“Come in,” she said, a little too cautiously judging by how slowly the door opened.
She leaned to her left, wondering if it was the servant returned to offer her another bath. If it was, Mackenzie would probably snap her arm off.
“You decent?” Hartt’s deep voice curled around her, instantly relaxing her.
Who needed to soak in a tub? Not her, apparently. She just needed to hear the dulcet tones of her enemy-turned-ally.
“I am.” She sat up and smoothed the tunic down, tugging it so it almost covered her knees. Maybe she should have asked the servant for some clothes at least. Even just some panties would have been fine.
She was too aware of the fact she was naked beneath the tunic as the door swung open and Hartt strode into the room wearing only his black armour. Those damned rumours about elf armour were right. It hugged everything.
He looked down at himself, paused and frowned. Suddenly, clothing appeared on him—a top similar to the tunic she wore and black trousers. He had a neat trick. She hadn’t missed the fact he had summoned her something to wear out of thin air too. If she asked him to summon her underwear, could he do that? She wasn’t sure how it worked, whether he could produce anything she wanted or was limited in some fashion.
While the thought of asking him to magic her some underwear was appealing, it also made her cheeks heat.
“How are you feeling?” He frowned as he softly closed the door behind him, his eyes never leaving her face. “You look a little warm.”
Understatement of the century. She was burning up, felt as if she was trying to put out a thousand fires as she kept calling to mind how good he had looked in his armour, how the tiny black scales had followed every valley and peak of his honed torso, revealing a lush amount of detail. Right down to his corded shoulders and the lean muscles of his thighs.
And the impressive bulge that hung between them.
Thankfully, the armour had some modesty there, appeared to be thicker and made him look as if he was wearing a protective cup.
A rather big protective cup.
Her cheeks heated another thousand degrees. If he noticed it, he was kind enough not to say anything. In fact, he seemed rather determined not to look at her, his gaze darting over the limited furnishings and the window, and back to her before it leaped away again. A hint of colour touched his cheeks now.
It seemed the elf was a little embarrassed about her staring at him.
He walked to the royal-blue armchair near the fire, turned it towards her and sat in it.
“I feel better than you look.” She frowned at how pale he was, the only touch of colour the fading blush on his cheeks, and at the shadows that darkened below his stunning violet eyes.
Stunning violet eyes that held banked heat that told her he might have been embarrassed by her gawping at him, but part of him had liked it. She hadn’t only fired herself up.
He combed his fingers through his short blue-black hair, tousling it as he leaned back in the chair. “I could use some sleep.”
Some crazy part of her pushed her to suggest he take a nap next to her. For safety’s sake, or some excuse like it. They should stick together, right? Safety in numbers? Who knew if they could trust the vampires not to kill them while they were sleeping in separate beds?
She ignored it and blamed her resurrection, although it had never made her loose with her tongue or shed her inhibitions before. He might not be the enemy anymore, but getting involved with him was a huge no-no. She preferred to keep things fast and a one-time-only deal, had stuck to that rule for decades. She wasn’t about to break it.
She also ignored the fact that she had tried to tempt him into kissing her, putting that down to temporary insanity too, together with how good it had felt when he had held her hand as if they were lovers.
A word that was never going to apply to them.
She swore it as she looked at him, as they sat in a too-comfortable silence as if simply being close to each other was enough for them.
She searched for something to say, needing to break the silence before she got wild ideas again, fearing she might act on them if he kept looking at her that way, as if he cared about her.
Really cared.
“When you—” he started and then cleared his throat and looked away from her, at the window to his left that overlooked the courtyard.
For a moment, he looked as if he was going to stand and go to it, but then he sighed and his gaze strayed back to her. There was too much worry in his eyes. That look bordered on tender and she panicked.
“I’m fine. Happens all the time,” she blurted and grimaced.
“Die a lot, do we?” He frowned at her and she couldn’t tell whether he was angry with her for being flippant about dying or angry with the people who had killed her in the past. His gaze went to the window again, his irises brighter now, and the tips of his ears grew pointier.
“No.” She rushed that word out when he went to stand, when her jumbled senses detected his agitation and his fury, and she saw in his eyes that he wanted to fight.
And she knew who his target would be.
The vampire who had killed her.
“I don’t know why I said that.” That confession left her lips as a whisper, one that lacked strength, made her sound as if she was worn down and on the edge, couldn’t take anymore.
She put it down to fatigue. He wasn’t the only one who needed some sleep, but she wouldn’t find rest if she closed her eyes. She would only find an endless replay of her final moments, every death she had experienced all rolled together in a nightmare.
It had nothing to do with the urge that swept through her, a need she had only indulged once.
With Syn.
Syn knew all about her, every horrible detail of her past. Syn was the only one who could know.
So why did she want to confess everything to Hartt? Why was she standing on the precipice and willing to take the fall, filled with hope that he would catch her rather than betray her in some way?
