Breath of Fire

by Amanda Bouchet

  “This is what, Talia?”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “It’s your name.”

  “My name is Cat. I’m Cat.” I don’t want to be Talia. I don’t want to be Beta Fisa. I don’t want to be the girl her brother tortured, or the girl who got her sister killed. I don’t want to be Andromeda’s daughter, and the person who saw that Sintan messenger get his arms chopped off and then his legs. His blood splattered me, and I stood there, watching.

  Griffin’s eyes are like stones. “I don’t even know you.”

  He believes that. My Kingmaker Magic tells me as much. Any lie would feel like a bonfire inside of me, but this is the marble-cold truth. “I’m the same person I was yesterday. And the day before. Nothing’s changed.”

  He lunges for me, grabbing my shoulders and ramming me back against the wall. His fingers dig into my skin, and the impact drives most of the air from my lungs. I struggle to breathe as the knotted sheet slips low.

  Granite eyes bore into mine. “Nothing’s changed?”

  I force down a tight breath, shaking my head. “Not if you don’t want it to.”

  “I think you have no idea what I want. Or who I am.” He leans close, but there’s nothing lover-like in the near embrace. It’s sheer menace. “What’s the one thing I value above all else?”

  I swallow, my throat almost too dry for words. Yesterday, I might have said me. Today… “Loyalty,” I answer, my stomach cramping hard. And loyalty means telling the truth.

  “So you do listen?” His grip tightens painfully. “Not just talk?”

  I gasp. “Griffin! You’re hurting me.”

  He glances at his hands and then releases some of the pressure on my upper arms. “This is the reason you didn’t tell me who you really are? Getting caught?”

  “Getting caught?” A surprised, slightly unhinged laugh flies from me. “I didn’t tell you for much more selfish reasons than that.”

  He frowns. Heavy lines bracket his mouth, and starkness wars with the dangerous gleam in his eyes. “Then you were just waiting. Biding your time. You never wanted to be here. You always wanted to leave us.”

  By us, he means him. And he’s wrong. “I didn’t tell you because I couldn’t bear for you to see me the way I see myself!”

  He stares down at me, his expression still hard but also unnervingly blank. “What?”

  “I’m not right for you.”

  “What?” he snarls, shaking me. The back of my head thuds against the wall, and he stops.

  “I don’t belong here! It was only a matter of time before you figured that out.”

  “What are you saying?” Griffin demands. “That you’re too high and mighty? Too good for me?”

  What? No! “I’m saying I’m not fit to lick the dust from your boots!”

  Anger flashes in his eyes. For a horrifying heartbeat, I think he’s going to hurt me. I’m strong, and I’m fast. Griffin is stronger and faster, and he’s immune to harmful magic, so even the terrifying amount of Dragon’s Breath I have stored up can’t stop him. When we killed Sybaris, I absorbed everything I could of the She-Dragon’s deadly Fire Magic. It’s mine now. Despite that, the frightening truth is, if Griffin wants to punish me, he can.

  His breathing turns erratic. The wild look in his eyes scares me as he pushes me flat against the wall, his hard body caging me there. His grip is biting.

  “Ow! Griffin! Let go!”

  His nostrils flare. Some of the fury clears from his expression, and he steps back, dropping me so fast I stagger. The sheet starts to unwind from around me, and I grab it, yanking it back into place. Griffin retreats, one foot behind the other. Slowly. Watching me.

  “Let you go.” He takes another step back and then looks around the room like he’s never seen it before. He keeps backing away from me, backing toward the door. His big hands clench and unclench by slow degrees, pulling inward toward his sides. His eyes sweep the rage-battered room again before skating back to me.

  “Griffin?”

  His gaze hits mine with the force of a thunderclap. He looks…appalled. “I-I won’t do this. I can’t…be with you.”

  My lips part in shock. Tears flood my eyes. He can’t mean that. What happened to our vows? What about his promise to never give up on me?

  My heart plummets, the crash painful, wrenching, and fast. I know what happened—me.

