by Wagner, Raye
I grieved, shedding tears for the death of the girl I’d been before entering that foul castle.
I wept, soaking Dyter’s aketon, draining myself of the pitiful reserve I had left. I cried, and the darkness released and poured out of me.
I shed every single tear in me as I mourned for what I would never have.
I lamented the losses I knew and the ones I had yet to discover. I cried, letting my heartbreak rule me.
I cried, finally feeling safe to mourn. For tonight, I was in the arms of my father, the only security I knew I could count on.
* * *
I hadn’t woken up chilled in days, and confusion clouded my mind as awareness greeted me. Where was I? Why was I so cold? The smell of campfire hung in the air, but there was no fire nearby.
Tyrrik. He wasn’t close, or I would be warm. Had I rolled away? Seemed unlikely given my subconscious tendencies. I reached out, but my hand froze mid-air as I fully awoke.
I should feel lighter after shedding so much of my emotional pain last night, but my head felt filled with bricks from the toll. My eyes were gritty, and I rubbed the salty crust off and blinked them open.
I was alone in the cave. The filtered light was plenty to illuminate the shallow cavern. Dyter’s pack was propped against a rock, but Dyter was absent. I took a deep breath and heard Tyrrik’s breath hitch.
He was awake. My heartbeat picked up, and I felt him several meters in front of me.
His heartbeat picked up, too.
Tyrrik was watching me.
“Khosana,” he said. “I know you’re awake.”
I wasn’t sure I was ready for this. To see him now after things had changed. Nervous energy skittered over my skin and deep in my belly. I wanted to go back to sleep, maybe even forever if it meant I didn’t have to deal with the jumble of feelings I had for the Drae.
When we first plummeted from the sky and he’d been awake, caring for him was easy. His near-death experience forced me to realize I didn’t want him dead, and in the heat of the moment, that acknowledgement had been easy and simple. But I would’ve done the same for Arnik, Dyter, and possibly even a stranger.
Over the last few days, I’d been Tyrrik’s lifeline. Sure, turns out I did a sucky job of protecting him, but I’d done my best to provide for his every need. I hadn’t hesitated for one moment to do everything I could for him: making nectar, washing his immobile body, pouring nectar down his throat. There was something about his unconsciousness that made the effort uncomplicated, and if I was being honest with myself, being close to him felt right at the time. But that level of intimacy, in retrospect, felt different than healing a wound that would’ve otherwise killed him.
Tyrrik had been asleep and unaware then, but now he was awake. He would not continue to be unaware of anything I did. If I didn’t block him, he would even know why.
Denial doesn’t get you anywhere, Dyter had said.
But denial had been my lifeline since the castle dungeons. To throw that lifeline away felt akin to pulling off my skin to don another person’s: impossible.
“Open your eyes,” Tyrrik said in a low voice as he drew closer. “Please show them to me. I’ve dreamed of them lately, but I know my dreams don’t do them justice.”
My heart skipped a stupid beat, and I could tell by the stupid hitch in his breath that he’d heard. Stupid Drae-mate hormones.
I opened my eyes.
Tyrrik stood just outside the rocky overhang. He’d lost weight. The nectar had been enough to keep him alive but not enough to satisfy the demands of a man’s body. Stubble covered the bottom half of his face. His silky hair was disheveled as though he’d run his hands through the tangle many times. He was wearing one of Dyter’s aketons but no trousers or shoes. The Drae’s broad shoulders and direct look made his bearing just as threatening as ever.
I doubted he was even aware of that.
Tyrrik’s face though—the slight rounding of his eyes, the fleeting way he searched my expression, and the heavy silence with which he watched me . . . Could he be as out of his depth as I felt?
I swallowed and got to my feet. “How do you feel?”
His gaze didn’t shift from my face as he stepped into the cave. “As though I’ve been an inch from death for several days.” He gestured to the forest outside. “Dyter has gone to hunt and collect more water.”
Dyter’s timing was as convenient as the dead queen’s illness. Curse him for leaving me alone with Tyrrik. The old bugger probably felt he was doing me a favor.