“I wish I’d known what you were,” Hartt murmured, his voice scraping low, tone distant as he looked at her. His gaze took on a bleak edge, the same one it had had when she had looked into his eyes and begged him to run.
When she had been filled with a desperate need to protect him.
“I can’t tell anyone. Can you imagine what that’s like?” She went to place her feet on the edge of the mattress to hug her legs to her chest and then remembered she was bare beneath her tunic, so she settled for toying with the hem of it instead, her eyes downcast. “We’re hunted. Prized by blood mages. It’s the reason I’ve been killed so many times.”
“The mages killed you?” He leaned towards her, resting his elbows on his knees, a beautiful look of concern mixed with rage on his handsome face. That look was in his eyes again, the one that said he wanted to hunt and destroy whoever had hurt her.
A look that made her feel special.
She shook her head. “Mostly… my family killed me.”
His eyes widened and she held her hand up, silencing him before he could leap to a terrible conclusion.
“It’s tradition.” And something she had never told anyone about, not even Syn.
What was it about Hartt that made her want to confess all the sins of her past, made her want to confide in him and trust him, even when she felt sure he would only end up hurting her?
She blamed her rebirth again. It always left her weak and drained, lowered her resilience to the point where she found it hard to deny herself the things she wanted. Apparently, she wanted Hartt to know her.
She had also wanted him to kiss her.
Still wanted it.
She pulled at a thread and then stopped when he scowled at her hand, reminding her this wasn’t her tunic.
“My kind grow stronger with each death.” She averted her gaze, stared at the window and beyond it, not seeing the world out there as she thought about her past. “When I was young, my family killed me over and
over to make me more powerful and ensure I lived up to their name.”
“That’s barbaric,” he spat.
She glanced at him, lost herself in his eyes instead as he glared at her, looking even more as if he wanted to hurt whoever had hurt her. No one had ever wanted to avenge her before. A girl could get used to it. She reminded herself it was dangerous to let him under her skin, to break the rules she had laid down for herself.
No matter how tempting it was.
“I wanted to be strong like my older brothers, but I… I hated it.” She looked down at her knees as that confession slipped from her lips, something she had never told anyone, not even her family. “I used to cry myself to sleep whenever I was sure my next death was coming. But my family were right. I did grow stronger with every rebirth, and it was worth it when I finally felt as if I was deserving of my place in our family.”
Even though all those deaths had left her with terrible nightmares, ones that still haunted her now.
“Are there many others like you?” He noticed it when she tensed and softened his tone. “I am not interested in finding them. I’m simply trying to understand more about your kind. You’re more myth than reality, something people speak of but no one has seen.”
“You’ve seen me.” She was deeply aware of that as he looked at her, as heat shimmered in his eyes and his gaze darted down to her tunic before meeting hers again.
He had seen more than the fact she was a phoenix shifter. He had seen all of her.
It would only be fair if he stripped and let her see all of him too.
She slapped that rogue thought out of her head. There would be no sexy stripping, no sleeping together, nothing of that kind. She focused back on what they had been talking about, and a light feeling ran through her, lifting some of the weight from her tired limbs.
It felt good to talk with him about this, to share things with someone and have them look at her as if she was incredible, not something to sell out or someone who was weak because of the things that had happened to her in her past.
They felt more like allies than enemies now.
She stared into eyes that held heat and a wicked promise, a need that ran in her veins too.
Lovers.
Too dangerous. She tried to banish that word, but it lingered as he gazed at her, as he leaned towards her again and closed the distance between them. She could reach out and touch his face at this distance, could feather her fingers along his jaw and tip his head up, and if she leaned forwards too, she could easily kiss him.
He lifted his hand but didn’t touch her face, ghosted his hand through the air as his gaze softened.
“Is what happened to you the reason you paint your eyes the way you do? I thought you wore it like a mask at first…”
She touched her cheek just below her left eye, swallowed and nodded. “After I escaped the mansion, I painted my face. I was trying to conceal my identity and I had seen other females who had used makeup in a similar fashion.”
She had thought it looked good, better than an actual mask because it looked less suspicious. A real mask would have drawn attention to her. Using makeup had just made her look like many other females in the free realm—out to make herself more beautiful and mysterious.
“After a while, it just became part of who I was.” She felt naked without her makeup now, strangely panicked as she thought about the fact she had no way of donning her mask.
Oddly, it wasn’t the thought of Hartt seeing her like this, without a trace of makeup, that disturbed her and set her on edge. It was the thought of everyone else seeing her like it. Hartt had a terrible way of making her feel too comfortable around him, as if she didn’t need any barriers between them and didn’t need to protect herself from him.
“Why is the mage after you?” His amethyst eyes searched hers. “What happened at that mansion?”
Mackenzie looked at the window again, fought the tide of memories as they surged forwards, as they swept her along and threatened to pull her under.
