Flux Flame (A Flame Moon Novel

by K. J. Jackson

  She ran to the overturned bench, skidding on her knees to the sword, and propped it up. Getting to her feet, her hands on the blade, she leaned forward onto the tip, lining it to her heart. It was at the exact right angle.

  Charlotte stood straight, keeping her hand on the blade to make sure it didn’t move from its target. With a deep breath, she looked up, allowing herself an instant in time to decide what the last thing she wanted to see was.

  Her eyes wandered above the top line of the evergreen hedge, up to where the sun shone over the tips of the mountaintops to her right. The rosy glow warmed what she knew were hard, foreboding, slabs of rock. Dramatic, beautiful, and soul-rendering. A view worthy of a last breath. Charlotte breathed deeply of the clear air.

  But then she closed her eyes. Of all the choices that had been taken from her, she had choice in this. So the last thing she was going to see was Triaten. Even if it could only be in her mind.

  She conjured his face, smiling, laughing. His dark hair curling onto his forehead. Dimple on his cheek that only appeared when he gave a true smile. Looking at her with nothing but pure love in his dark chocolate eyes.

  That was what she wanted to bring to eternity. His eyes.

  And just when she thought she might waver in what she needed to do, those eyes gave her the strength to let her toes go. To drop her body onto the sword.

  Time slowed, and Charlotte felt herself falling, falling into the only thing she had left to control.

  “Char.”

  The voice found her ears.

  It was Triaten’s. Only it wasn’t a figment in her mind. It was real.

  Charlotte jerked in that instant, the same instant the blade pierced her skin.

  The blade missed its mark.

  Charlotte opened her eyes.

  “Oh, fuck.”

  She was lying over the bench, sword impaled just to the left of her heart, right through her lung. What the hell had she just heard? She had just screwed herself.

  “Char, where the hell are you?”

  It was Triaten. She wasn’t just imagining it. She hadn’t just fucked up her own death for no reason.

  “Tri?” Her voice was a gurgle with the blood filling her left lung.

  “Char?” His voice was louder. “Talk to me, Char. I need to hear you.”

  “Tri? Really, Tri? It’s you?”

  “Char, yes keep talking. Keep talking.”

  Charlotte could hear the wood limbs of the hedge cracking and tearing. “Here. Here. Here. Really, Tri. It’s you?”

  “Don’t stop, Char.”

  Her eyes squeezed closed, begging. “God, Tri. Please let it be you. Please. God. Please.”

  The sound in front of her opened her eyes. The opposite green hedge fell below Triaten’s foot, and he pummeled his way through the branches.

  “Holy fuck, Char—” he yelled as her ran at her, “what the hell?”

  She looked up at him, still stuck on the sword. Still splayed across the overturned bench. Blade protruding from her back. Still not believing it was him.

  He stopped and put his finger to ear. “Now. Bring it around. No rendezvous. We extract from right here. Drop it on your way. Center of the maze.”

  Charlotte could hear helicopter blades circle around the curve of the mountain behind the labyrinth. She also heard a lot of fire power explode. She wasn’t sure if it was air-to-ground or ground-to-air. But the helicopter remained in flight, so she could only hope for the best.

  Triaten went around behind her and knelt. “Dammit, Char, what the hell did you do?”

  She couldn’t answer him. She couldn’t even look at him. She stared down at her blood dripping onto the white snow, melting little red holes into the drifts.

  Triaten muttered something incoherent and then positioned himself. Swift, but gentle, he slid one arm along the front of her shoulders and the other under her belly. He wedged one foot under her, stepping down on the hilt of the sword.

  It turned the blade in her chest, and she whimpered.

  The whimper was nothing against the scream that escaped when he lifted her body off the blade.

  Snow had started to whip around the clearing as the helicopter centered above them.

  Clear of the sword, Triaten dropped his arm from her stomach, putting her to her feet. He kept one arm wrapped under her shoulders to keep her upright. With his free hand, he reached up and grabbed the black cable dangling from the helicopter, and attached it to the utility vest he wore.

