Meryn’s tangled, messy feelings start to manifest physically: dark tendrils of shadow wrapping around her, twisting and curling.
“Anassa’s rage is all-consuming,” Cratos shares.“She’s bearing what she can from Meryn, but they’re both close to the breaking point. We need to intervene.”
I send him silent assent, and he picks up his pace until we’re running next to Anassa and Meryn, wind whipping by us.
Out on the battlefield, I could sense her getting pulled under by her power.I don’t understand what happened next. But the door she opened in her magic somehow opened to me as well.
If I hadn’t helped her shoulder it, she might not have come back from the edge.
I haven’t wanted to think about everything that came along with it: the overwhelming connection between us and the insistent, excruciating desire that coursed through me like a sickness.
And now she’s teetering on that cliff once again.
Meryn turns her head toward me, her hazel eyes anguished.
“I’m here,” I tell her.“Don’t carry it alone.”
She isn’t opening up to me, though. When I test the boundaries between us, her mind is closed off, a walled garden.
Cratos guides us into dense woods, leaving the dirt farm paths and rolling hills behind. Anassa is still bristling, snarling as we slow to a walk.
We reach a clearing, and I slide down from Cratos’s back, turning to watch as Meryn dismounts. She stumbles toward me, then suddenly stops, eyes wide.
And lets out a ragged scream of frustration.
The sound tears through the woods, cracking the peace of this wild spot like the strike of a hammer. Birds rise from the trees around us and take flight, and Meryn’s shadow magic swirls and sparks after them, like an echo of their discontent.
Behind us, Anassa is just as worked up, hackles raised. She snaps at Cratos, who bites right back. The two of them circle each other and then bound off, working their aggression out their own way.
“Let it out,” I command, leveling Meryn with a look. I know there’s more there, raging. I know because I canfeelit inside her, just barely caged.
The next sound that rips from her throat is a growl, almost animalistic. And then the shadows around her surge, shooting out in every direction.
Darkness rushes through the forest like a wave. All around us, tree trunks creak, a few crashing to the ground in a clamoring echo of Meryn’s pained cry.
The darkness flows right over and past me, but it whispers against my skin. A few tendrils linger as the rest of her magic expands and pulses. It murmurs in my ears, rifling through my hair, itching at my skin like anger embodied.
And still, it’s building in her, not fully released.
I’ve been tryingso hardto be on good behavior.
I’ve stayed calm, controlled—for her. To help her, to be the quiet voice for her, the refuge in this storm.
But maybe that’s not what she needs.
Maybe she doesn’t need a steady, silent anchor she can moor herself around.
Maybe she needs to be met where she is, violence with violence. Maybe she needs someone who has the strength to ride the wave of her ferocity with her.
“Hit me,” I demand.
She steps toward me, neck craning to look up, eyes searching in their wildness. Her breath hitches, chest heaving. “What?”
I lower my face toward hers. Whatever she sees nearly makes her flinch.
My hand wraps around her throat, gentle but a warning all the same. I try not to stroke the tattoos I’ve marked so carefully into her delicate skin.
“I don’t like to repeat myself, princess. I am not a very patient man. Stop fucking bottling up your feelings. You need help to get them out? I’m going to tell you this one last time: Hitme. Hurtme. I can take it.”
