At some point, I must have opened my hand and dropped her. Maybe she even punched me in the face before she ran away. It would explain the headache and the blood dripping into my eye from what must be split skin above my eyebrow.
She launches herself onto her eagle’s back a moment before it takes to the sky. I catch her bloodshot eyes and the bruises blossoming around her neck as she rises into the air, fleeing as fast as she can.
My groan grows louder. Damn and fuck.
A low keening sound from behind me tells me my serpent is edging toward me, but I hold up my hand, warding him off. “Stay.”
I sense my fire is close to erupting. I’ve held it at bay for a long time now, longer than I thought possible, and it’s pushing toward the surface.
I can’t pursue Cassia. Not when I can’t see straight.
Not when my head is pounding, and my fire is about to rage out of control, and the Oracle’s scent fills my chest. All while her earlier command repeats in my memory over and over. A rebuke against the way I tried to claw my way toward her just now.
Come for me when the sun turns bitterly cold, and the sand bleeds iron. Come for me only then.
I slump forward, my fists thumping the dry sand as I try to make sense of what happened, of the energy pulsing from the blade, the amber thread connecting me to her, and how I could have seen her across the distance between us. I’m certain that what I witnessed was happening in that exact moment. It wasn’t in the past or the future.
Anger rises within my heart, replacing the pain, because I’ve lost her. Again.
A roar leaves my lips. A desperate exhalation.
With it, flames finally explode from my torso and arms, burning through the remaining leather on my chest, spearing across the ground in front of me, spreading and spreading as far as I can see. Threatening to set the whole fucking world on fire.
My serpent rushes into the air, barely escaping the explosion. The nearest dry twigs disintegrate in a flash. The sand and grit beneath me turn to lava, and the empty pit inside my chest threatens to swallow me.
I sink to the ground as my fire finally stops on a far ridge,finallyburns itself out, leaving me inhaling smoke and despair.
Gone is any shred of peace the Oracle’s presence brought me.
In its place is rage.
I have no choice but to defy her command.
Sure, I’ll return home now. I’ll startplanning and preparing. I’ll find a way to strike Antony’s Kingdom when it will hurt him the most.
But I can’t wait for her.
Not when waiting can only bring death to everyone around me.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Thyra
For a breathtaking heartbeat, Antony remains right where he stands, his left hand gripping my wrist, his head lowered to mine, his lips a mere inch from my mouth.
For a heartbeat, I inhale his savage breaths, his furious rage that I dared to reach for him, that I came so close to cupping my palm to his jaw.
A heartbeat from closing the gap between us.
Then he jolts back with a savage, “What is this trick?”
I try to force sound from my mouth, fighting to focus through the overwhelming intensity of his nearness and the haze of the vision I experienced only moments ago. “What trick?”
“You did this in the village, too.” His other hand, the naked one, reaches for my face, but still he doesn’t make contact, his palm hovering infuriatingly close to my cheek. “Your hair, your eyes, your skin. This trick.”
“I don’t…understand…”
He gives a growl, and I read his renewed distrust in thenarrowness of his eyes, the twist of his lips. Lips that came very close to brushing mine.
