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Kage, sprawled out on his stomach, the bare muscles of his strong back clenched and glistened with sweat, was in the bed. The knife I’d taken gleamed on a bedside table as he groaned against a long, lumpy pillow. One hand sunk deep into his hair like his sleep-driven pain needed to find something for purchase.
His body twitched. He pleaded softly for whoever starred in his nightmare to cease doing whatever it was they were doing.
Good hell, he was utterlytorturedin his dreams.
My eyes dragged over his sleeping form, drinking the dark inktattooed along his spine—two crossed blades with a bloody skull in the center, and wrapped around all the brutality were blossoms.
Blossoms too wretchedly similar to the ones painted on my back.
“Why?” he said, voice broken.
I coughed against the blow to my insides. His dream—his nightmare—was somehow destroying me slowly.
Bolstering whatever bit of courage I could find, I crept over the large mattress. Oddly soft, yet sturdy for something made without gel or high-tech foam. My hand trembled, hovering over his thick shoulder, until I placed it on his skin.
The caress awakened something in my thoughts. Much like the touch to the arm ring, a scene flashed through me, as though I were a ghostly spectator to a dream argument reeling through Kage’s mind.
Kage was seated in a wooden chair, one elbow propped on a desk. He appeared lighter, a little younger, and his smile was less wicked.
“Why do you ask these things?” He arched one brow, looking to the corner of a room. From the angle I was placed in the vision, I could not make out who else was with him. “To take a heartstone is cruel to the soul in which it belongs.”
“Do you not find it interesting?” asked another voice. I could not deduce if it was male or female, simply vague and frustrating. “A heartstone being added upon another until it takes hold and is restored is fascinating and curious.”
“You’re speaking of ending one soul for another to live again.” Kage shook his head, mouth tight as he nudged a sheet of parchment to the edge of the desk. “It borders on cruel spells. Not to mention it would take a powerful bloodline like . . .” His eyes tightened.
“House Ravenwood,” the other said flatly.
A muscle throbbed in his jaw; he studied his fingers. “Yes. But it is gone.” All at once, his gaze lifted to mine. “What are you doing here, Wildling?”
I was flung backward and landed over Kage’s bare chest. My scream pierced the silence of the room when he jolted awake. Like a spark catching flame, he rolled me beneath his body, a hidden knife leveled at my throat in mere moments.
The smooth brown of his eyes darkened to charcoal and held a touch of violence, like one simple move from me would awaken a monster trapped within.
“Kage . . .” I gasped, gently tapping his ribs. “Kage . . . please.”
He blinked once, twice, then startled back. “If you are here to kill me, you ought to have a knife in your hand, or I might think you are in my bed for other reasons. Not that I would mind.”
“Even to a potential assassin you’re still an ass.” My fingers curled around the furs and quilts of his bed when he did not remove the knife, even pressed a little firmer against my skin. “Stop. You . . . you were having a nightmare, and I wanted to wake you, but?—”
“I saw you.”
“I don’t know how that happened.”
“Nor I.” Kage recoiled the knife and let it rest beside my hip. When he looked at me again, he tilted his head to one side. “Your chamber is in the other tower. How did you hear me?”
Good question. How was I to explain that some agonizing force dragged me from sleep, through the corridors, and into his head and bed?
I settled for fragments of the truth. “I had a feeling.”
He narrowed his eyes. “A feeling?”
“Yes, now if you don’t mind, kindly get the hell off me.”
I expected him to protest, maybe even prove if he was truly wretched by using this moment to his advantage, but Kage moved aside.
Beneath a gleam of his green candle, I took note for the first time of his chest. The man was made of carved muscle, but it wasn’t his strength that drew me to pause. Along the edges of his hips were dark, pulpy veins. Like black worms crawling beneath his skin.
Kage noted my scrutiny and flopped backward on the other side of his bed, tucking the furs over his waist. “You could’ve been killed sneaking up on a Soturi.”