“We lived in a valley, a place that had been safe for centuries. Secret.” Her gaze slid back to meet his, a need to know she wasn’t alone flooding her and tugging at her, making her crave the connection she felt whenever she looked into his eyes. She felt strong as she gazed into them, able to face her past and the pain that awaited her there. “The mages came one night. They took out the guards before anyone knew what was happening and then they were in the house. There were so many of them. We managed to take out some of them, but they overpowered us, used spells to weaken us. Someone knocked me out and when I came around, I was in a cell.”
“How old were you?” He shuffled closer, moving to the edge of his seat.
“A hundred and twenty. Around that. An adult.”
He looked as if he wanted to ask how old she was now. If he did, she was going to ask how old he was, and she had the feeling she was going to be shocked. Every elf she had met had been centuries old. How much older than her was he?
When he said nothing, sparing himself an interrogation for now, she took it as a prompt to continue.
She sucked down a breath, dreading thinking about this next part. “I’m still not sure how long they held us captive, shut in those dark cells beneath the mansion. The days blurred and the magic made it hard to keep track of time.”
“Is that why you don’t like the dark?”
She frowned at him, wanting to know how he knew about her fear of the dark. She wanted to curse instead when she recalled tailing him in the fae town and how she had panicked in the alley because it had been dark, allowing him to get the jump on her.
“Let’s just say I’m not a fan of it.” She wanted to leave it at that too, gave him a look that told him to let it go, only he didn’t look as if he would, so she sighed. Maybe it was better he knew. “Imagine being held in pitch darkness, not even a trace of light, your sight stolen from you. Imagine having to listen to those in the cells around you being taken one by one, and you know that eventually they’ll come for you. Imagine how loud your own breathing sounds as you sit there surrounded by black, unable to see a damned thing, not knowing what might be in the room with you. The dark… It brings back bad memories.”
He looked as if he wanted to hold her now. Part of her wanted that too, but she needed to finish telling him what had happened first, knew she wouldn’t feel like continuing if she sank into his arms. She chastised herself. There would be no sinking into his arms.
No matter how much she wanted to do that.
“You mentioned magic. They used spells to hold you?” His violet eyes searched hers.
She nodded. “To make the darkness too dark for us to see. To hold us. To keep us docile. To stop us from having the strength to hurt them whenever they came for one of us.”
She cursed as tears filled her eyes and blinked them away. Hartt didn’t help matters by placing his hand on her knee, that comforting touch only drawing more to the surface as her heart ached. She stared at his hand as she thought about her family, as she struggled to find her voice.
“They killed my mother first.” She choked on the last two words, not strong enough after all. Tears slipped down her cheeks. She dashed them away and closed her eyes so she didn’t have to see the worried look Hartt gave her.
“You don’t have to talk about this. I shouldn’t have asked.” He went to take his hand from her and lean back, but she caught his wrist, holding him firm.
“I do.” She sucked in a breath and blew it out. “I mean, I want to talk about it.”
But it hurt like hell.
All these decades later and it turned out she still couldn’t talk about it without feeling as if it had just happened.
She pulled down another deep breath, seeking calm so she could continue, trying to distance herself from the pain and the rage that still lived inside her heart. She wanted Hartt to know this part of her. She wanted Hartt to know her. Despite how dangerous it felt, how she was sure this would only lead to them growing c
loser.
Maybe that was what she really wanted.
She wanted to be close to him.
She wanted to be close to someone for the first time in too long.
“You said your mother died. Did she resurrect like you did?” Hartt said, his voice whisper-soft, gentle and soothing.
She clung to his hand, twisted hers and toyed with his fingers, staring at them as she waited until she felt she could speak again without breaking down.
“If a phoenix loses too much blood, we can’t resurrect. Our gift is in our blood. It’s what makes it so appealing to the mages and what makes them so powerful. They… they hold us and drain us, use our blood to give themselves a longer life, to make themselves more powerful.” She pressed the tip of her index finger against his, turned his hand palm up and noticed how he didn’t fight her, just let her do as she wanted.
She stroked her fingers over the calluses on his palm. He had the hands of a warrior. Capable hands. Strong hands. She had no doubt he could kill this witch that was trying to get them to kill each other.
She swirled her finger in a circle in the centre of his palm. “They didn’t care if they killed us. Whenever it happened, they just picked another of us to start… using. They killed my father next, and my brothers tried to tell me to be strong, that our oldest brother would come.”
“He wasn’t taken with you?”
She shook her head. “He was away at the time of the attack. He’d gone to the nearest town for supplies.”
“You think he’s the one who left the note for Grave?”
She nodded this time. “I’m glad he never tried to come to help us. The mages were too strong and would have easily defeated a lone phoenix. He did the right thing in hiring others to attempt a rescue.”
“Have you seen him since you escaped?”
Mackenzie sighed. “No. Our family had a plan. If any of us were taken, we’d go to another place we knew, a safe house. I went there and waited, but my brother never showed up. In the end, I moved on. I was afraid I would be found… and I thought maybe he had tried to rescue us and had been killed. If I could find him…”
Scorched by Darkness: Eternal Mates Series Book 18 Page 13
