His hot fingertips ran over the bunched neckline, the fabric pulled taut by being tugged over her shoulder, and Nessa’s head fell back against the wall. Shadow placed his lips against the hollow of her throat, lingering, burning. Nessa sucked in gasping breaths, his hair tickling her chin, her lips, silky and soft.
“There should be a torc right here,” Shadow murmured, voice rough. “It is your right.”
Nessa couldn’t think clearly. She couldn’t speak, unable to string even the simplest of responses together. His hand had moved southwards, his fingertips hovering over the small swell of one of her breasts. With the neckline of her gown pulled down over her shoulder, tight across her chest, an effect similar to that caused by a corset was fashioned.
Nessa grew shy, a part of her wanting to tug the neckline back in place. Not that there was all that much on display. Not that he would have been able to see if there was. Not with their secretive cocoon of pleasant darkness. A larger part of Nessa, though, didn’t want him to stop. She felt nothing but pure bliss, a sheer joy caused not just by the fire of his touch, his kisses, but also by the tremors that ran through him. Nessa had one of the Twelve Kingdoms’ most powerful Dragon Riders wanting her. Craving her.
It made Nessa feel powerful, to have a man such as him shake with desire, with longing and need.
It was a very powerful thing indeed.
His fingers trembling, Shadow traced the curve of her breast. It was the faintest of touches, the pads of his fingers only just skimming her skin. Nessa shivered, her breath catching in her throat.
“You’ll be the death of me,” Shadow groaned, his fingers hooking her neckline with intent, slipping it lower…lower…
Chapter 40
Nessa gasped as a jolt of pain shot through her chest, red-hot and blistering. Shadow hissed in surprise as he sprang back, reeling away from her. His hold on her was abruptly gone. Nessa was barely able to catch herself against the wall as her legs threatened to collapse, turning to jelly. One hand rose to her chest, grabbing at the hot, metal disk before it could burn a hole through her sternum.
The lamen rapidly cooled in her hand, turning icy cold in a blink of an eye. Nessa stared at it in bemusement, wondering what had happened, why it had happened. It was now the same as it had been. Nothing had changed about its appearance, nothing to indicate that it had almost been red-hot a second ago. She peered at her chest, finding that the skin there bore a small, pink mark. The pendant had scolded her.
How strange…
Nessa dropped the lamen, and it settled back into place, the now cool metal soothing on the patch of stinging skin. She’d have to puzzle out what had happened later. Looking up, Nessa found Shadow standing in the middle of the room, his chest heaving, his eyes wide as he stared at his hand, at his blistering fingertips. Nessa went to take a step forwards, frowning, and his gaze snapped up, locking with hers.
Her step faltered.
The haze of longing, of passion and desire, was long gone. The spell between them had shattered. Shadow’s eyes were as hard as the gemstone they resembled, filled with the glimmer of confusion and anger.
Nessa swallowed nervously and put her nightdress back to rights. There would be no more… She bit her lip, the blush in her cheeks turning from one of pleasure to one of embarrassment. There would be no more of that.
“What did you do?” Shadow asked, his voice dropping into a low tone that rippled with danger.
“Nothing.” Nessa wrapped her arms around herself, a shield to protect from the cold that slowly seeped into her bones now that she was without his warmth, a shield to protect herself from him. “I didn’t do anything.”
“No?” He rubbed his reddened fingertips with his thumb meditatively, like he didn’t quite believe he had been burned.
Nessa shrugged, trying for nonchalance. “Nope.”
His gaze, dark and calculating, drifted over her face, seemingly weighing the truth in her words, then went to the pendant. “What is it?”
“Just something I came across.” She held out her arm, displaying her torc bangle as a means of distraction. “I have a bangle too. And another necklace…” Shadow didn’t pay any heed to her words, not even sparing the barest of glances at her bangle.
Nessa flinched back as he came at her, his hand snapping forwards with the speed of a striking snake, catching the pendant easily. He pulled it towards him, angling it so that the firelight caught on the sigil’s raised surface. The chain grew taut, digging into the back of Nessa’s neck as she fought against being drawn closer to him.
