Deep down, I don’t. But his anger seems to sing to my own and it burns too brightly for me to think beyond it. I square my jaw and shake my mangled wrists at him. They are bruised and scabbed from Shivhai’s irons, but it was Shaw’s own ropes that made the first mark, and I won’t allow him to forget it. “I would have been no worse off in the hands of those monsters than in the hands of the one standing in front of me!” I shout at him. His very presence charges my skin. It pricks at my throat and looses a wave of crimson from inside me that washes over everything else. How dare he act as ifIhave wrongedhim.
Shaw’s eyes blaze and a muscle feathers in his jaw as he steps closer to me. He holds himself tightly once more, coiled as though he will pounce on me at any moment. A day ago—hell, an hour ago—I might have ceded a step. Backed away timidly. But he’s awoken whatever it is that lives inside me, the dark creature I’ve always fought to keep quiet. There is no caging it now. So, I use it.
Let it heat my cheeks and my skin and my very heart. And then I take a large step toward him in an unspoken challenge.
His eyes widen fractionally, the only sign of surprise he will give.
“You brought me from their prison to one more convenient to you.” I step toward him again. He doesn’t move, but a warm thrill shoots through my center at the way he looks at me. As if he will burn straight through me with his gaze. As if he cannot look away. “There is nothing noble about that.”
He bares his teeth. “Lucky for you, I have no interest in beingnoble,” he spits the word like it tastes foul. “Because a more noble man than me would never have snuck into the camp like a ghost and gutted every one of those soldiers from behind with no hesitation. They never even saw it coming. There’s no dignity in that, but you know what there is?Justice,”His eyes drift to my wrists and then lower, where a deep bruise blooms on my thigh, beneath the layers of my cloak. A bruise in the shape of Shivhai’s fingers, an imprint of everything he tried to take from me. “For aiding what was happening in that tent. For what has happened in that tent countless times before.”
Fast as lightning, Shaw grabs my hand and yanks up my sleeve, revealing the watercolor of bruising that plagues my wrist. The skin is raw and bleeding and I can almost feel the weight of Shivhai pressing me into the ground.
Shaw runs his thumb lightly over the tender skin and the claustrophobic feel of thelegatusis replaced with something that shivers and burns in equal measure. Meeting my gaze fiercely, he snarls, “I savored every bit of their blood.”
I shiver again. There is something chilling about his words, something both deadly and reverent. How can such raw violence live alongside whatever it is that allows him to touch me so gently? This close, I can see the way his thick lashes brush his cheekbone as he watches his thumb dance across my wrist. It makes me ache for something I can’t even name.
I move my eyes downward, to his chest, rising and falling in ragged breaths as though he’s been sprinting miles. So at odds with the stillness in which he holds the rest of himself. I wonder, for an absurd moment, what it would feel like to run my fingers down the lean muscles. To reach under his tattered shirt and confirm the truth of my mind’s imaginings. Will his skin feel soft stretched over his stomach or will it be as unyielding as the rest of him? He’s only a breath away. I need only to reach out a hand and I could discover if he’s really made of marble and stone. I could run them down the ridges of muscle, down the sharp bones of his hips to his…knife.
Forgotten in my breathless haste, forgotten in his wash of anger, his knives are right in front of me. In their scabbard, only a hairsbreadth from my fingers.
Shaw lets go of my wrist gently, moving his fingers to my throat. I swallow roughly, sure he can somehow read my traitorous thoughts, that he will wrap them around my throat, but he only brushes over my old bruises lightly. His face is pained, and I shiver once more, though I am far from cold. My skin feels fevered and my blood rushes like lava through my veins. His calluses scrape gently across my skin, the friction deliciously unnerving. His eyes never leave mine, and something like agony flickers in them as he traces my jaw lightly.
I can’t seem to look away, can do nothing but stare at him. I wonder if every touch feels like this or if it is only his that electrifies my skin and makes my heart feel like it will beat out of my chest. Is it only his that makes me feel such…want?
Shaw’s fingertips trace the small cut across my cheek and the heat in me is abruptly replaced by something much colder. Emptier. It doesn’t matter if he truly is the only one capable of eliciting such a cacophony of emotions. He isn’t to be trusted. The gentleness inside him will expire, giving way to that horrible mask of stone and he’ll hurt me once more. I owe him nothing.
I wrap my fingers around Shaw’s knife and while he still touches my skin, I plunge it into the nearest part of him I can reach.
I yank the knife out as Shaw lets out a string of words I don’t recognize but are surely a curse. Gripping the blood-soaked handle, I turn to run, but he sweeps my feet out from under me. I shout angrily, the irony of being snared by the same movement cuttingly cruel. I tumble to the ground, spinning myself around just in time to see Shaw throw himself at me. Even injured, he is terrifyingly fast.
Our bodies tangle as we grapple for the dagger. Shaw emits a sound more akin to a wild animal than a man. His body is heavy against mine, pressing me into the cavern floor. I know nothing of self-defense, or apparently where to stab someone to incapacitate them, but I did grow up with a brother. I bring my knee up as hard as I can between Shaw’s legs.
He lets out another curse and his hand loosens fractionally. I bring the knife up again, slicing at his chest. The makeshift tourniquet flutters from his shoulder to the ground, a forgotten white flag, as Shaw roars in pain. My feet slip against the limestone as I slither out from under him.
I leap over him as his hand grapples for my ankle. Missing his fingers, I don’t get far before one of his long legs catches me. I sprawl forward and it’s only the cushion of Shaw’s arms that keep me from cracking my skull against the rock. I yelp as he climbs over me, shoving a hard thigh between my legs. He pins my wrist to the ground with his good arm, squeezing until the knife spills from my fingers. I slam my other fist into his injured shoulder, but he doesn’t even flinch. Just grits his teeth and pins my other wrist to the ground in a perfunctory manner.
Blood pours from his shoulder wound once more and wells where I sliced him in the chest. It feels scalding as it drips onto my chest and neck. How much pain has he endured that he’s able to move through it so well?
I squeeze my eyes shut and let out a scream of rage. He’s going to finish what he started and kill me. If he didn’t plan to before, stabbing him will certainly have tested the limits of his limited mercy. Maybe I’ll get lucky, and he’ll bleed out before he can. A girl can hope.
“There it is,” Shaw says. His voice is rough and so close that his breath is a warm whisper against my throat.
What?
Unable to quell my incredulity at his sudden change of tone, I open my eyes. He doesn’t look angry any longer. He looks almost…amused? He grins, but if his previous smiles were lanterns, this would be a firework. It lights his entire face and for a moment, I can’t breathe. I stare at him dumbly. “What are you talking about?”
Does he truly find me attempting to murder him amusing? And if he does, what in Covinus’ name is wrong with him?
He tilts his head, his eyes meeting mine. If I were able to move more than an inch, I would rear back from what shines there. Hunger. Wild, frenetic hunger. As his eyes rove down to my mouth, he looks absolutely ravenous. “I thought I saw it when I first met you. But then you were sowillingto let the world brutalize you, to allow it to blow you around as if you’re no more than a leaf in the wind, that I thought I imagined it. But there it is.”
I huff impatiently but realize immediately it’s the wrong choice as it only further presses my breasts into the unrelenting stone that is Shaw’s chest. The friction brings heat to my cheeks. “You thought you saw what?” I grind out, attempting to shimmy one of my legs from underneath his grasp.
Also a mistake. One that brings heat to more than just my face. “Quit talking in riddles and get off me!”
At this, Shaw grins wider. “Make me, Lemming.”
“My name is Mirren!” I scream wildly at him.
