I do not love you, Serin. I cannot.
His words replay in perfect, torturous detail. The careful flatness of his voice. The deliberate way he avoided my eyes when he spoke. The slight tensing of his shoulders, as if bracing for impact. I've analyzed every syllable, every gesture, searching for... what? A crack in his certainty? Evidence that he didn't mean it?
But I found nothing but cold finality.
I increase my pace, my fingernails digging crescents into my palms as the grotto rises in my memory with painful clarity. Water droplets glisten on silver scales, the gentle press of his massive body against mine, the reverent way his claws traced patterns across my skin. The sounds he made when we joined, low and primal. That wasn't survival, it was discovery and wonder.
And when he lifted me from the ash pit? When he breathed life back into my lungs, his mouth covering mine with desperate urgency? I remember the raw fear in his eyes when I finally gasped awake, the way his hands trembled against my face. That wasn't the clinical detachment of one being ensuring another's survival; it was terror of loss and relief.
I pause before the nest meant to be my bed. Did I imagine the tenderness, project my own feelings onto actions that meant nothing to him?
No. I refuse to believe that. I've spent my life watching, observing, and reading people when they thought no one noticed. I didn't misinterpret what passed between us. I couldn't have.
So why the sudden change? Why the cruel dismissal? What happened between our arrival at Vessan-Kar and his visit to the Flame room that transformed him from the male who held me through the darkness into the cold stranger who denied everything we shared?
Eira's words float back to me.When those instincts are challenged, it stirs storms inside even the strongest warriors. The winds of change are rarely welcomed when they first arrive.
My pacing resumes, faster now, almost frantic. I rake my fingers through my hair, pulling strands loose from their simple braid. The rage I've been suppressing since his rejection builds in my chest, expanding with each heartbeat until I can barely breathe around it. How many times must I be dismissed, overlooked, underestimated? By my father, who saw me as nothing but a pawn. And now by Lurok, who shared my body but discarded my heart as if it were worthless.
The pressure in my chest builds to unbearable heights. My next circuit of the room is almost a run; my breathing ragged with emotion. I should be able to get past this. I faced death in an ash pit and survived torture at the hands of the TrueCoil. I helped save an entire city. I should be stronger than this, able to withstand one male's rejection without coming apart at the seams.
But I'm not. The pain is too fresh, too raw, too all-consuming.
"Enough!" The word tears from my throat as I throw my hands upward in a gesture of absolute frustration.
And the world explodes.
Air erupts around me in a violent gust, as if I've somehow unleashed a tempest indoors. The wind spirals outward from my body in a perfect circle, catching everything in its path. Scrolls fly from the desk, fluttering like startled birds. The carefully arranged nest covers lift and billow, fabric snapping in the sudden gale.
Small objects transform into projectiles around me. A silver hairbrush whirls past my ear. A cup shatters against the far wall. A jeweled decorative box spins wildly through the air before smashing into the wall, sending crystal fragments cascading to the floor.
I drop my hands, and the vortex stops as quickly as it began. Objects clatter to the floor. The chamber, so pristine moments ago, now looks as though a small army has ransacked it. Shards of broken pottery glint in the gentle light. Scrolls settle in disarray, some drifting to rest as far as the washroom threshold.
And I stand at the center of it all, utterly still, staring at my hands as if they belong to someone else. My fingers look the same, pale, human, ordinary, yet something has changed. I felt the power flow through them, felt the air respond to my emotions, to my will.
Impossible. Humans don't wield elements unless they share a blood bond with a naga with elemental affinity like Leira. I have no such connection, no naga blood…
My fingertips drift to my lips, tracing the memory of that moment when Lurok's mouth covered mine, his breath flowing into me. The sweet, metallic taste of his essence slipping down my throat, igniting my blood until every vein hummed with crackling energy.
"Holy shit!"
Chapter Twenty-Two
LUROK
Islam my fist against the wall of my den. My scales burn with rage I cannot contain. The lie I told her echoes through my mind. Each syllable is a fresh wound. My coils tighten and release in agitation. The air already answers my fury. Scrolls stir on my desk without a visible source. I have become the very thing I feared: the living embodiment of the prophecy I have fought to deny.
My palm leaves a smear of blood on the stone, knuckles splitting from the impact. I barely notice the pain. It is nothing compared to the memory of her face crumpling before she rebuilt her walls, that flash of devastation before pride reasserted itself. For a heartbeat, I glimpsed the damage I inflicted before she hid it away.
"I did what was necessary," I snarl to the empty chamber, my voice bouncing off walls carved with the history of my ancestors. Of warriors who never broke, never wavered, never succumbed to weakness.
The air disagrees. It whips around me in agitated currents, rustling scrolls and setting the ancient blades and ceremonial daggers hanging on my wall to trembling against their moorings, metal singing against metal in soft, accusatory chimes. Myelement has its own opinion, it seems, refusing the lie even as I desperately cling to it.
Just survival. Nothing more,the words tasted foul on my tongue as I spoke them.
I circle the confines of my den, tail lashing in tight, furious arcs. Each slither sends ripples through the air around me, invisible power growing with my emotions. A vase topples from its shelf, shattering against the floor. I barely register the sound.
I should never have claimed her in that hidden grotto, or surrendered to the hunger that has haunted me since I first scented her. Marking her as mine was reckless folly with ancient prophecy warning against it. Now I suffer here, my scales burning with the memory of her skin against mine, torn between duty to my people and the invisible pull that is tearing me apart inside to deny.
