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“What are you doing here?” Each words sliced between his teeth, barbed and jagged.
I swallowed against the pulse of his grip around my throat. “I-I-I was brought here. Kage . . . I can’t stay away if you’re hurting.”
As I spoke, words steadied, panic lessened. My limbs found their strength again, and I shoved him back. He hardly budged.
“Brought here?” Kage’s eyes went dark as coal. “You stepped inside.”
I held my arms out to my sides. “I know, it’s impressive. When I learned how to walk through a door, it blew everyone away back home too.”
Kage’s shoulders rose in harsh breaths, as though restraining barely contained rage . . . or something else. Something almost like fear. Each breath brushed our chests together.
I wanted to flee.
I wanted him to hold on a little tighter.
“Kage, we need to speak. Gwyn and Hugo seem to think we’re somehow connected, and they don’t want me leaving here until we speak about it, and I don’t know where to begin. Sorry, I’m rambling, and . . . who are these people?”
The barest of smiles teased Kage’s mouth when I glanced at him.
“You speak a great deal, Wildling.”
“Nervous habit.”
“I enjoy your words.” The thumb of my thief, my tormenter, gently traced the freckles on the ridge of my cheek. Doubtless, he didn’t realize he was even doing it. “If we are connected as they say, then we’ll talk. For we have mysteries to uncover.”
CHAPTER 23
Kage
Adira satacross from me at the small table. A pale drinking horn was cupped in her hands, and every few breaths she’d rotate it, scrutinizing the sweet wine inside.
Her gaze would occasionally peek through long lashes, as though she expected I might draw a blade and attack or flee, abandoning her in the wood if she moved too swiftly.
“This is good.” Adira lifted the horn and took another sip. “What’s it called?”
“Wine.”
She snorted. “What kind?”
“We call it mistvine.” I took a gulp. Tart and intense, the sweetness slid down my throat like satin. “The berries are found within blossoms that grow along the shores in rocky edges nearest the spray of the sea.”
“I’ve never had anything like it.”
“Yes, because you can’t recall.” The retort slid free in a rough grumble.
Adira slouched in her chair. “Are you going to keep doing this? Snapping at me for something I don’t even remember, something I barely understand?”
I hid the flush of shame with another drink. Harsh words slippedout from the pull to cruelty, from the poison soiling my blood. I did not plan to explain the truth of it. From what I suspected, Adira would take the charge like my friends, and pointlessly focus on saving me, not our kingdom.
She sighed when I kept quiet. “You’ll need to forgive me for being a less than an acceptable Blood Sacrifice. Last I checked, I was a nobody. Someone simply trying to keep her head above water filled with sharks in Las Vegas.”
A furrow gathered between my brows. “You could not seek refuge on land?”
“What?”
“Sharks. I know the term from mortal translation texts I’ve read in the past.”
Her lip twitched. “It’s not . . . it’s pronounced shark, notshock.”
