Page 146 of Winter Gods & Serpents

“I’m not a vase, Kilian.”

His lips twitched in a smile. “No, you’re a stunning witty murderous vase.” For a split moment his eyes darted down to my lips and I sucked on a breath. It chanted a storm inside me, but he halted and moved away letting me go. Not a second later he took note of my feet and rubbed his face groaning loudly. “Ridiculous woman, how many times do I have to tell you to wear shoes.”

I blinked wildly at his unusual loudly expressed frustration and then down my frozen bare feet. Within unnoticeable moments he was holding me up in his arms. A yelp escaped me at the sudden action. “Put me down, you burly fool, let me go.”

I wiggled and wiggled, but he only gripped me tighter. “Your feet are half frozen, and as I said I do not enjoy your self-destructing ways.”

I looked down, my feet almost turning grey, the colour of a corpse. I tried to move them to life, but they were completely numb.

The sun slowly started rising and castle corridors were buzzing with servants, who stopped astounded at us passing through.

I buried my head in his chest from the severe embarrassment. “Let me go, I swear to the heavens,” I threatened in a muffled murmur drowned over his flesh.

“If I put you down on the floor now and you cannot stand without tumbling, I will carry you over my shoulder for the rest of our stay in here, everywhere we go. And that, princess, is a promise,” he warned.

I slapped his shoulder repeatedly and when he did not budge. I pinched him hard enough that he groaned in pain, finally letting me down. The moment my feet touched the ground they turned to mush and aching pins and needles that almost sent me landing face down on the floor before Kilian hoisted me up and over his shoulder, like a sack of flour.

“Convinced, you vixen?” he asked, slapping my bottom. “Or shall I put you down so you can crawl there? I’d love to see you on your knees and especially crawl to me but not of that sort, and you would be wearing less than a nightgown.”

I felt a flush creep up my ears and cheeks. It was the first time he’d been so direct with me. I hit his shoulder a couple of times in sign of protest, not knowing what to say or do with myself. He’d silenced me dry.

Probably noting that realization himself, he chuckled, a dark warm sound, his whole body shook in amusement. “If I had known it only took a bit of manhandling to get you to abide, I would’ve tried it sooner.”

It wasn’t the manhandling.

I wiggled and slapped his back several more times. “That’s how you want me, tamed like a mare?”

“Many other ways too, but not tamed, I like you feisty. It appears I have a thing for vixens. And you don’t have to be like this all the time woman, rest once in a while, pull those claws back, not everyone giving you a hug has a dagger pointed on your back.”

“You first, but you might not be alive to see my point.”

He shook in laugher and I swear no man had ever made me flutter and shiver like he had done that moment.

“Prepare the bath, Penelope, as hot as you can get it,” he ordered my gobsmacked little red head when we entered my chambers.

“Oh my, are you to bathe me too?” I asked in a snide tone, while he lowered and sat me at the edge of my bed.

Pen still stared aghast between the two of us before running towards the bathing chambers.

He rolled his sleeves and lowered kneeling in front of me. “Just say the words, princess.”

My eyes rolled back at his reply. “I quite enjoy this, you on your knees.”

“I’d be better between yours.” I hit him with all my fury, but he only shook in more amusement. How dare he tease me like that? “Get a good look, I haven’t done much kneeling in my lifetime,” he said, tapping a hand over his left knee. “Bad knee, tripped over a cliff when I chased Mal down after he ran from home. Couldn’t walk for three months, now it sends a sharp pain up to my spine and creaks every time I kneel, this cold doesn’t help it either.”

I didn’t know why I found it funny to see him in the human light, but I held my smile in, he looked serious about it.

He prodded my feet before rubbing his palms over them. “Do you have any feel?”

I shook my head. They no longer felt mine, only hot and foreign but then right at this moment everything felt hot and foreign. My reacting body, the climbing smile, the organ that should be remaining silent at the moment, many called a heart. My skin crawled like worms, and then sigh after sigh of relief left me as I began wiggling my toes freely at the touch of his magic.

“Why did you have to chase Mal down? Why did he run from home?”

He shifted onto his right leg, resting my foot on his shoulder running more magic over my skin. “Mal is a gifted Aura, but Empaths have the hardest training. You often fear and doubt your own emotion, begin to think that what you feel is false or compromised. Sometimes one shuts their magic completely because at times one would become unaware and channel emotion, foreign emotions, other’s. Empaths are taught all of them from start, like the alphabet, then…practice it.” He interrupted himself to examine my attention. “They are not like most Aura, the training is done on other people. One of the most salvaged emotion an Eldritch soldier learns to weaponize is pain and fear, but to know to inflict it in a weaponizable level you have to know the pain to its fullest.”

“W-what?” I asked, aghast.

“Eldritch soldiers would be strapped to bounds and be taught pain, shown fear. I recon you might be able to connect how. My brother is not just another Empath, he is…rather gifted and was taught the hardest. To him that was not the worst part…it was the practice, so he ran. Mal would rather eat mud for a lifetime than harm a fly. Funny enough he leads perhaps the most dangerous unit in the whole of Numengarth. I had to find him first, otherwise the next time he would be in bounds would not be to train him.”