“How long will it take for you to heal?” I asked, walking around the rocky space. I was at a loss for how to busy myself so looking at him wasn’t mandatory.
“A few days,” he said. “I should’ve been well healed by now.”
“They were draining you. Dyter and I didn’t know,” I said, hating that I’d failed him. I stopped my pacing and met his eyes. “I’m sorry, Tyrrik. I let you down.”
He shrugged. “You’re not to blame for the Phaetyn’s actions. I could hear what was going on; I just couldn’t respond.”
My heart flipped, and I frantically tried to remember what I’d said to Dyter while we were in Zivost. “What did you hear?”
He got to his feet, and I resumed my slow pacing to ensure there was a good distance between us.
“I heard you threaten the guards and their families.”
I nodded. I did that. That wasn’t so bad.
“I heard you and Dyter discussing whether you should wear a dress for the gathering,” he said, his eyes turning ink black as his gaze roved my frame.
My heart flipped again. The corset and wispy skirt had seen better days by this stage. My silver hair was a tangled mess. My feet were dirty, I had grime smeared on my face, and I was splattered with Phaetyn blood.
Tyrrik didn’t seem to mind. Where I’d been gratified for Kamoi’s attention, Tyrrik’s appraisal of the outfit—the way his eyes lingered on my breasts, the way he stared at the skirt as though hoping it would burn away—that made me feel something else entirely. A foreign heat coiled deep in my stomach. My breathing quickened as a strange heaviness settled in my chest like a magnet, pulling me toward the Drae. The rocky space felt far too small to contain what was possible between us.
“I heard you asking Dyter why sometimes my scales seemed blue,” he whispered, taking a step toward me.
Shivers broke over me, and I felt the eruption of scales on my forearms. I squeezed my eyes shut as the Drae continued to draw closer in the same way, I supposed, he’d always moved, a predatory stalk. “I . . .”
The heaviness of wanting eased as his warm breath brushed the top of my cheekbone. He stood in front of me and said, “I heard you tell Dyter I hurt you, that I broke your heart.”
Tyrrik brushed the area over my heart with the back of his hand, and my eyes flew open. I lifted my gaze from the base of his neck, over the sculpted plains of his face, to his midnight eyes.
“You al-already knew that,” I said, my voice trembling. My fear was not of him, or rather not that he would hurt me physically. But of the magnitude of what lay between us, past and present; fear of what could lay between us . . . if I let it.
He nodded and turned his hand so his palm rested on my skin. “I did,” he said. “But I don’t know how to fix it. I don’t know if it is possible for you to feel for me again. To feel for me what you felt so strongly for Tyr.”
Yet, wasn’t he Tyr? Wasn’t Tyr’s gentleness and protectiveness somewhere inside this Drae? And Ty, my friend who made me smile, my confidant, wasn’t he in there somewhere, too? Or were Tyr and Ty merely personas he’d assumed to manipulate me? My voice wasn’t the only thing shaking now, but I couldn’t control my trembling as I asked, gaze dropping to the base of his throat again. “Do you really want to fix my heart?”
The question was uttered in a voice so low I was surprised he made it out.
“Yes,” he said. He swept his hand to the top of my shoulder and then up the side of my neck.
I sig
hed, leaning into the warmth, and did not resist as the Drae tilted my chin so I was forced to meet his eyes once more. Fire spread through my body at his touch; the burning awareness I’d felt from the first time our skin had touched was rampant and unchecked. My lips parted as I stared up at him, and I sighed. “Why?” I whispered, my words breathy, “Why do you want to heal my heart?”
He searched my eyes for an eternity that was likely only a few seconds, but time lost meaning and measure with him so close.
“Because,” Tyrrik said, the pulse in his throat feathering as he stroked my skin. “You are my mate.”
Though he still had a finger under my chin, I closed my eyes. I couldn’t let him see my reaction, not when I didn’t, couldn’t, understand it. How long had he been waiting to tell me? Had he been afraid to say the words out loud? Was he afraid now? At his utterance of the word mate, I’d felt a warm sense of belonging I hadn’t felt since Mother’s death or since I’d had a home. The sensation was stronger than what I’d felt at the elm tree, more personal.