  His hand went to his ear. “We’re clipped. Go.”

  Triaten wrapped both arms around her torso, and as their feet left the ground, his legs went around hers, locking her into a hold that had no possibility of being broken.

  They quickly cleared the corner of the mountain, putting the rocky spire between them and the castle, as the cord pulled them up into the helicopter.

  Triaten had locked her into such an all-encompassing embrace, that she could see nothing except his chest until his arms finally loosened on her, and she was pulled deep into the helicopter and onto a seat.

  Triaten was unhooking from the cable when Charlotte looked next to her and realized who had set her down.

  “Atticus?” She said, shocked, her word completely drowned out by the noise of the blades.

  Triaten’s younger brother looked down at her, the smile on his face telling her he understood exactly what she had just uttered. The smile, so much like Triaten’s, told her that yes, he was alive.

  Triaten slid into the seat on the other side of her, forcing his arm behind her back. He paused for moment, hands ripping the thin fabric of her dress so he could poke at the wound in her back. He repeated the action on her front side. Satisfied with what he saw, he stopped poking and pulled her onto his chest.

  She wasn’t about to be captured so quickly, and pushed off his tight stomach to gain Triaten’s eyes. Her face still in shock, she pointed her finger over her shoulder at Atticus.

  Triaten gave her an apologetic sly smile and mouthed the words, “I know.” Then clamped her body onto his again.

  As they flew past mountaintops and valleys, to lower land, Charlotte happily kept her head on Triaten’s chest, listening only for the thudding of his heart beat underneath the noise of the helicopter.

