I wrap my fingers around his arm and give it a sharp squeeze. “Focus,” I urge.
I feel his magic settling back around us, blurring the air, protecting us once more. Neither of us so much as breathes again until the creatures are out of sight. Then Soren pulls away from me and wobbles a few steps in the direction of said creatures.
He looks like he’s thinking of breaking into a sprint after them.
I grab his shirt and jerk him back. “What are you doing? Pretty sure we should be heading in the opposite direction of those things. Seriously—I’m just now starting to feel warm again.”
“Do you realize what those things were?” he asks softly.
“You mean besides super creepy?”
“Animaclepta.”
“Anima—oh.”
He turns to me, and the emotion shining in his green eyes steals away my ability to speak.
I’ve seen this look before. A little lost, a little angry, a little like the ground has shifted underneath him and he can’t find balance. It’s the same look he wore when we sat together on that cold, damp night in Ireland and he first told me about what had happened to his mother and sister.
“The Anima are the ones who stole your mother and sister, aren’t they?”
He tries to shove his way past me.
I shove him back. “What exactly is your plan here?”
“I’m going to let them abduct me too,” he says without a second of hesitation. “And then I’m going to find out what they do with the abducted.”
“Okay, that… is an absolutely terrible idea. Like in the top five of the long list of terrible ideas you’ve had since we met.”
“It could lead to information I need—”
“It could also lead to you being killed and dismembered.”
He tries to push by me once more. Luckily, I’m stronger than him—physically at least—and he’s in no condition to fight me off with magic.
Although the furious look on his face makes me think he’s about to attempt it anyway.
In the distance, I still hear movement. Crunching footsteps and rustling foliage. Reminders to keep my own motion and my voice quiet as I grab the front of his shirt and pin him against the nearest tree before he can do something stupid.
“Look. I get it. You’ve spent years trying to get into this world, and now that you’re here you want answers, vengeance, whatever—”
“If you understand, then let me go.”
“Not happening.”
His hand moves toward my face, fingertips grazing my cheek up to my temple. To an outsider, it would probably look tender. Romantic.
But I know that it’s simply easier to overtake a subject with illusion magic if you’re physically touching that subject.
My sword is against his throat a second later.
“I’m still annoyed with you—so if anyone is going to kill you, it’s not going to be those Anima creeps. It’s going to be me. So maybe don’t tempt me, stupid.”
Our standoff holds for at least a full minute before the tension in his body finally slips. He pulls his fingers away from my face, clenches them into a fist that he knocks against the tree as he slides down against it.
I cautiously relax and take a step back.
I want to take several steps—to get as far away from the sudden awkwardness as possible—but I’m still convinced he’s going to do something drastic and dumb if I take my eyes off him.
So I stay put.
“We’ll come up with a better plan,” I offer after another few moments of that awkward silence.
“Just be quiet for a minute, will you?” He closes his eyes and massages the space between them.
I bite down my reply and turn to the woods, pacing and smelling and listening for threats.
Five minutes of unpleasant quiet pass. I catch a new scent on the wood, suddenly—something that smells vaguely of vanilla and spice. It reminds me of Carys, of that awful incense she always insisted on burning in her room. I don’t know how it didn’t overwhelm her sensitive sense of smell, but she claimed it didn’t. It gave Liam a major headache, though; I could always tell when the two of them weren’t getting along, because she would burn so much of that junk that it would force him to stay at least five hundred feet away from her room.
I smile a little at the bittersweet memory. I stop my anxious pacing and glance back at Soren. His eyes are still closed. I wonder what sort of memories he has about his mother and sister? He was young when they were taken, I know.
But he has to have something left.
Enough to cross worlds for, at least.
He must sense my staring, because his eyes open, and he holds my gaze for a moment before switching to stare at his hands instead.
“What were your mother and sister like?” I ask, walking over and leaning against the tree next to him.
He glances up at me for a second but doesn’t say anything.
I slide down next to him. “I’m serious. I want to know. Tell me…what’s your favorite memory of them?”
He keeps staring at his hands. Our arms are just barely touching, and I can feel the unease coiling in him, the uncertainty that’s keeping him quiet.
I don’t know how to make him relax enough to trust me. So I stay silent, dragging the tip of my sword around, swirling patterns in the dirt. I’ve nearly finished etching my masterpiece when he reaches over and takes my free hand, wrapping his fingers securely through mine to stop my fidgeting.
I nearly drop my sword in surprise at the suddenly confident touch. At the way his body relaxes once he’s holding on to me, as if this is our natural position, finally restored.
He still doesn’t speak right away. But suddenly I don’t care as much about the silence, because all I want to focus on is that secure weight of his hand against mine.
It’s strange.
The last time we were holding on to each other like this, with heat leaping from his skin to mine, it ended up triggering the curse in my blood and making me—and the world around us— dangerously unstable.
The only thing that’s unstable now is my heartbeat, which races even faster as he clenches my hand more tightly and shifts his position so that our bodies are flush against one another’s.
