“Dommik, you don’t have to—” I took the smallest step toward him.
“No. You asked. More than once. I just,” his face fell into his hands, “I never speak about it—or her. And this is why.”
I rubbed my arm as I took another small step. “Would it be easier if you showed me?”
Dommik spread his fingers, questioning eyes peeking through the cracks. His response muffled in his palms, “Can you?”
I sat on the bed next to him again. “Maybe. If you can think of something unique to her—a necklace, a ring, something of hers—it would make it easier.”
“I don’t know if I want you rooting around in my mind and digging up the pain I buried.”
I lifted my hands in retreat. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”
Dommik studied me. My hands were folded in my lap, one crossed over the other, just like my bare ankles. No assertion. No expectation. I hoped he saw me as just a person—a friend—sitting quietly, leaving space for him. What he did with that space was entirely up to him.
He rolled out his neck and groaned, “Okay.”
“Only if you want to?—”
“I said okay,” he snipped, extending his hand to me.
I looked at his calloused palm. Rough and worn from his time as a soldier before he’d been turned and—as he said—forged into a weapon for Eryx. My gaze flicked to his.
“What’s the item?”
He exhaled in his hesitation. “The Forest and The Flame.”
The book he’d gifted me. One of the few personal comforts I had at the Northern Hive was something of hers? My heart fluttered and my posture tensed.
“Okay,” I croaked.
Then, I took his hand.
Chapter 31
The Worst Mistake
Ilearned to swim at a young age. I had strong legs and keen instincts for navigating the bodies of water across the land my father owned. But Dommik’s memories made me feel like I was drowning in violent whitewater rapids.
The small book first appeared in my bedroom, then as he tucked it in his bag before he brought me to the Southern Hive. The memories were going backwards. There was a sense of overwhelming discordance as he lay flat in the bed I sat on now, injured but healing, content listening to me read.
Seeing myself through his eyes, gaunt and dirty from the keep and ambush, was like looking at a stranger. I still had so much in common with that woman, but so much had changed since then.
In a blink, I was gasping, following the book back to the beginning, to its origin.
A reluctant Dommik ignored the pleas of the human slaves he guarded, except her. Kaia. She held more similarities to the withered version of myself than the bathed, fed, and finely dressed version I was now. Her thick, wild hair overpowered her lean frame. Even though her cheeks were hollow and her skin sun-deprived, warmth radiated from her mahogany gaze.
“Can we trade? And get something new to read?” she’d asked, handing DommikThe Forest and The Flamethrough the bars of their enclosure.The simple request was a determined droplet that burrowed within him, making a path for a creek to grow into a stream. A stream to broaden to a river.
This river of feelings led to stolen kisses through the bars and long shifts, guarding as Kaia read to him and the other humans who shared her cell.
“I’ll get you out of here. We can leave this place.” Dommik’s heart was full and heavy. The only emotion he carried more than his affection for Kaia was the fear that someone would find out.
And someone did.
Vaspar.
Without the memories tethered to the book, the vision became blurry, but Kaia’s face was a constant as I overstayed my welcome in Dommik’s memories.
