28
Where I want her
KADE
The cold of the tunnel seeps into my bones, but I don’t loosen my grip on Zara’s arm. She’s too quiet, her steps too precise, and every instinct tells me to stay on guard. Malric’s laughter still rings in my ears, a haunting echo that feeds my simmering rage. I shouldn’t have let it come to this. I shouldn’t have brought her here.
Her arm jerks against my grip. “Let go of me.”
I glance at her, my jaw tightening at the fury blazing in her eyes. I release her, my fingers tingling from where her skin burned against mine, or maybe that’s just the bond’s damn compulsion. Either way, I take a step back, giving her room to vent her anger. She doesn’t waste time.
“What did you agree to?” she demands, her voice sharp enough to cut through the heavy air. “What did you promise him?”
“Enough to get us what we need,” I reply, deliberatelyvague.
The last thing I want is to explain the full terms of Malric’s offer, not when she’s already looking at me like I’ve betrayed her. She screws her face up as she tosses that long silver hair of hers; her gaze boring into mine.
“I’m not a fucking toy to pass around or trade. What have you promised him?”
“Nothing he wasn’t going to take,” I snap, the words harsher than I intend. The accusation in her tone grates against the raw edge of my own guilt, and I don’t like it.
I know exactly what Malric is, and I know exactly what he wants. He wants to size Zara up, to feel her magic and her softness. My former tutor craves her power and he’s keen to experience all that she is. He wants her pain and her suffering; he wants to see how far she’ll go and make her suffer. He wants to break and bend and mold the girl I’m increasingly protective of.
Malric says this is the only way to weaken or break the blood weave, and I’m not sure I believe him. I don’t know if he wants something else, but I know Zara wants to break this connection and I no longer know what the fuck it is I want.
Except her.
I want her.
I want her to choose me and accept the inevitability of us, and if she has to go through a fucking awful experience with Malric to realize she’s better off with me, then I’m not about to stop it from happening. She’ll suffer and it’ll hurt her, but she will learn through the pain and it’ll be a lesson she won’t forget. Or want to repeat.
We move in silence until we reach the end of the tunnel, and she stops me before I emerge onto the streets.
“What have you agreed to?” she hisses.
“He’ll test you, Zara,” I whisper, my eyes searching the shadows for danger. “Malric put us all through it. He pushes and pushes and pushes until he knows all your strengths and weaknesses. He’ll find ways to hurt you and he’ll figure out your pressure points until he knows exactly how to break you.”
Her jaw snaps as it shuts, and I hear her silent anger roar.
“We’ll talk more when we get home,” I gesture to the faint outline of the mansion at the center of Varric’s Hollow. “But for now, we need to move. Someone doesn’t want us here, and we’ll be safer inside the wards.”
“I don’t think so,” she says, refusing to budge. “Your brothers weren’t exactly welcoming.”
Her defiance is a spark in the suffocating dark, and for a moment, I hate how much I admire it. I take a step closer, lowering my voice to keep it from cracking.
“If we stay here, we’re sitting ducks. You want to hash this out? Fine. But not in the open where we’re exposed.”
The fire in her gaze flickers, uncertainty creeping into the edges. She knows I’m right, but she doesn’t like it. I don’t blame her and I stare into her emerald irises, dazzled by their green and startled at how they burn for me. They’re mine and I want her for myself. I want this reaction for myself, and I never want anyone else to provoke this in her.
Reluctantly, she turns and steps into the streets of the city. It’s late, and the roads are empty save for the occasional shrouded figure lurking in the shadows. Even the usual hum of life feels stifled here, and the darkness of outlawed and deviant warlocks taints everything like a miasma.
Zara falls into step beside me, her silence heavier now. My stomach twists as I glance at her from the corner of my eye. She’s too still, her movements too deliberate. The bond between us thrums with tension, each step amplifying the space growing between us despite the mere inches separatingour bodies.
I grab her hand and drag her behind me, pulling her through the wards that guard our fortress again. She doesn’t complain and I feel her sense the magic around her, learning its ebbs and flows as she starts to understand it. Zara’s working it out and she’s doing it so she can move as freely as I can.
My teeth grind and we’re putting an end to her delusion of freedom as soon as we fucking can.
She exhales as we step inside, and the walls seem to press in, trapping the tension between us. I close the door behind us, leaning against it as my hands brace against the rough wood and my chest prepares for the onslaught from Zara.
