“But I agreed to this under false pretenses!” I protest, eyes darting from one to the other. “Iquit.”
Rhordyn stops cold.
A few long seconds pass, feeling like a small eternity. He finally unravels, shirt held in his white-knuckled fist as he looks my way. “Then your training will be replaced by daily trips to nearby villages. Escorted byme.”
Not a single cell in my body escapes the attack of his words. Even my bones want to crumble from the blow.
I find myself mouthing the wordno... unable to draw enough breath to say it.
Rhordyn’s eyes harden. “Training it is, then. I’ll be back tomorrow night.”
My heart drops.
Tomorrow night ...
He’s reneging on a blood-letting. Possibly two.Something he’sneverdone before.
“But ... but don’t you need me?”
“No,” he growls. “I need you to sort your shit out.”
Asshole.
“Ride her ass, Baze. Keep going until you can see the color in her eyes again.”
“I hate you,” I manage to whisper, watching him stalk toward the wide-open doors.
He grinds to a halt the moment the words slip off my tongue.
A small, humorless smile curls his lips into something almost painful to witness—a wicked sharpness that reminds me I don’t know this male despite all the years we’ve lived under the same roof.
All the droplets of myself I’ve shared with him.
“Oh, precious,” he says, surveying down, then back up the lines of my body still pinned to the wall by his phantom touch. “You don’t even know the meaning of the word.”
And then he’s gone.
Ihold a lungful of floral air, attempting to soothe myself from the inside while I ease the greenhouse door shut. A bunch of blooms are caught in my fist, boasting vibrant petals of every color but the one that depicts my current mood.
Blue.
Not the crisp, clear blue the ocean goes when it’s not being stirred by wild weather, but the color of the bruised sky right before the last bit of light is pulled from it.
I twist off the lid on an empty jar and ease my fingers open, exposing the stems of my fresh haul and all the raw, weepy blisters vandalizing my palm.
That’s what hauling fifty-six rocks across The Plank will do—make you look diseased.
The old tree that fell across the stagnant pond at the bottom of the estate twelve years ago used to be harmless enough ... until Baze started using it for training and corporal punishment. There are piles of rocks at each end, all bigger than my head, and if I lose my footing while ferrying them to the other side? Well, then comes a plunge in the selkie-infested pond.
I should have just faked a fall the moment blisters started forming and risked a mad dash to the edge, but I was too busy nursing the chip on my shoulder.
That chip has only grown since I climbed Stony Stem and realized my entire stash was cleared out. Now I have to re-collect all thirty-four ingredients to make a fresh batch of Exothryl—most of which are currently out of season.
I’m pissed.
Tomorrow, when I wake feeling like my head’s been crushed between two boulders, I’m going to be even more pissed. Something I’m certain Rhordyn considered before he deserted the scene of his crime, took off for a couple of days, and left me to salvage the scraps of my composure.
I huff out a sigh, pushing the flowers into the jar more forcibly than necessary, causing a few stems to snap.
