“How bad is your arm?” I ask, my voice soft against the still forest around us.
The evening sounds are comforting. The gurgle of the river, the crackle of the fire. Soft breathing from the horses, and the odd chirp from a bird.
“Dislocated shoulder, broken humerus, and three cracked knuckles – but the knuckles healed while you were having a swim. Just some swelling. And I set the arm while we were riding.”
“That’s not what happened. You were trying to drown me. What if I couldn’t swim?”
“The water wasn’t going to kill you,” he says, still struggling with the bag.
I reach over with my good hand and hold the buckle still. We balance each other’s injuries and manage to make light work of the normally two-handed job. The corner of his mouth tweaks into a smile.
I like when he smiles. Like the way my muscles relax – which is even more obvious now that every muscle is trembling. Some just a little, others more violently.
“How,” I have to stop and swallow against the teeth chatter before continuing, “do you know?”
He looks up, and I hold his gaze, staring at the sheen of emerald dancing across the almost black.
“I didn’t. But I would have known if you stopped breathing.”
“How?” I demand.
“I can smell Darkness approaching,” he says, waving a hand in front of his face – which probably means he’s not talking about a smell at all.
“Did those Sabers in the market smell dark?”
“Didn’t matter. You wanted to flirt with that danger.”
“So you let me? You just let me make a really stupid decision. Killian, you’re hurt. Pax is – I don’t know what. They almost killed you.” I stop to gasp for air, eyes wide, watching as his smile broadens. Stop chuckin’ smiling at me. I messed up! “And I do not flirt!”
He chuckles, pulling something from the bag. I don’t even bother looking at it, resting my hand on top of his to get his attention back. This is too damn serious for him to just laugh it off. He looks down at my hand.
“You can’t let me do that again,” I say. “You can’t let me do things that will get you hurt. Any of you,” I try to order, but my voice is shaking from fear.
From the cold – and maybe from shock.
From the knowledge that I’m their weakest link.
“You didn’t do anything. You didn’t put mercenaries in the enforcement office. You didn’t make Pax lose his shit,” he says, still looking at our hands like something more interesting is happening than my skin touching his. He just saw my boobs, my ass, my everything, and kept a completely neutral expression. But my hand on his makes him stare.
“I told you not to kill those assholes on sight – and clearly listening to me is the dumbest thing you’ve ever done.”
Killian tilts his head to the side, seriously frowning at my hand. I pull it away.
“Sorry,” I say. “You need to promise me you won’t let me do that again.”
“No.”
“What do you mean no?”
He picks up two thick sticks from right beside him, obviously chosen earlier when he was prepping the fire, and holds them up. I take them from him, confusion pulling at my brow, until he holds up a bandage.
“I thought you set it?” I ask, then realize that he’s changing the damn subject. “No, you need to answer me first. You need to promise.”
He growls. “It needs to stay set – and no.”
He drops the bandage in my lap and lifts a finger underneath my chin, holding me in place with his thumb. Power brushes along my skin, cool like an autumn breeze.
“Why not?” I ask, pushing my words through frozen lips as I struggle to put it all together.
Killian’s power spreads across my cheek and down my neck.
“Because I like seeing what you do in the Darkness,” he finally says, dropping my chin.
The smooth tendrils of Darkness hover for a second before the sensation is gone.
“I don’t,” I mutter. “I do stupid shit.”
With one tug on his collar, at the back of his neck, and a long, low growl, he pulls his shirt up over his head. His chest is smooth, with the barest scattering of hair. Tight muscles, pure tone, and a really long scar from shoulder to abs. It’s still jagged and split, like the injury happened yesterday. There’s the odd old scar here and there, but surprisingly few for a guy who chooses not to block half the time.
I lift my fingers and rest them at his shoulder, at the top of the old wound.
“You haven’t got many scars.” My voice is low, almost lost in the sudden spit and hiss of the fire.
I’m expecting him to brush my hand aside. To stop me.
He doesn’t.
“Mostly we heal too fast.”
“Mostly?”
“Not the scars born from Darkness,” he says.
My chest tightens. His mother being killed before his eyes certainly qualifies as Darkness.
“Why doesn’t this scar heal?” I press.
I start to run my fingertips down the length of the cut.
His hand snaps up, wrapping around my fingers with just enough force and speed to make me gasp. His hand wraps around mine, showing a flash of the red and black design of the Release Seal on his palm.
“Some Darkness is too deep to heal.”
I swallow hard and nod – even though I’m not satisfied. Maybe Roarke will tell me more if I pick the right moment to ask.
Slowly, his grip relaxes, and my hand slips free. “You,” he begins gruffly. “You were good at talking to the merchants.” As he talks, he works free the beginning of the bandage – all of his attention on his hands. “Why did you call me your husband?”
I shrug, because only Killian would be confused about the obvious. “It felt right… to make them relax, I mean. What did I do to Pax?” I ask, which isn’t really changing the subject because we were talking about this only moments ago.