He’s still staring straight ahead, still looking determined not to speak.
“You can tell me, you know.”
“You would probably think it’s stupid.”
“I think the majority of the things you’ve done and said in the past twenty-four hours have been stupid. Why stop the trend?”
He laughs softly, tilting his head toward mine. Our faces are close—so close that it makes my thoughts spin, and suddenly I can’t remember why I ever thought running away and going home without him was a good idea.
He relaxes his grip on my hand, taps and traces thoughtful patterns against my palm as he says: “I was four when they were taken. So I don’t have much to say. But I do have one clear memory: birds.”
“Birds?”
“Mmhm. My sister—Anika, was her name—she loved the white birds that lived in the park where our mother used to take us to play. And one night, I found Ani alone on the porch, trying to create an illusion of those birds. She was so mad that she couldn’t get it right. They were supposed to be white, but they kept turning out silver—and she took her irritation over it out on me. I still remember the fight we had when she caught me watching her. She was always so determined to be perfect when it came to spells and such. My mother was the same way when she was younger, people always told me.”
“You told me they were incredibly powerful,” I recall.
“Yes. But my mother was a learned mage, you know—not a Blood Sorcerer. And my sister took after her. Very little natural ability, but she was determined to make sure people couldn’t tell. Which is why I think she was so embarrassed at someone witnessing her failure at even a relatively simple illusion spell, even though I hadn’t even realized she was failing—I was so impressed by the
silver birds that I forgot they were even supposed to be white.
“She still yelled at me. I ended up crying myself to sleep in the room we shared, and then I woke in the middle of the night to see my mother sitting on Ani’s bed, comforting her. And teaching her. The two of them conjured bird after bird until the room was full of them, a dozen little white lights in the dark—but there was still one silver bird among them, even then. I watched it diving in and out of the others until I fell back to sleep.
“I bugged Ani until she taught me how create the birds as well. It became a comforting thing between the three of us; no matter how tense things got at home—with my dad and all the power-hungry members of the Blackwood clan and everything else—sitting together and summoning birds with them never failed to calm me down.”
As he finishes speaking, the hand not holding mine drifts lazily through the air, creating a swirl of silver-tinted energy that folds into the shape of a bird. It unfurls its wings. With a curl of his finger, Soren makes those wings lift and fall in slow, mesmerizing flaps.
And he’s right—it is oddly comforting to watch.
I lean my head on his shoulder, watching as the bird flies circles above his hand. That hand is shaking just slightly. Movements so small that only my predator brain would notice them and realize that he’s weakened and hurting—from the memory, or from reaching his limit magic-wise, or some combination of the two.
I feel a bit selfish for making him relive that memory, but I don’t regret it.
“That wasn’t stupid,” I say.
“No?”
I shake my head.
He still looks unconvinced about opening up like this, but after a minute he says, “Well, thanks for listening, I guess.”
My eyes widen a bit, which makes him roll his.
“What?” he asks with a crooked grin. “Why are you looking at me like I’m not capable of using polite phrases such as thank you?”
“I just expected you to tell me to go away again, is all,” I say with a shrug.
“You can still go away,” he suggests.
“Can’t.”
“You can’t?”
“Nope, too distracted by this bird, now.” I motion toward it as it perches on a nearby rock, its movements delicate but certain.
Soren’s laughter is silent this time. His body shakes slightly with it. The vibrations send a pleasant tingling racing over my skin, and my breath catches.
“You’re so easily distracted,” he muses.
“I can focus on things that matter.”
“Things like?”
“Like helping you find your family.”
“I had a feeling you were going to say that.”
Tension rolls in the tiny bit of space between us for a moment before he finally relaxes, and he moves so he can wrap an arm around my waist.
So, not exactly pushing me away anymore.
Progress, right?
“I don’t want you here,” he says after a long pause.
“Rude.”
“Because…” His face angles toward mine again. My head is still resting gently on his shoulder, so the movement brings his lips close enough that they nearly brush mine as he says: “I don’t want you here because I’m afraid of what could happen, alright? What if you don’t make it back to Earth, whole, and in one piece? Elle, you are—”
He stops abruptly.
Another weighty pause.
I stare at the ground, trying not to think about all of the what-ifs.
“You are the only person I’ve actually cared about in years. I’d forgotten what it even felt like—but now I remember why I try not to care.”
“Soren—”
He looks away. “Because the last two people I really cared about were taken. And the same thing could happen to you.”
“It won’t.”
“It might. There’s no guarantee.”
“There are no guarantees in anything. So just let me help you. Please?” I lift my head from his shoulder and stare at him until he can’t help but look back— if only for a second.
“Fine,” he relents.
“Really?”
He sets his jaw. “I don’t want you here. But… I’d be lying if I said some selfish part of me wasn’t glad you’re being stubborn about it.”
