It’s too much.
Erik’s features blur as I stumble backward, gasping for breath, clutching at my pounding heart before my legs collapse beneath me.
Chapter22
Erik leaps forward and catches me before I hit the floor. His arms wrap around me, but I can barely feel them.
All I feel is the forge-fire billowing around me again, the memory so strong that I’m trying to throw myself backward, away from the flames, even though in the very next second, the air is filled with smoke and my hand is once again brushing up against human flesh, transforming it into the very smoke I was breathing. My ears fill with hissing vipers and my feet are sinking into mud I can’t escape from, and then my hands are smacking into rock as I decide whether or not to kill a fae…
Erik’s voice is far away. “You’re going into shock.” His hands rest on either side of my face. “Oh, Asha, what the fuck did youdoto keep me alive?”
His hands tighten. “Tell me! Youhaveto tell me. You have to extract it like poison. Speak the memories so they’ll let you go.”
I can’t form words, can’t focus.
Sharp stones are biting into my back and a dark, night sky is swallowing me whole. Now, all I can hear is my scream, echoing through the ballroom as I fought to constrain my power so I didn’t hurt my sister.
I’m vaguely aware of Erik gathering me up into his arms and carrying me toward the bed. Somehow, he manages to scoop up the blanket before he carries me into the next room, where it’s darker.
He takes me into the farthest corner, away from the light, where he pulls me into his lap and wraps the blanket around us both, pulling the material up and over our heads so that it drops us into darkness.
My panicked breathing slows.
“This is our den,” he murmurs against my ear. “It’s a safe place. A place where fear can’t reach you.”
My memories rush all the way back to the first time I saw his bedroom. The mess of clothing, blankets, pillows, and random belongings all strewn about like burrows. Places to hide.
Finally, that’s where my memories stop.
His lips brush my forehead and then my cheek before he urges me to rest my head in the crook of his neck. “You’re okay, Asha. You’ll be okay.”
I shudder wildly as I curl up as tightly as I can, his arms squeezing around me.
“The crossbow was propping you up,” I whisper, knowing that I have to start somewhere. “I wanted to kill them all.”
Now that I’ve started speaking, I don’t stop.
I tell him everything and leave nothing out—not the way I used a medallion to stop his bleeding, or how the humans tried to use forge-fire against me, or the number of humans I killed. I describe how I made the stretcher and pulled him through the wasteland under the cover of smoke and then up into the mountains. I tell him about my meeting with the fae, of killing one of them, and of flying him back here.
Then I recount my interaction with my sister and the Fae Queen, and the deal I made.
He listens and doesn’t interrupt.
The more I speak, the more I wish I could read his expression in the darkness beneath the blanket. The material gapes open a little at his left shoulder, letting the air in, but there isn’t enough light for me to see him properly.
Yet I have no doubt that he can see me.
He may have lost his visible wolf features, but his senses seem as strong as they were.
When I finally fall silent, he asks a question I wasn’t expecting.
“Why are the fae this far west?”
I thought he would focus on my sister or on my deal with the Queen or maybe on the mechanism I pulled from this chest—all of the things that impact him directly.
My forehead creases. “I don’t know. It wasn’t exactly my focus at the time.”
Did the corner of his mouth rise a little?I’m not sure.