  Before I can think of anything to say, any way to keep him with me—now and forever—Griffin jerks his sword from the cracked wood of the table and then storms from the room, leaving.

  Leaving me.

  CHAPTER 2

  I can’t be with you.

  I slide down the wall, a deep, painful ache spreading through me and settling fast and hard into every corner of my body, inhabiting my blood and bones. Tears distort my view of the ruined bed. I squeeze my eyes shut, blocking the sight. Trying to block the tears. But they keep coming, hot drops tracking down the sides of my face. A sob scrapes its way up my burning throat. Hot and clawing, it rises, making the whole room quake.

  I slap my hands down, my eyes popping open as I brace myself against the rumbling floor. I swallow everything in a panic—my heartache, this magic, and my terrifying potential for destruction. The glacial shard in my necklace pulses with magic, and I force a powerful flood of cold through me, shocking my body, numbing my pain, and calming the storm. The room settles.

  Shaken, guarded, I breathe shallowly, my lungs too tight and my pulse hammering like a drum. The Gods only know if I could have brought the whole castle down with the force of my emotions. Trying to stay numb, I gather the wrinkled sheet around me. It smells like Griffin, and me, and my heart shatters all over again, nearly toppling my fragile control.

  Balling the material in my fists, I press down hard, feeling the sting of my own nails. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Griffin asked me to take a chance. On him. On trust. On love. I did, and look where it got me. That my misery is my own damn fault doesn’t escape me. It just makes it worse.

  Pressure clogs my throat. I think only a raw, primal scream might clear it, but I don’t let it out. I’m too afraid of what I could unleash.

  The numbness I forced upon myself wavers dangerously as I take in the devastation of the room, the destruction an accusation, the wreckage the ruins of what I almost had.

  The stone around me groans with a low vibration, and I scrape my fingers over my scalp, dragging my loose hair back and burying my face in my knees. Rocking, I try to hold myself together.

  Griffin and I exchanged a vow. But he’s Hoi Polloi and not bound by promises like Magoi are. The magic in my blood makes verbal pledges permanent and unbreakable, physically binding for the rest of my life unless Griffin releases me.

  I curl in on myself. He won’t release me. He’ll never release me. Griffin needs the Kingmaker, even if he doesn’t want Cat.

  A terrible weight settles in my chest. I’m magically tied to Griffin, but he’s not tied to me. I’ll be forced to be here with him, without being with him. I’ll have to watch him move on.

  Deep breath in. Long breath out.

  Who cares if I cry?

  The room rattles again, and I draw in a sharp breath. Apparently, unleashing more tears isn’t an option. My options are horrifyingly limited, in fact.

  Standing, I scrub my face with my hands to wipe it dry and then unwrap the sheet from around my body, leaving it on the floor. Moving mechanically, I dress and strap on my knives and sword before gathering my other belongings and dumping them into the center of the sheet, clearing Griffin’s room of anything and everything that’s mine.

  There’s not much, and I stare at the pile with gritty, burning eyes, not nearly as numb as I need to be. My inhale catches. I press the heels of my palms to my eyes, hard, forcing the insistent, rising heat back down. This was supposed to be my home. More fool m
e for actually believing that.

  Trying to not shake the castle again with power I have no idea how to control, I tie the corners of the sheet together to create a makeshift sack. I heft it over my shoulder and don’t look back. I never look back. But the frosted wall just barely caging my emotions is still fragile, and no matter how hard I try to shore it up, my necklace helping me, pain still hammers at my heart, unrelenting and bold.

  A focused thought separates a familiar thread of magic from the rest of the power surging inside of me. I turn invisible, and by extension, everything attached to me turns invisible, too—clothing, weapons, my improvised bag. My worn boots are silent as I move through the shadowed back corridors of Castle Sinta, avoiding any occupied rooms. No one would see me—but I don’t want to see them.

  I walk across the Athena courtyard, trying not to feel or look at or think about anything. I can’t cry again. I can’t afford that. No one here can. The magic inside me is still crashing like a storm. My grief right now is so deep, so raw, so raging and powerful that I have no idea what would happen if I let it out. Nothing good. I think I shortened my name to Cat for a reason—as in Cataclysm.

