CHAPTER 15
The storm came without warning. One moment Rykan was standing on a ridge overlooking a valley, staring at nothing and trying to silence the chaos in his skull. The next, the sky had darkened to charcoal and the wind was screaming through the pines like a living thing.
He’d seen mountain storms before. He’d survived dozens of them in his years of exile. But this one had teeth. The temperature plummeted so fast he could feel ice forming on his skin, and the snow came sideways, thick and blinding, turning the familiar landscape into a white void.
His beast wanted to shift and ride out the storm in the form better suited to survive it. But that would mean hours in beast form, possibly overnight, and the thought of leaving her alone in the cabin was unacceptable. Even furious, even hurting, even convinced she was going to abandon him the first chance she got—he couldn’t leave her unprotected.
He fought his way back through the blizzard, navigating by instinct more than sight. The cabin was a dark shape in the white, barely visible even from a few feet away. He slammedthrough the door and fell into warmth, gasping, covered in snow that was already melting against his heated skin.
“Rykan!” She was there in an instant, her hands on his arms, pulling him towards the fire. “You’re half-frozen. What were you thinking, staying out so long?”
“I didn’t see it coming,” he managed through chattering teeth. The cold had sunk deeper than he’d realized, numbing his extremities and slowing his thoughts, challenging even his Vultor physiology. He let her guide him to the hearth, too drained to resist her touch.
She quickly stripped off his outer furs, draping them over the rack near the fire to dry. Then she wrapped him in a dry fur and pressed a cup of heated broth into his hands.
“Drink,” she ordered. “Don’t argue.”
He drank. The warmth spread through his chest, chasing away the worst of the chill. When he lowered the cup, he found her watching him with an expression he couldn’t read.
“Better?” she asked.
He nodded.
“Good.” She sat back on her heels, her grey eyes darkening. “Now maybe you’ll stop running away from me long enough to have an actual conversation.”
His jaw tightened. “I wasn’t running.”
“Weren’t you?” She gestured towards the window, where the storm was still raging, snow piling against the glass in thick drifts. “You’ve been avoiding me since we left the wreck. Youwon’t look at me and won’t talk to me. You can barely stand to be in the same room. And now this.”
“The storm wasn’t planned.”
“No. But staying out until you nearly froze to death was a choice.” Her voice cracked on the last word, and he saw the fear beneath her anger—real fear, raw and trembling. “I thought you weren’t coming back. I thought?—”
She stopped, pressing her lips together as if holding back words she didn’t want to speak. Something shifted in his chest. The ice around his heart cracked, just slightly.
“I’m here,” he said quietly. “I came back.”
“You almost didn’t.” She stood abruptly, turning away from him to pace the small cabin like a caged animal. “You walked out that door without a word, without telling me where you were going, and then the storm hit and I thought?—”
“What?” He rose to his feet, the fur falling away. “What did you think?”
“That you’d rather die out there than be trapped in here with me!” She whirled to face him, and he saw the tears she’d been hiding, tracks of silver running down her cheeks. “That I’d finally driven you away, just like everyone else who’s ever?—”
She stopped again, this time catching herself before she revealed too much. But he’d heard enough.
Everyone else.
How many people had left her? Her mother, dead before Ember could know her. Her father, taken by illness despite her desperate wish to keep him. Her aunt, who had raised her asa tool to be discarded. Every servant and tutor and guard who had treated her like glass—none of them seeing her, all of them leaving in their own ways.
And now him. Adding to the list of people who had made her feel abandoned.
“That’s not what I was doing,” he said roughly. “That wasn’t?—”
“Then what were you doing?” She advanced on him, her small body vibrating with emotion. “Because from where I was standing, it looked exactly like punishment. Like you’d already decided I was going to hurt you, so you might as well hurt me first.”
The words slashed across him like claws across his face. Because she was right. That was exactly what he’d been doing. Building walls, creating distance, preparing himself for the inevitable rejection by rejecting her first.
Just like he’d done with everyone since Lysara.