Killian grunts at me. “Something triggered him.” For half a second I’m worried he’s going to stop, but he doesn’t. “Something made him fear losing you, or think that he had already lost you. Pax has triggers. Seeing the marks left from slavery on someone he cares about is one.”
“What set him off this time?”
“Ask him, but if he went looking for you and couldn’t find you? And Sromma, whatever he did or said. It makes sense his wolf would –”
I cut in, “Lose his shit? Because my stupid decision had us locked in some room of torture. Which is another good reason to ignore everything I say from now on.”
He snorts. “Enforcement Office.”
I give him a ‘huh?’ look.
“Locked in an enforcement office; and it didn’t help.”
“So, you agree with me, and you’ll stop me from getting us locked up again?” I press.
“No. Help me with this. If it heals wrong, I have to re-break it – we don’t have time for that.”
He snatches the sticks back, demonstrates what it is I’m supposed to do with the things, then jabs them in my direction again. It’s a two person effort, holding the sticks to his arm and wrapping the bandage in place, especially with my fingers still trembling from the cold – or shock.
“What’s shock?” I ask.
“Your body has taken too much of a beating. Physically and emotionally. It’s struggling to survive.”
“Oh,” is all I can say.
He could be right. I could be in shock.
When I’m done with the bandage, I clench and unclench my fists. The tingle through my palm and the shake along my fingers is getting really annoying.
“It’ll go away,” he says, gripping my broken arm at the elbow and making it clear that he wants my arm resting and motionless on his leg.
“Why am I in shock?”
“Because you killed a man.”
I swallow hard. Yes, that commander is dead, but that wasn’t on my mind. And technically I just cut him, I didn’t actually do the ki
lling part.
“And you lost energy to Pax.”
“What does that mean?”
“Sabers suck the souls from mortals,” he says, pulling on my wrist and sending a sharp stab of pain through my whole arm. “Not just from mortals. From anything not strong enough to suck an equal amount of power back out of us. We live in harmony with each other.”
I growl, then gasp. My eyes clenched shut.
“You need to let this heal, or you’re going to be left with a weak spot that breaks every time you fight.”
“I’m trying,” I say through gritted teeth. “What did you just do?”
“Realigned the bones.”
“How do bones even get misaligned?” I ask, blinking back the tears.
“Throwing yourself through a window doesn’t help.”
He runs his thumb firmly down my forearm, pressing just enough to see the muscle dent. I wince, and instead of releasing the pressure, he presses harder, massaging into the pain.
I clench my teeth. “That. Hurts.”
But I’m not game to try and pull away.
Trying to avoid pain with Killian just equals more pain.
“You’re damaging the muscles,” he informs me.
“Feels like you’re damaging them.”
He cracks his almost-smile and releases the pressure. His thumb moves back in the other direction until it finds tenderness again.
“I’m going to tape your arm to your body, so you’re not tempted to use it.”
“Thanks,” I say, because that was a joke – right?
His fingertips brush along the scabbed line of one of the seventeen cuts he left me with. I counted them.
“You break too easily,” he says.
“Yet I went through the glass without a scratch. That’s weird, right?”
The low tone on his exhale almost sounds like he agrees with me.
“What does that mean?” I ask.
“You take unnecessary risks. The glass and going near Pax,” he says, finding a new sore spot and pressing into it. “Never go near Pax when he’s like that,” he orders.
I gasp, gritting my teeth and struggling to talk. “You said that bad things were going to happen if we didn’t stop him.”
“If I didn’t stop him,” he growls. Pressing harder. “There was no we. If he’d seen you vulnerable – if the glass had cut you, if he’d felt the scars on your back… You could have made things much worse.” He doesn’t release the pressure, and I start to buckle at the elbow. “Promise,” he orders.
“No,” I growl back – which gets me more pain.
If Killian was breaking bones to get to Pax, then shit was really desperate. I want to say that there was no thinking involved – I just acted. Just ran at the stupid wall, and before my fingers touched glass, the stuff shattered.
Killian growls, which translates to ‘promise, now.’
“I won’t promise you, Killian –” I gasp. “Because I can’t keep it.”
With a final growl he releases the pressure. Instinctively, I move, but he holds my arm against his leg. Not hard. Not rough. Just firm.
“I can’t keep it because I just ran. I just moved, and I didn’t have time to consider why or how,” I elaborate.
Which doesn’t help my case. I’m just a mortal soot-pentad-member and I chuckin’ ran at a wall of stone and glass.
But I didn’t die.
Pax must have broken it with the same burst of power that killed Sromma – and tore my clothing to dust? Maybe?
I have no idea.
“What happened?” I ask, my words cut off as he begins to massage a muscle above my elbow.
I crumple forward, curling over myself in pain – my arm staying obediently on his leg. Letting itself get kneaded and pushed, and hurting like bralls, and at the same-stupid-time enjoying his touch.
He says nothing, and I might be whimpering, but I’m not letting this conversation go.
“What was the worst case scenario today?”
He relaxes his fingers just a little.
“Pax’s power can rip through things. Together we control the power. In his Darkness, he loses that control. He lost control when his daughter died. By the time he’d found himself, his wife was gone too.”