Shadow stilled. “What have you done?”
“Noth—”
“Do not lie to me,” Shadow warned, his eyes flicking up from the lamen, troubled and joyless. “What have you done? How did you come by this sigil?”
Nessa blinked, taken aback by how quickly everything had been turned on its head.
“It was given to me.”
“By whom?”
“I don’t know.”
“Liar.”
“It’s true!” Nessa strained against the chain, hoping that it would snap and she would be able to spring away. “I don’t know who he was.” What he was.
Shadow’s hand fisted around the pendant. “How did you come to meet him?”
“I’m not sure.”
Shadow growled. A muscle ticked in his strong jaw.
“I’m telling the truth!” Nessa snapped, grabbing the chain and ripping it from his grasp, a little disappointed that it hadn’t burned him again. “One minute, I was in my room. The next, I’m in this bloody glowing forest, and this man appears out of nowhere. He was all glowy too and…and he changed the sigil from one of protection against the Atheals I was trying to call upon into whatever this one is.” Cupping the lamen in her hand, Nessa considered it momentarily, wondering what it stood for, what it meant.
Shadow sucked in a breath, drawing her attention back to him, and Nessa found him glaring down at her with displeasure.
His throat worked. “You were trying to call upon the Atheals?”
Nessa winced. “I…uh…probably shouldn't have told you that.”
“No need to tell me what you were trying to achieve with them. I can guess.”
“Can you, now?”
Shadow sighed, resigned, and turned, ambling over to one of the closed doors. He pulled it open and disappeared into the black void beyond. Nessa heard a mumbled word and light bloomed from within, long rays streaking across the floor as the door swung partially shut behind him. Nessa’s eyes went from the door to the open archway, seeing an opportunity and intending to take it.
“I wouldn’t if I were you,” Shadow called. “Bane is out there. He isn’t in the best of moods tonight. He might decide to save us all some trouble and just eat you now.”
“Bane?” Nessa’s eyes went wide. “As in your dragon, Bane?”
There was a growl of confirmation from beyond the gossamer curtains, deep and powerful enough for the vibrations to be felt beneath Nessa’s feet. She yelped and rushed after Shadow, realising that the archway was more than big enough for a large dragon to fit his head through.
Darting through the doorway, Nessa found herself standing in the threshold of a large walk-in closet that was probably the same size as her room at Jerome’s guest house, if not bigger. Shadow was rummaging around over to her left, looking for something on the clothing rails, a small orb of light hovering by his shoulder. Nessa stared at it in wonderment; then a twinkle at the back of the room caught her eye.
Neatly presented on plush, velvet cushions and metal busts, protected by a gilded-glass cabinet, was a collection of gleaming torcs.
Pulled forwards by a magnetic force, Nessa approached the tall cabinet, her breath hitching as she beheld the torcs’ beauty, with their sapphire and dragon shell gems set in gold and silver. They twinkled invitingly, seductively. Nessa didn’t know where to look first. Or second. Or third. Her eyes darted from one stunning neck torc to the next, drinking in the
sight of precious metals and gleaming jewels, of woven threads and intricate terminals. One was familiar to her as she had seen him wearing it before, but the others…they had her spellbound.
A quiet sound of movement came from behind her, and she jumped as warm fabric enveloped her. A heavy cloak of black velvet settled over her shoulders. Nessa pulled it tighter around herself, savouring the softness, the shelter from the cool air.
“The ward is beginning to wear,” Shadow said, coming to stand beside her, his little mystical orb following after him, echoing his movements. “I’ve been meaning to refresh it for quite some time. Especially since it will snow soon. Bane hates snow, and I hate the cold.”
Nessa looked at him, quizzical. “Ward? Refreshing?”
Shadow peered at her from the corner of his eye. “You just tried to call upon the great Atheals and yet you don’t know what a ward is?” He shook his head and shrugged into a long overcoat, its dark-blue colour matching his eyes. “You are lucky not to have killed yourself. Or anyone else, come to think of it.”
