“I’m going to let go now.” He waited for me to nod again before loosening his grip around me.
The garden was quiet. Even the fountain had calmed its babble to a whisper.
Now, with enough space between us, Dommik pulled his oversized jacket tighter around my shoulders to cover more of my shivering form.
“Thank you,” I said weakly, my embarrassment ripe and ready for picking.
“You’re welcome.” Dommik stood tall and tense, arms at the ready in case I crumbled again. Hesitantly, he asked, “Do you want to talk about it?”
I did. And I didn’t. Dommik might be one of the few people I was most familiar with in the Hive but I had no fantasies about where his loyalty lied. There would be no secrets between us, and anything I said would most likely find its way back to Rhazien.
But Dommik also knew more than anyone else—about Rhazien, this great matter to find this stone and prevent a vampiric war, and what it’s like to be turned.
My stomach sank all over again and my mouth filled with an acrid taste.
“You don’t have to,” he retracted. “I just figured I’d offer.”
For someone who’d insisted we weren’t going to be friends, that I was simply his assignment and nothing more, this felt oddly like an offer a friend would make.
“Rhazien told me—” I let out a heavy breath and hoped saying the scary thing out loud would calm the nausea rising deep in my belly “—why I’m here.”
“Hmm.” He rocked on his heels. “And what do you think about that?”
“I think I still have too many questions to know what I think about it,” I said honestly, pulling at his jacket.
“Smart,” he said through a strained exhale. “It’s not something to enter into unless you’re entirely sure, with every piece of yourself, that it’s what you want. But…itisa choice.”
My face scrunched. “Preventing a war?”
Dommik’s face was all angles and cut edges, from his square jaw to pointed nose. But somehow, mentioning the potential conflict made everything harder, sharper. “I was referring to accepting his shadow. Becoming bound to him.” He struggled to get the words out.
“Yes. We talked a bit about that at dinner the other night.” I chewed on my cheek as I compared the hope I felt at dinner with Rhazien versus the despair I was overcoming now.
“He shouldn’t have told you that.” Dommik rubbed the back of his neck and began strolling around the fountain.
“Part of me wishes he hadn’t,” I admitted, the words escaping me before I could consider their impact.
He paused, hands deep in his pockets, leaning back slightly to peer at me from across the trickling fountain between us. “Are you okay?” he asked, frozen like a garden statue.
“Yes,” I said.
Dommik’s arched brow nearly disappeared beneath his wavy, dark tousels.
“No,” I admitted with a shrug.
He looked down to his feet. “I wouldn’t expect you to be.”
Dommik’s broad form rounded the fountain and approached me head on. My chin tilted up with each of his steps to hold his gaze. Then he stopped. “You don’t have to pretend. You’re allowed to feel.”
I narrowed my gaze at him, remembering his words again.Just an assignment.
“What?” he scoffed through a dimpled smile.
There it was. The Dommik I’d met in the Illica keep. Coy and playful, but also calculating and manipulative. The kind of man who would use his charms to get you to do what he wanted. Like relinquishing yourself to the Hive rather than going to the axe.
My intuition prickled at the base of my neck. “This feels like a trap.”
“No trap.” He lifted his palms in surrender.