“Then the risk with the glass was worth it,” I say.
I would jump through a million narrow windows made of razor-sharp glass for the people I love, if I had to.
He grunts, finding a new knot, and making me gasp in pain again.
He’s not watching his hands, though. He’s watching my expression.
“Do you enjoy seeing me in pain?”
He grunts a ‘no’ sound.
“Then why – argh – are you watching – argh – me, instead of what you’re doing?”
“I don’t understand how you’re supposed to survive this.”
“A broken arm?” I say, snap really, because he’s deliberately working my muscles harder than he needs to and he just exhausted the mild balance between putting up with the pain and enjoying his touch. Suddenly, I don’t think he needs to be touching me at all! “Or,” I add. “Because you think I’m supposed to die.”
Silence.
“What’s a grimm?” I press.
His thumb digs into my wrist, shooting fire through every muscle between his hand and my shoulder, even into my back.
Enough.
I smack at his hand, which hurts me more than him – but it takes him by surprise enough that I manage to reclaim my arm.
“Touch my arm again, and I’ll chuckin’ bite you,” I growl.
He gives me a lopsided smile. “Bite?”
Yes, Shade, why did you choose bite? Not stab or punch, but bite?
“Yes! Bite,” I growl, hugging my arm across my chest.
“Bite me, and I’ll muzzle you,” he says.
Should have threatened his balls instead.
“Muzzle me, and I’ll bite your –” Crap, no. Shade – do not finish that sentence.
Killian just looks at me expectantly, so I scramble to say something not-stupid.
“Face. I’ll bite your face.”
That wasn’t much better. It’s made worse by the fact that he’s now laughing at me.
Damn, I love his laugh.
“Grimm,” I growl, before that sounds completely dissolves my anger. “Tell me about the grimm.”
“The grimm,” he begins, once his laughter has settled, “are creatures who guard the Veil. They stop things getting out. Lithael has the ability to open a doorway and bring them in and out whenever he pleases. Deadly speed. Incredible intuition. The leaping distance of a wieldron –”
“I need more than an inventory of their abilities,” I say, cutting him off.
“People with black, tar-like skin on their hands and arms, their feet and legs. Thorns that sweat venom protrude from their flesh. They ooze Seduction and Darkness at the same time. Hold your gaze, call you to them, then do what they wish. They live solely on pain and answer to the Veil Queen. Lithael has her allegiance. He has told the council that she is helping to restore the balance, to undo the damage caused by Lucif – I don’t believe it. You will die. Let me splint your arm.”
“Why bother? What’s a damaged arm compared to a dead body?”
I don’t want a damaged arm, and I don’t want to die, but if he’s worried about my arm being strong enough to fight, then he thinks I can fight – right?
“I –” His gaze seeks out mine. The black washes away to reveal a pure emerald green.
My breath up and leaves me, running off with every bit of common sense my heart has ever had.
“I need you to live.”
He holds his hand out to me, palm up. I’m too shocked to move, to even work out what his hand’s there for. A shiver runs down my back, but I ignore that because the rest of me is considering whether or not death-by-kissing-Darkness would be a bad thing.
Killian, right there, shirtless in the firelight.
He is not ma
king this easy for me.
“Give me your arm,” he orders.
Ah, so that’s what he’s holding his hand out for.
“Can you do it without hurting me?” I finally ask.
But the truth is, I’m struggling to keep my arm away from him. My whole being wants to move forward and mold against his body – but this is Killian, and I really don’t know what reaction I’d get if I did. Trying to kiss him could somehow end up in a battle to the death.
But I do it anyway.
I lean forward, his chest under my palm and my lips to his. Which, I get the feeling, sends fear through him because he doesn’t stop me. I want him to fall backward, arms around me, hold me close, as our lips move in the softest brush of an almost kiss. But he doesn’t react for three racing, stuttering heartbeats.
Four.
He grunt-groans, gripping the front of my cloak and not letting me any closer.
I can’t miss the stutter in his breathing, which just makes me want to fall against him even more. But there is no falling, just that ripple that I am now sure is fear, maybe anger too, as he forces me to sit back on my ass.
“That was definitely your fault,” I whisper.
“You’re in shock. Your body wants warmth and comfort – I am not those things.”
When I don’t struggle or try to resist his grip, his physical order to sit and stay, he releases my cloak.
His fingers open and close, just the once, motioning for me to give him my arm. And I do, because I’m a sucker for two things: doing as I’m told and Killian.
He pulls a curled piece of stiff leather from his bag, his movements sharp. Great, now I’ve pissed him off.
The leather could almost be a bracelet with a crisscross of leather to tie it together, but it’s too long.
He slips it around my forearm, the thing just fitting in the space from my wrist to elbow.
“Good,” he grunts.
The black is returning to his eyes, curling and coiling, setting in under the emerald green, as he works the ties into a neat order.
Together, we pull them tight and knot them securely. I almost want to laugh at us, one hand each, but the sense of accomplishment overrides the humor.
It’s just plain nice working with Killian for once, instead of fumbling to keep up.
Shadows and Shade Box Set Page 60