“Well, if it wasn’t for you,” Nessa grumbled, turning back to the glass case, “I wouldn’t have tried in the first place.”
“Not the response I was expecting.”
“Oh?”
“Indeed,” his tone was dry. “What you should have said was that you’ve learnt from your foolishness, that you will never do something so dangerous ever again. That would be the most sensible response, not trying to pin the blame on me.”
“I’m not trying to pin the blame on you. The blame’s already yours.”
“Impertinent, little wildcat, aren’t we?” Shadow turned away from the gilded case, not as enraptured by its contents as Nessa was, and faced her, folding his arms across his chest. “Humour me and explain how I am to blame for your stupidity.”
Nessa only just stopped her mouth from falling open. “My stupidity?”
Shadow cocked a brow, amused at her growing outrage.
“I’ll have you know that I only tried to call upon the Atheals to fix the problem you’re responsible for.”
The amusement vanished. “Your memories.”
“My memories,” Nessa confirmed. “The memories you stole from me, the memories you’ve hidden somewhere that I can’t get to. If you hadn’t, then I would never have needed to try and retrieve them.”
“I presume that the block is still in place?”
Nessa gave a stiff nod.
“I also presume that you’ll still endeavour to seek a way of having them returned?”
“Unless you would be so kind as to retrieve them for me?”
A humourless smile. “I suppose it’s pointless in telling you not to do so, that you’re safer and better off without them. At least for the time being?”
“Pointless and won’t be believed.”
Shadow sighed and looked away from her, his gaze fixing upon one of the case’s higher shelves, at a row of torcs that stood out from the others. They were older and made from copper and bronze, unpolished and tarnished. They hadn’t been worn in decades. Maybe centuries. Had they gone out of fashion? Replaced by gold and silver designs that the courts now favoured? Nessa wasn’t sure, but she did know that a couple of them had been worn long, long ago and were now broken, the woven threads bent out of shape and dented. One torc was snapped clean in half, the wire strands sticking outwards like crazed springs. It was arranged on a thin cushion, the tarnished copper nearly black in the orb’s light, the gems more purple than blue.
“I’m trying to protect you,” Shadow said, staring at the broken torc with faraway eyes, his voice a rasping whisper. “I did the best I could given the circumstances.”
Nessa’s mouth went dry. “Circumstances?”
“Margan wanted to do to you what was done to me. I couldn’t let that happen.”
“What…what happened to you?”
“I was broken apart and put back together. Different. Changed. I was trying to save you from that fate.” Shadow laughed, a short, harsh bark, and waved a hand at himself. “From this fate.”
Nessa was quiet, still. She gazed around, absorbing the closet that was bigger than her room at Jerome’s, the wealth that was displayed by the finest of clothes and the almost full wall of precious torcs. Nessa gazed at Shadow, at his muscled arms that were left bare by his overcoat and at his deformed Rider’s Mark.
If not for his Mark, stretched out and ruined as it was, and the haunted look in his eyes, one that spoke of dark memories, Nessa would have said that it didn’t seem to have turned out so bad for him. But Shadow was a million miles away, and it didn’t appear that he was anywhere pleasant. Nessa could feel his magic sitting just beneath his skin, fierce and poised to attack, ready to lash out like an injured animal. Hovering between them, the little, glowing orb flickered and dimmed.
“Somehow…” Shadow’s throat worked, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he struggled to swallow heavy emotion. “Somehow Margan discovered a secret of mine. A great and terrible secret, my truth and shame. I am beholden to him. At least, I have to appear to be for the time being. I fear that I have failed in that regard of late.” He sighed wearily. “I thought that after all these years I was without weakness. Then Margan’s scheming came into play and racked up a notch. It took me by surprise. I hadn’t seen it coming. I hadn’t expected it. And the next thing I knew…” Another humourless chuckle. “The next thing I knew, this girl was added to the mix. This small, innocent girl with the biggest, most beautiful brown eyes I’ve ever seen was suddenly caught in the cruellest of games, one without rules or regulations.”