Yet our past stretched between us. Not just the manipulative way he’d broken the Blood Oath. His dark, terrible years of enslavement. The barely scarring wounds left inside me. People with battered souls shouldn’t make decisions like this. Surely that could only lead to disaster.
He wasn’t asking me to sit next to him at a gathering or to make him nectar a few times or dance with him. Tyrrik was asking me . . . I frowned, realizing he hadn’t asked me anything.
I freed myself of his grip and looked at him. In the brief moment I’d spent with my eyes shut, he’d smoothed the expression from his face, and he wore the impassive mask I was most familiar with. “What does it mean exactly? That I am your mate?”
“We are each other’s mates,” he corrected, a hint of a growl in his voice as emotion lit his eyes. “And it means we are made for each other. Drae only ever have one mate. They can only bear children together.”
“So, we can just have children together.” Why did this stuff always come back to dancing the maypole? My fault for asking about children, I suppose.
“Amongst other things,” he said. Tyrrik turned and took several paces toward the front of the cave before sitting on a shelf of rock.
I simultaneously felt relief and a bone-deep cold at the distance. But I wasn’t done. “Like?”
27
Tyrrik settled like a raptor on a branch. Despite his obvious fatigue, everything about him was predatory. His inky gaze remained fixed on me. “You’ve felt the connection between us. I’m able to hear your thoughts, and you hear mine. If we keep that bond open.”
I flushed, remembering the time I’d severed the emotional tie with him when flying over the mountains.
“The connection doesn’t just allow us to speak,” he said, glancing at his hands. “In our culture, the male is the protector. The female—”
“Do not tell me I’m meant to be peaceful again. I have perfectly violent tendencies myself.”
“I was not going to say that.” He raised a brow, but his expression remained dark. “Drae females are perfectly capable of defending themselves. But their role in a mated couple is to balance the male’s violence, to ground him, and when they are threatened, to strengthen him.”
Despite myself, I edged closer, not wanting to miss a single word. Leaning toward him, I asked, “Strengthen him how?”
He glanced up, meeting my gaze for only a moment before looking away.
I studied the hang of his shoulders and bit my lip. Even though I was filled with confusion, the prominent feeling racking me was guilt. Tyrrik had divulged the truth to me, and I couldn’t find it within myself to give him what he so clearly wanted. Why did that seem like such a grave offense?
“You have felt the push and pull of Drae energy,” he finally answered. “You’ve practiced pulling the tendrils of power that flow between us back into yourself.”
Our lesson in the mountains felt like so long ago, but I remembered asking him how to protect my thoughts from the emperor. “Yes.”
He shrugged. “Instead of pulling the tendrils into yourself, you push them into me.”
I stirred uneasily at the thought. Putting more into the tendrils weaving between us? When I used my Phaetyn powers on Tyrrik, it was almost business-like, the same as I’d do for anybody with an injury. I saw the problem, and I healed it. But the tendrils of Drae power between us . . . they were different. I knew they were specific to us. The idea of expanding the threads of force that connected us, increasing them in size and strength so the attachment was more powerful, made me feel faintly unwell. I didn’t want to be chained to Tyrrik; I didn’t want to be chained to anyone. I changed the subject. “Anything else I should know?”
“Plenty you should know, but not much you’ll want to.”
I crossed my arms, irritated that he seemed so confident in his assessment. “Try me.”
A ghost of a smile lit his face, and his eyes warmed. “Your sudden obsession with shiny objects.”
My hand went to the top of my corset, and Tyrrik chuckled. Inside the corset sat my ruby and golden pill box. “What about them?”
“It is a courtship ritual between male and female Drae, just as my scales reflect the color of your scales to show I am the right mate for you.”
A courtship ritual. “Me collecting precious things does something . . . for you?”
Scales appeared on his shoulder and climbed up his neck. “The way you care for precious things does.”
My face slackened. “You’re right. I don’t want to know any more.”
His face closed off, and the guilt gnawing in my chest roared in protest.
I sighed and went to sit beside him on the rock. Dyter could come back as soon as he liked in my humble opinion. “Tyrrik,” I said. “When did you know we were mates?”