  Drops of blood still dripped from her chest, pooling onto Triaten’s thigh, but Charlotte didn’t care in the slightest. Instead, she was pinching herself just to make sure she didn’t just really die and land in heaven.

  ~~~

  “What the hell?!” Charlotte hit Atticus in the chest the second they were off the helicopter and onto the tarmac, the helicopter blades easing into silence behind them. Then she immediately wrapped her right arm around his neck. “Actually, I don’t care what the hell, I’m just happy you’re alive.”

  She pulled back, kissing his cheek, then hugged him again. “So damn happy.”

  He laughed in her ear, returning the hug. “I’m happy you’re alive too, Charlotte.”

  She leaned away and looked at Triaten, who waited patiently with a smile on his face for her to get over the shock and the hugs.

  She turned to Triaten and punched him in the shoulder, then almost doubled-over in pain from her wound. Triaten grabbed her shoulders, brow creased in concern.

  After a couple of deep breaths to ebb away the pain, she looked up at Triaten. “You are in so much trouble, Tri. You knew Atticus was alive and you didn’t tell me?”

  He squeezed her shoulders. “I know, I know. But I made a promise.”

  “It’s true,” Atticus chimed in. “I made Triaten promise to tell no one I was alive.”

  She turned back to Atticus, looking at the closest thing she had to a little brother. She still couldn’t quell the grin that appeared every time she looked at him. “But what happened in Africa? The attack at the camp you were defending? The elders said you were dead.”

  “I should have been.” Atticus’s eyes turned dark. “It was blatantly obvious once I got there that
I was about to become a token death. We were supposed to have a healthy contingent of fifty or so meet us there, instead, it was about five of us. I was dead, or so I thought. I still don’t know how I got out of there. When I woke up, Triaten was the only one I knew I could trust to call.”

  “Our father—sorry, Horace,” Tri apologized to Atticus. He knew Atticus refused to acknowledge Horace as anything other than the accidental sperm that created him. “Horace wasn’t lying at the hut in the Black Hills when he said he gave Atticus up to the good of the cause. The order came right from Horace for Atticus to show up at that camp.”

  Charlotte’s eyes went wide as she glanced at Atticus. The obvious anger and pain on his face curdled her stomach. Betrayal. At least she didn’t have a father to screw her over like that. “I am so sorry Horace is such an asshole. Are you okay?”

  Atticus shrugged. “I will be. Triaten got me back on the path to heal the body. The anger…well, I’m just living with it right now.”

  Charlotte whipped back to Triaten. “That’s where you disappeared to after the Black Hills, wasn’t it?”

  Triaten smiled sheepishly. “Yes, I’m glad you know now. I have no desire to have secrets from you.”

  Instinct bowed Charlotte’s head, her eyes on the ground, avoiding Triaten’s look. Secrets. She couldn’t even begin to think about that right now.

  When she realized she had just awkwardly stopped conversation, she quickly looked up at Atticus. “So what now for you?”

  “I’ll be staying dead for the time being. Assuming you can keep the secret as well? Triaten needed help he could trust in getting you out of there, which I wasn’t about to say no to. Not when it was you. But now I’ll be disappearing again.” He looked down at his watch. “Right now actually. I need to go catch a train. So give me another hug.”

  Charlotte quickly wrapped her right arm around his neck again, squeezing hard. “Again and again, I’m just so happy you’re alive.”

  “Me too, Char,” he said, lifting her off her toes.

  She reluctantly let him go. Triaten and Atticus gave each other a quick handshake-hug, and then Atticus disappeared into one of the hangers.

  Triaten’s arm went around her back, and Charlotte leaned into his heat.

  “Would it be too much to hope your injury requires me to carry you over to the plane?”

  Charlotte looked at him, still in the overwhelming fog of near-death by her own hand, Triaten saving her, and Atticus being alive. Her brain had not yet caught up with reality.

  But she managed to smile. “Probably not necessary. The bleeding has stopped. But you do what you gotta do, Tri. I’m not going to deny you.”

  He beamed at her as he bent down, picked her up, and started walking to a waiting plane. “Good. We’re getting off this continent right now.”

  Charlotte looked around. “Where the hell are we, anyways? I still don’t know. I figured the Alps, but have no clue other than that.”

  “Austria,” Triaten said.

  The stairs came down as they approached the plane. Within minutes, Triaten had deposited her on the bed in the back, talked to the pilot, and come back with gauze and tape to wrap her wound.

  Once airborne, Triaten stood up. “First things first. Let’s get that wound in your chest cleaned and wrapped.”

  He went to get water and a sponge. Charlotte had never been happier to get out of her clothes in front of Triaten. The damn dress just reeked of Damen’s castle. Her bra and underwear, and Triaten’s hands, would keep her plenty warm.

  Next to her on the bed, Triaten sponged off the wound on her chest. After a few minutes, he paused, watching Charlotte intensely. His voice was gravely soft. “What were you doing in the maze, Char?”

  Charlotte closed her eyes against the question.

  “Char, tell me there was someone else out there that did this to you.”

  Eyes still closed, Charlotte shook her head. “It was just me. Just me.”

  Triaten didn’t reply. Instead, the sponging of dried blood continued.

  Charlotte let her eyes creep open. Triaten didn’t look mad. He didn’t exactly look happy, either. He was so close to her, she still couldn’t believe it. All she wanted to do was touch him. Have him touch her. Make this real.