Nessa bit her lip nervously as questions bubbled up in her throat. So, so many questions that she wanted desperately to ask.
What was his secret and shame?
Did he just say that I have the most beautiful eyes he had ever seen?
“This girl, though, gave Margan a run for his money. Despite being little more than a mere wisp of a thing, she managed to resist his efforts in getting her to join him in his plans. Even when he employed some of the darkest persuasion methods, she still refused him.”
Persuasion. Nessa shivered at Shadow’s choice of word. What a nice way of phrasing it…
“She even managed an escape during their latest round. At least, she came close. He caught her, of course. She hadn’t made it far, and she was punished for her efforts. Something inside of me broke then. Which came as a surprise. I didn’t think there was anything in me left to break. Not anymore.”
Shadow looked away from the broken torc, his gaze going down to his crossed arms as if they might hold some kind of answer. His shoulders were hunched over, tense. Nessa held her breath.
“Margan is the youngest of us. He has yet to find his place amongst the King’s chosen. He is quick to anger, still impulsive, and often fails to see the bigger picture. This, combined with the girl’s resistance, was a dangerous cocktail. After her escape, he beat her, losing himself to his rage, his frustrations that his scheming wasn’t working quite to plan. Something inside of me shattered when I saw this girl, this beautiful, innocent girl, bleeding and bruised and broken. I acted. I was helpless not to.
“It was by luck, or perhaps divine intervention, that Margan was called back to the city before I was. At the time, I didn’t know how long he would be gone for, nor how much time I had before I, too, was summoned. I was rushed. I knew…” His voice cracked, and he paused to clear his throat. Nessa stood shock still beside him, heart racing.
Please don’t stop…please don’t stop. Nessa wanted to hear the rest. She had to hear it.
“I wanted to save this girl. I needed to save her. But I knew that even if I managed to free her from Margan’s clutches, she still wouldn’t have been saved. Not completely. Not with the memories of Margan’s torments lingering in her mind. I knew…I knew that they would never fade. So I took them away, shielding her from them.”
Shadow turned to Nessa, his eyes shining bright. He looked so helpless and lost. Not at a
ll a fearsome Dragon Rider. Nessa’s heart twisted. Her lips parted but no words could be found.
“I took them from you,” Shadow murmured. “But in my haste, I took not only the memories of Margan but of everything else as well. For that, I seek your understanding, my little wildcat, my little Sāwolwalkere.”
“But not my forgiveness?”
His smile was small, hesitant. “Are you offering it?”
“Perhaps.”
Shadow moved and cupped Nessa’s face, his hands warm and gentle. “But only if I return your memories?”
“The ones with Margan can stay where they are,” Nessa said softly, sadly. “If they are so horrible.”
Shadow stroked her cheekbone with the pad of his thumb, slowly, reverently, and dipped his chin, resting his forehead against hers. He gazed into Nessa’s eyes with a kind of desperate longing, like he wanted to get lost in them, like he wanted to drown in them.
“Mental blocks are fickle things,” Shadow whispered, his breath twining with hers, binding them together. “Who’s to say I won’t make matters worse?”
“You won’t.”
“And who’s to say that you won’t go back to hating me again?”
Again? “Who’s to say I won’t if you don’t?”
“You’ve got me caught between a rock and a hard place, little wildcat.” Shadow groaned, pulling her against him, tucking her head beneath his chin. One hand buried itself in her hair. The other slid around her back, fingers resting at the dip of her waist. “No matter what I do, I’m doomed.”
Nessa closed her eyes as she rested a cheek against his chest, her hands settling there too. She savoured this more tender side of him, the warmth of his hold, the comfort she found with him for reasons unknown. Nessa listened to his heartbeat, strong and fast, steady and grounding.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
For a split second, Nessa thought she heard something over the steady beats: the squeak of a door opening, the quiet tap of booted feet on stone flooring. Her eyes flickered open, and she peered at the closet’s door. When she found no one there, her eyes slid closed again.
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