He slowly turned to me, and I saw the scales had a lapis lazuli glow to their onyx shine. His gaze dropped to my lips, and he said, “When I first touched you.”
“The nape of my neck,” I said. I remembered the moment; it was seared in my memory.
A shiver rippled down him, and the twist of his neck was decidedly Drae. “Yes,” he rumbled, his guttural voice filling the rocky shelter. “The nape of your neck, though it could have been anywhere.”
I remembered the pain, falling to my knees, knowing something had just happened to me, and chalking up the sensation to the Lord Drae before me. He’d known from the very first moment, our first meeting. He’d kept this to himself the entire time? His actions in the room with my mother took on new meaning, his desperation to get me out of my bedroom and away from the guards to save me from the king. My heart clenched as I thought of Tyrrik as Ty and about all the information he’d disclosed, the effort he’d made to be close to me while in prison. I thought of his tender ministrations as Tyr. He wasn’t just trying to clean up my blood to keep me from being discovered by the king. Tyr hadn’t needed to be gentle to wash the evidence away. He’d risked a lot to even bring me food. I thought of the emotion in his eyes when he’d come as Irrik to give me a bath. I’d thought I was part of some game, and I was right, just not about who he was playing for. My throat clogged with feeling. I swallowed the lump as the memories washed over me. Was Dyter right?
Tyrrik had been watching my face, and he slowly raised his fingers toward the nape of my neck.
His scent made me dizzy; his eyes stared to the deepest recesses in me. My head and my heart were no longer in agreement of the certainty I’d known a few minutes ago. That’s what made me jerk my upper body away.
We were both panting hard with only an arm’s length between us. With wide eyes, we stared at each other.
“Tyrrik, I . . .” I started then cut off. How could I put my reaction into words? How did I explain to him my doubts regarding him shrank every day, no, every second, but my self-doubt only grew?
I felt him seal himself off. He pulled his energy back into himself, his expression smoothed, and his eyes harde
ned. He slid the mask he’d worn for a century back into place, and still I could not think of a word to say.
“It is no less than I expected,” he said, his voice rough.
I reached out a hand, and this time it was Tyrrik who lurched away, going so far as to stand.
“It’s not you—” I said, even though there were some reservations against him in my heart. “I need time. Mating seems so . . .” Final.
“For Drae, there is no between,” Tyrrik said, brusquely. “Mates feel too much to be slowed by petty human traditions of courtship. You either accept me, or you do not.” His eyes turned to slits, and he spun away. “I cannot woo you as you would like or expect.”
The comment slapped me across the face. “That’s too much to ask? To know you better?”
“Yes,” he said, striding for the edge of the shelter as blue-black scales covered his exposed skin.
Yes, it is, his final words echoed through our bond.
* * *
A part of me felt bad Dyter was stuck in the middle of the awkwardness between Tyrrik and me. Over the next two days, the cave was seriously uncomfortable and not because the only furniture it offered was rocks. More than once, I thought of offering an apology, but then what was I apologizing for? Binding was a serious decision, and I shouldn’t be guilted or manipulated into it. As for Dyter, he’d left me alone with the Drae, so maybe I shouldn’t feel bad about that either.
Tyrrik needed time to regain his strength, and I’d be lying if I said my body wasn’t craving the same.
The two days passed with hunting, drinking, sleeping, and Tyrrik’s sulking—or so I’d dubbed it. The Drae was back to his Lord Broody-Pants days, except without pants. He was sullen and withdrawn, only answering if he was asked a direct question, and then only with as few words as possible.
On the other hand, I had every reason to be in a bad mood, which was why I felt no guilt for my grumpiness.
I couldn’t understand his last comment. I’d assumed he wanted to mate with me; I still did, but if he wanted to be with me for life, which was a freakin’ long time judging by the emperor’s lifespan and the fact that Tyrrik had been alive for over a century, why didn’t he want to court me? The mate . . . thing didn’t seem like an option really, although I wasn’t fully Drae, so things could be different for me. If being each other’s mate wasn’t an option, why didn’t he want us to get to know each other?