The shadows pouredfrom his mouth, out of his nose, and filled the air around him. They were everywhere; not a single piece of him, or the world, was spared their coldness and wrath.
But through the icy tendrils of their grasp, a trickle of warmth started to fill a heart he hadn’t realized had gone cold. The beams of light piercing the darkness reminded him of the sun peeking through the black clouds of a thunderstorm.
Little shafts of light danced across the ground, chasing away the shadows there. The shadows hissed as they recoiled from those rays. The blackened ground turned green once more, and when he tipped his face toward the light, the heat melted the icy chill encompassing him.
The warmth spreading out from his heart pulsed through his veins with every beat. It seeped into his arms and legs as it pushed the shadows out from his veins. When the light forced the shadows to retreat, the sun became exposed once more.
It was still black, but brilliant gold light illuminated its shriveled edges.
Cole flexed his fingers as he gazed at the field spread around him. The shadows retreated, and life was returning to the land, but the dead didn’t rise. Their bodies remained strewn across the rolling green fields.
The sight of them was as unnerving as the realization that, though warmth flowed through him once more, a small ball of coldness remained deep inside his soul.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Cole woketo discover he wasn’t in a land filled with darkness and death but one of warmth and temptation. A lush body, one he would have recognized anywhere, pressed against his side.
A strawberry aroma teased his senses, and though the strangeness of his all-too-realistic dream lingered, his cock stirred. But then, he could plunge into an icy lake, and Lexi would still entice him. She always would.
“What are you doing here?” he asked as he ran his fingers down her arm to her hip. He loved seeing her in the clothes of the dark fae. The color of the tunic brought out the emerald flecks in her hunter green eyes and hugged her body in all the right ways. “I left you in bed.”
“That’s funny because that’s where I leftyoutoo.”
“There’s a reason for that,” he reminded her.
“I think it’s beyond time we both moved past that reason. I helped pull you off that battlefield; I’m not the weak half human we believed me to be, and I’m sick of waking up to find you on the floor or in a chair. We can’t spend the rest of our lives sleeping like this; I won’t allow it.”
Cole’s hand stilled on her hip, and he almost chuckled over her commanding declaration. But there was nothing to laugh about, given that he nearly killed her before.
“All those things may be true, but what happens if I attack you again and you’re not so lucky, or—” He gulped because the possibility of losing her terrified him, and if it happened at his hand—no, he wouldnotallow it. “—I kill you?”
“I wasn’t lucky last time; I punched you in the face and woke you up.”
“That you did. It was a good, solid punch too.”
“Damn right it was, and that was before Brokk started training me. Now, I have more skill, and I will have more strength soon.”
“You still have a long way to go on both fronts before you get there.”
“I know, and I’m determined to get better trained, stronger, and to learn all the things I might be capable of doing; I’m also determined to sleep beside you. I’m not sure if you were having a nightmare or not, but something was clearly bothering you when I laid down beside you this time. And guess what? You didn’t hurt me. In fact, you calmed down.”
“I wasn’t dreaming about being back in the war this time. Things might have been different if I was.”
“What were you dreaming about then?”
He recalled the darkness, the ice, the feeling of suffocating as the shadows filled him, and then the warmth and light. That light had been Lexi; he was sure of it. Somehow, she chased the shadows away, but that didn’t mean she’d chase away the dreams of war.
And since she would only worry if he told her about this dream, he simply said, “It was a normal, run-of-the-mill, bad dream. So, since I wasn’t dreaming about killing someone, there’s no way to know how I’d react with you sleeping beside me.”
“I don’t care,” Lexi said. “I don’t want to keep doing this, Cole. We at least need to know what would happen. If you go to sleep knowing I’m beside you, and I don’t try to wake you from a nightmare, things could be completely different.”
He sighed and caressed her hip. The feel of her silken skin shoved away the remnants of his strange dream. As his fingers trailed up to her rib cage, he pushed the tunic with them until his hand settled on her waist.
Lexi’s fingers tapped his chest. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing,” he replied innocently.
“You’re not getting out of this conversation that easily.”