  “You didn’t believe me…at the castle…you didn’t believe me,” she said quietly, watching his hands on her chest.

  He stopped and put the sponge down in the shallow bowl of water. He looked at her oddly, and his voice was hoarse. “I know your heart, Char. It only took me a moment in the outside air to realize what you were doing. Of course I didn’t believe you.”

  She grabbed his shoulder, and turned fully to him on the bed. “I’m so sorry, Tri. I’m so sorry for my words. I couldn’t think of any other way to get you out of there. Damen promised to let you go, if you went of your own free will. It was the only way I could hurt you enough for you to leave.”

  She shifted herself even closer to him on the bed. “Tri, I need you to know it strangled my soul to say those things, to utter those monstrosities to you. You alive was worth killing us. I could make no other choice.” Her hand went to his cheek, cupping it. “Thank you for believing in me. After what I said, I was sure you were done,” her breath caught, and she had to strangle her next words out. “But I was okay with it because you were safe.”

  “God, Char. Don’t you know that I will always come back for you—always?”

  Tears brimmed in her eyes as the memory pounded her. “It was the look in your face when you left. The utter disgust with me. It crushed me like nothing ever has, Tri. I had no hope against it. I…I still don’t even believe this is real right now.”

  “It’s real, Char.” His hands went along her face and he came down on her, lips meeting lips, tongue meeting tongue.

  There was no hesitancy in the kiss, it was Charlotte taking in everything Triaten could give her. Her lips between his teeth. His tasting of her tongue. His breath on her neck.

  He pulled back for a moment when his hand slipped across her wound. Charlotte shook her head, hands sliding behind his head. “No. You’re not stopping. I need you to make this real, Tri.”

  She pulled him back to her, and he attacked her with the ferocity of weeks spent searching, aching for her body. He flattened them back onto the bed, his hands everywhere on her body, reclaiming all that had been lost. She arched against his fingers, reveling in every movement, every pore he touched as his hands slid down her body, unclasping her bra and slipping off her underwear.

  He stopped just long enough to make his clothes disappear. Charlotte moaned in relief once his skin finally touched hers again, fully on top of her.

  Legs sliding up along his thighs, she curled her toes into the lean muscles in his calves. “God yes, this is what I need, Tri. You. Taking me right now.”

  He needed no further invitation. He thrust into her in one fluid stroke, hand slipping under her thigh and pulling her leg up, pushing deeper into her core. Consuming her body. Consuming her thoughts.

  Turning her time at the castle into the dream, and this into reality.

  She grasped at his skin, gripping onto his flesh, desperate to keep herself in the moment and prove she was here with Triaten. Not back at the castle. Not dead.

  His strokes took over her body and his fingers went into her folds, electrifying her core. She arched in agony against the last frayed barriers between her and soul satisfying bliss.

  Triaten’s guttural voice was in her ear, “Char, oh hell, Char.”

  It was all she needed to break through.

  With a scream from her depths, she released, clamping onto Triaten’s body, nails digging into his back, demanding his body join hers.

  With a violent shudder, he obliged.

  { Chapter 17 }

  They had been back at the ranch for four days. Four days, and Charlotte had not slept, nor could Triaten get her to talk about what happened at the castle. What happened with Damen.

  He wanted t
o know. He didn’t want to know.

  But aside from what he wanted, he needed Charlotte to be okay. And she wasn’t.

  He tried multiple times, in multiple ways—demanding, asking softly, talking clinically. “What did he do to you?”

  “Nothing.” Was always the answer. “I don’t want to relive it, Tri. I just want you.”

  And then, no matter the time of day. No matter what they were doing, Charlotte would utter those words and then strip down, demanding Triaten take her. Make her forget the last two months ever happened.

  The one time he did find her asleep, she awoke and bolted out of bed the second his footstep creaked a floorboard in the bedroom. She pulled off his clothes a moment later.

  At two a.m. on the fourth night, Triaten woke and turned over in bed to see Charlotte staring at the ceiling. Her mouth moved, and Triaten could see she was silently counting. She was in the tens of thousands, and she looked beaten as hell.

  He sat up. Her bleary eyes were slow to track his movement. He turned on the lamp by the bed.

  “Char. What on earth? Why aren’t you sleeping?”

  She rolled on her side to face him. Her voice was hoarse. “Just waiting for you to wake up and take me.”

  Triaten blinked in confusion. “What? No. Not going to work this time, Char. You haven’t slept in days. What’s going on with you? Why are you afraid to go to sleep? Nightmares?”

  The exhaustion weighed her down, and she didn’t even lift her head from the pillow. “No, not nightmares—wait, yes. Yes. That’s it. Nightmares.”

  Triaten stared at her, trying to track her thought process. And then it dawned on him. “Hold on a sec—you’re not afraid of dreams, are you? You’re afraid of what you’re going to say in your sleep. Is that it?”

  Desperate weariness flooded her face, and she rubbed her eyes, trying to focus. “God, Tri. I can’t take it anymore. I’m just so tired. Please just go back to sleep.”

  “What are you afraid you’ll say, Char?”