  My patently unwise vow to stay with Griffin makes it physically impossible for me to walk away from him, leaving me only one place to go. After what feels like a long march through hostile territory, I swing open a nondescript door and stare at the small, dim room in the barracks I used to occupy. A narrow bed. One small chest. A rough-hewn table that’s seen better days. A chair.

  Home, I guess.

  Compared to the opulence of the castle, it’s as unappealing as it could possibly be.

  I light the lone lamp in the windowless room and then push the door closed behind me, letting go of my invisibility. Aching and brittle, I unpack my sheet and put my clothes and weapons away, the methodic chore helping to calm the violence of the sorrow inside me. That done, I know of only one escape—apart from death—from this kind of constant, overwhelming pain.

  I undress and then slip on one of my new nightgowns, squeezing my eyes shut again as thoughts of how I’d wanted to wear the flimsy garment for Griffin flood my mind. His storm-gray eyes would have burned with passion. Strong, battle-roughened hands would have reached for me. His breath would have quickened, and I would have melted at his first touch.

  My heart jolts painfully, and I open my eyes back up to stare at my cold, small bed. None of that happened. We only had a few nights together in that way before…this.

  Turning to the table, I blow out the lamp, my breath shuddering dangerously, and then crawl under the blanket in the utter darkness. Beneath me, I’m not surprised to find a bare mattress with no sheet covering the coarse surface. I vacated this room. No one thought I was coming back—least of all me.

  Fighting tears, I lie there for hours, trying to find sleep and doing my best to think about nothing. Because nothing is all I have.

  * * *

  I wake up to the door crashing open and the sudden blaze of a torch brightening my barren room. Sitting up, I push hair out of my face and squint against the light. Has someone come to arrest me? Am I to have the dungeon instead of the barracks? That wouldn’t surprise me. I am the enemy.

  Flames whoosh as someone whips the torch from side to side, illuminating first the room and then…Griffin? He comes into focus in front of other large, dark figures. As my vision adjusts to the light, I gasp.

  What happened to him? His eyes are wild, his face haggard. His features aren’t just drawn, they’re ravaged.

  Passing off the torch, Griffin leaps forward and yanks me into his arms. Our bodies connect, and a spasm wrenches my chest. It feels so perfect, so right, when he holds me like this. Surrounding me, squeezing me until I almost can’t breathe, he rains kisses all across my face. His thick stubble scratches—my nose, my cheek—and I want more of the light scraping. The subtle sting proves he’s here. That this is real.

  Griffin’s low, raw voice rips through me like a dull knife. “Thank the Gods and all of Olympus.” He shudders. “I thought you’d left me.”

  My pulse roars, deafening. “I don’t understand. You left me.”

  “No. No.” His heavy breath pounds against my neck. “Never leave you.”

  “But…did I dream that entire fight?” Is that even possible? Good Gods! Maybe I am insane!

  Griffin just shakes his head, his warmth and his sunshine-and-citrus scent enfolding me in what feels like the best dream I’ve ever had. I glance over his shoulder at the other men. Kato and Flynn block the doorway. Carver hovers behind them, all of them scruffy-jawed and tired-eyed. They look like they haven’t slept in a while. Flynn nods to me and then slips the torch into the sconce on the otherwise bare wall. They back out, shutting the door behind them.

  I curl my fingers into Griffin’s tunic. My hands are trapped between us against his solid chest, and his heartbeat thuds fast and hard against my knuckles. I ache to hold him. I’m terrified to let myself. I’m not sure I could survive losing him twice.

  “I couldn’t find you,” he rasps, his face still buried against my neck. “All yesterday. All night. All day again. It’s past midnight.”

  “I slept that long?” Healing requires extended periods of sleep, and my stomach was still sore the last time I woke up…a day and a half ago? It doesn’t hurt anymore. But I doubt that’s why I slept so deeply. I’ve always been good at denial. I didn’t know I’m such an expert that I can crawl into an abandoned room and put myself into a coma.