I’m speechless for a moment; it feels like I’ve managed to knock down a door that I’ve been pounding on for weeks, and now all I can do is try to catch my breath as I finally see what’s on the other side.
When he truly looks back, his eyes are still their real, illusion-free shade of deep green. And they’re full of something that looks suspiciously like want, despite his claims to the contrary. His lips quirk at the speechless expression on my face, and he reaches over and traces his fingers up along my jawline. The arm around my waist tightens, pulling me forward to meet him in a soft, gentle kiss.
It stays soft and gentle for a moment—maybe because that’s what it’s always had to be.
Careful Elle. Keep your emotions in check, Elle, or things could get dangerous.
And my curse might be lifted now, but he’s still dangerous.
He still lied to me.
But there are no lies in the way he’s touching me now. Nothing false or forced about the way his kisses are growing hungrier, his breathing huskier, his heart beating faster.
Maybe I’m just easily fooled.
I decide I don’t care.
I kiss him back, harder and hungrier. So hard that it makes him gasp, and then laugh before he teasingly pulls away from my lips and trails kisses down my throat instead. My arms wrap around his neck, yanking him down, urging him on. His hands dig into the small of my back, inching up the sweater he gave me until his fingertips find skin.
I close my eyes and breathe in his scent, twist the fabric of his shirt between my fingers, press my lips to the sensitive skin just beneath his ear, and then I—
Stop.
“What was that?”
He focuses on catching his breath and balance for a moment before reluctantly taking a step back and fixing me with a quizzical look. “I don’t hear anything.” I can hear the disappointment about stopping in his voice; I press my fingers to his lips before he can start complaining.
“You also don’t have my sense of hearing,” I mutter.
And I wish I didn’t either at the moment, because I’m no happier to be interrupted than Soren is.
“Footsteps,” I say quietly. “They’re coming this way. Dozens of them.”
“The second half of the parade?” His tone has dropped to a much more serious note, and he pulls his arm out from around me and reaches for his sword.
He must sense that sudden coldness in the air, too; that oppressive magical energy is unmistakable now that I know what it feels like.
“Promise me you aren’t going to do anything stupid,” I say, wrapping around to the backside of the tree and pulling him with me.
He doesn’t answer right away.
“I told you we’d come up with a better plan,” I continue in a hurried whisper. “So let’s do that. Maybe we can abduct one of them and, I don’t know, interrogate them or something?”
“Without attracting the attention of a dozen more?”
“I’m open to other ideas.”
We exchange a frown.
“Maybe we could…” I trail off as a familiar scent hits me.
Again.
I smell Carys again.
Impossible.
I sink down next to the tree, bracing an arm against it for support as the second round of Anima march into view. Like the first group, this group also carries a prisoner.
I ignore the awful sense of foreboding that’s tying my stomach into knots, and I creep as far forward as I dare, trying to get a closer look. But the windows on this suspended cage are as small as the last, and it’s impossible to see more than an occasional flash of the eyes peering out.
There’s no way it’s her.
The caravan i
s out of sight, and her scent is fading with it. It was a memory. Clearly a memory—
The wolfish scent I catch a few minutes later is not.
It’s real and it’s strong, and there’s no way I would mistake it for what it is.
For who it is.
I’ve crept forward a few more feet without really meaning to, and I probably would have kept going—but Soren slams an arm into my back and forces me to the ground. His mouth is next to my ear a moment later, his words little more than breath: “What in the hell are you doing?”
I lift my head and shrug Soren away just in time to see the creature that’s trailing the caravan: a streak of white fur, brilliant and bold within the red moonlight.
Chapter Five
Liam.
He’s obviously hell-bent on not losing those Anima. Paws sidewinding a frantic path through the brush. Massive ears flicking back and forth. Nose to the ground.
I don’t think he’s noticed me.
Is he trailing Carys’s scent?
“Was that…?” Soren begins.
“Yes.” I get shakily to my feet.
Soren stands with me. “Promise me,” he whispers, “that you won’t do anything stupid.”
But I’ve already made up my mind.
It might be stupid, but there’s nothing else I could possibly do except start to run.
Because there’s no doubt about it: That’s definitely Liam, and I definitely smell Carys, and there is definitely no way I can let them face those terrifying creatures without my help.
I try to shift as I race through the trees. But the only thing moving faster than my feet is my mind, a tumbling current of fearful thoughts that make it impossible to focus on shifting, or even remembering what it felt like to shift; that power feels blocked all over again. It seems impossible that I was a wolf such a short time ago.
Whatever.
I still have my shiny new sword.
I carefully hack my way through the overgrown trail, aiming for a combination of speed and quiet. Soren is somewhere behind me. Following me—scent and sound tell me as much—but he’s not nearly as fast as I am. I wish he had just stayed put. I have zero semblance of a plan here, and it’s bad enough that I’m probably about to get myself in a shit load of trouble because of that.
Silver and Shadow (The Canath Chronicles Book 2) Page 5
