Makes her look like a warrior.
I didn’t tell her that I cut it shorter on one side because I thought it would frame the crystal roses growing like floral ghosts from that mark on her shoulder, mutated since I saw it last. Risen in places. Stretched farther across her chest and up the side of her neck. I certainly didn’t tell her I counted the blooms on the beach before I resecured her necklace—twelve.Most the size of a pip, ranging to a cherry, and two the size of a mandarin.
Breathtaking. And so fucking haunting.
I doubt she’s aware of her capabilities. That she has the power to wield her own light like the elders of her race—the ones who spilled from Mount Ether, and have since been hunted.
Slain.
Whether she’s aware of it or not, her light’s been seeping through the cracks in times of fear—similar to the raw emotion she must have felt when she hid herself from the Vruks all those years ago.
Those blooms tell me too much.
Too little.
They tell me the words she’s biting back. The ones that keep choking her breath. The four severed nubs and the bruises on the back of her arm tell me she’s got harmful tendencies she may or may not try to fall back upon.
Key word beingtry.
Too much.
Too little.
Her gaze flicks up, catching mine, a blush creeping over her cheeks that brings much needed color to her drawn complexion. She tucks the shorter side of her hair behind her ear and looks away, like she’s afraid I’ll see past her shields.
Little does she know, I’m already beneath them.
“What was that place I found earlier?” she asks, collecting her lopped hair and piling it behind the log she’s seated on.
I clear my throat, reaching forward to stir the stew, hoping it smells alright. The moment she walked out that door, every sprig of herbs I’d stuffed into the pot lost their punch. I hope she never learns how bland the world really is.
If she does, I’ve failed her again.
“The Great Purge turned a large chunk of the continent to glass, but I’m beginning to wonder if the blast released a pocket of gas that has since blown out and forged that cavern. There was a well of illuminated water at its base that looked and smelled the same as the water in the bowl at Mount Ether. I saw a Vruk clawing out of the pool, like it had just been birthed.”
Her eyes go wide like saucers. “So that cave is—”
“Constantly spawning Vruks, yes.”
A small pause slips by. “And there was nobody down there …” she pulls her bottom lip between her teeth and nibbles on it, “singing?”
“In the cavern?” I frown. “No. Why would there be?”
“Ignore me,” she blurts, eyes churning with guarded thoughts. I’m about to press her on it when she says, “We need to go back and destroy it.”
She’s sitting straighter, like she wants to leap up and dart there right now. I’d love to get further inside that head and see exactly what she’s thinking we could even do. Stuff the thing with logs? The Vruks would slash through them in a heartbeat.
“There’s no point,” I rumble, more concerned about the fact that there might be more openingselsewhere—perhaps where there aren’t any moisture-suckling shadows to stem the flow. “It appears nothing is making it past the nest of Irilak.”
“Not true. I saw a Vruk outside the walls of Parith.”
I raise a brow. “Did you now?”
She nods. “It chased me. What if it came from there?”
Tilting my head to the side, I ask, “Did it look malnourished?”
“It was definitelyhungry,” she says, and a shadow slips over her eyes as she shivers, then shakes her head. “But no, not malnourished. It looked … mighty. A beast in its prime. I didn’t know they could get that big.”