  “All your things were gone, like you never even existed. I searched the castle. The woods. The city. The circus.”

  Anxiety spikes inside of me. “Oh Gods. Selena.” My sort of adoptive mother threatened Griffin with a variety of fates worse than death if he ever let anything happen to me. “What did she do?”

  He grunts, respect mixed with a certain amount of wariness in the sound. “She just about eviscerated me with her eyes alone. She looked at me, and I swear to the Gods, I felt my gut heating up and twisting around.”

  I have no trouble believing that, which makes Selena one of the scariest people I know. The owner of the traveling circus where I took refuge for nearly eight years, Selena is overprotective of me almost to a fault and not particularly keen on Griffin—or my choosing to stay with him. In all fairness, he did snatch me out from under her nose, an abduction I wasn’t exactly on board with for a long time, either—to say the least.

  Without letting go of me, Griffin sits on the edge of the bed and pulls me onto his lap. “I thought…” He clears his throat, his grip on me tightening. “I thought you’d turned invisible and left.”

  And I thought he’d never hold me like this again, crushing me against his body like it’s physically impossible to let me go. For the first time in my life, I’m ecstatic to be wrong. “I can’t do that.”

  Pulling back slightly, Griffin searches my face. “You can’t?”

  I cup his jaw, needing to feel his raw masculinity under my hand, and he subtly, maybe unconsciously, leans into my touch.

  “I could go for a walk and then come back. Go training. Shopping. Visiting. But if my intention is really to leave you, I probably can’t get farther than the castle gate. I vowed to live with you, or die trying. I can’t leave you unless…” I audibly swallow, sudden nerves making my stomach flip over. “Unless you release me from my vow.”

  “Never release you.” Griffin’s stark, harsh, wonderful truth sears me with its intensity. I chose him. I chose us. I don’t want to be let go.

  “And my vow to you remains, Cat. Just as binding as yours.” His words ring with truth, and forever sings through me on a ripple of magic—a promise he’ll never break.

  A hard drumming starts in my chest. It builds, battering the wall I built around my heart until the fragile barrier explodes outward in a shattering of fire through ice.

  I spear my hands into Griffin�
�s hair, using his inky locks to hold him tight. “But you said you were done with me.”

  “How could you think that?” He gives me a shake that’s both gentle and frantic. “I love you like a man insane.”

  My breath hitches. Tears prick my eyes, and I blink them back. “You said you couldn’t be with me.”

  Griffin looks confused. Then angry. “I couldn’t be with you right then. You were spouting nonsense that was making me crazy—things about us not belonging together. I was fuming and…not in control of myself. I hurt you, so I left. I walked out the door so I wouldn’t hurt you again, but that never meant I wasn’t coming back.”

  I gape at him, the most horrible knot unraveling in my chest. “Gods, I’m an idiot!”

  Shaking his head, Griffin smoothes my hair back. “I’m sorry for what you thought. For what I made you think.”

  “No. I’m sorry. If I didn’t come from a completely deranged and homicidal family, I might actually understand relationships.” Maybe I wouldn’t have taken the worst possible meaning from Griffin’s words. Maybe I’d have given him the benefit of the doubt, and just maybe, I’d have put more faith in us.

  Griffin gently holds my head in his hands. His touch is soothing, but his voice suddenly cuts like a knife. “You lied to me. You didn’t trust me. I hate that.”

  “I do trust you!”

  “Then why? Why hide from me?”

  I open my mouth to try to explain, but nothing comes out. Any words that are even remotely sufficient stick in my throat.

  “I need an answer, Cat. Don’t think you have a choice.” Griffin’s hands drop away from me, leaving me cold. Flat eyes. Flat voice. When he looks like that, he gets what he wants.

  I swallow hard. “I didn’t want you to leave me.”

  If possible, Griffin turns even more stone-faced. “Like I said—no trust.”

  “That’s not true! But look at you. At your family. Then look at me and mine. I’m ashamed. And I should be!”