A heavy, empty space bloomed inside me instead.
Why did this victory taste so bitter?
11
For hours, we marched, and even with the pain knotting at the base of my neck, I refused to pick my head up. One wrong glance and the mating bond would wrap like a divine noose around my neck, solidifying my connection with the fucking Issaraeth.
The idea was too painful to even consider. To be mated to a male who systematically slaughtered his own kin simply for refusing to believe the narrative that the Demons were evil and needed to be eradicated from this earth? For choosing peace in a time of war?
Loathing, acidic and bitter, curdled in my gut.
The accursed sun continued to rise over the mountains at our backs. Through the veil of my hair, all I knew was that we were headed down, down, down. Away from the promise of safety or chance that I could escape and hide in some cave.
The forests offered no such opportunities.
We entered a misty copse of trees, the earth softening beneath our feet. I dug mine in, finding an anchoring root to aid my obstinate refusal to move. The Issaraeth stumbled, and for one vicious heartbeat I hoped he’d break his nose falling into a boulder.
“Walk,” he snapped once he recovered, his fingers tightening around my upper arm.
“No.” A single defiant word, yet it was my only lifeline in this power imbalance. The toe of my boot slid deeper into the tree’s embrace. I kept my focus on the rough bark as he rounded in front of me.
“Do you think you have a choice here?”
“None that you’re giving me,” I bit out.
A frustrated exhale ghosted over the top of my head.
“You love me being powerless, don’t you, Issaraeth?” I taunted, jerking my shoulder away. “After all, that’s why you need your Command power. No one would follow you without a leash around their throat. Your magic is all you have to earn respect.”
His grip turned bruising.
I let a slow, venomous smile bloom on my lips.
“I think I liked it better when you were silent,” he hissed. Finally, he let me go.
The phantom lightning he’d sparked under my skin sputtered out.
But I didn’t move. Didn’t let him know how he had been affecting me.
“We’ll stop here and rest for a few hours,” he said like he was trying to regain the upper hand in the situation.
I sat back against the tree that had supported my rebellion.
The bronze weighed heavily against my wrists. At least with it touching my skin, the prophecies wouldn’t come. But Icouldn’t access the well of light in my chest either to defend myself.
Essentially, I was fucked.
And yet, I was testing the most dangerous male in the Angel Realm.
“Here,” he said, shoving a waterskin into my field of vision. With the barest unfurling of my body, I accepted it. I drank a few gulps—awkwardly, since I refused to raise my head. My stomach panged and growled, hunger a constant companion since fleeing the royal hunters the first time.
“Eat,” the Issaraeth ground out. Something heavy thumped at my feet.
Slowly, I eased my legs apart, finding a strip of dried meat waiting atop a nestle of pine needles.
I snatched it without thanks—why should I when he was the reason I was exhausted and starved in the first place?—and dug my teeth into the sinew. Within minutes, the entirety had disappeared. Water washed down the remnants.
The male moved about, my every muscle tense and on alert. I tracked him with my intuition and sound alone, waiting for the moment he’d try to pry me apart and force me to walk again.
