dry.
“You are passion and fury embodied,” he rasped, and released my throat, moving instead to seat his pendant in the cradle formed between my captured palms. Forcing me to feel the truth of his words. “Nothing can stamp out your fire. Not now,” he pressed, cutting off my denial before it could crawl from the dark. “You havemeto tend the flames when you need a break.”
“I…” Nothing. No words came out as I stared at him, blinking stupidly.
Taking my silence as permission, Asher did just that. Slid through my veins, unencumbered, touchingeverything. Leaving power and health in his wake, yet allowing hard-won scars to remain untouched. Lingering beneath my skin as he restored what had been lost in trying to defy the Void itself. Tending my fire.
And Goddess, the scent of this man! My bondmate.
Mine.
Of their own accord, my knees fell apart. Allowing him to step between with a gruff curse whispering across his lips.
“Goddess,Asher—”
“You don’t have to fight alone,” he breathed, and freed my wrists. Cupping my face between work-hardened palms. “Give over to me. Let me ease your burden and in return, I will give youeverything.”
Chapter 15
With those words, clarity ignited in my mind. Stilling fragmented, racing thoughts with the echos of a forgotten conversation. Echos that tugged at my brain stem and forced memory to the fore. And though tears continued to trace over-warm cheeks, their source had run dry.
