Page 128 of Wings of Destruction

I step up to Kieran, a sadistic need to cause pain rising. Damn him. Curse him and everyone like him. I kick out again in the same pattern.

“You’d have better luck if you tried something else,” he explains as he pivots. “As it is, I know your moves.”

“You’re a fast learner, then.”

“And you’re tired and sloppy.”

He slaps my leg away. I’ve got to get the dagger from him. I glance at the blade as we circle each other but Kieran is loose, only moving because he has to.

“You don’t have to go to the mines.” He leans closer. “If you let me help you, really help you, then I’ll see what I can do to keep you from the pits.”

His whispers caress my skin despite the feet separating us. I feel it inside of me, the whirl of my hair, along the line of my neck.

I shiver. Scorch him.

He knows how to get to me. He’s learning those tricks, too. Rather than shuttering up and showing him nothing, he’s seeing between the lines. He’s reading into things he has no business reading.

It’s like he and I are fellow travelers on the same road, Kieran with the uncanny knack to ferret out my secrets and me struggling against his obvious interest.

“A trick. A dirty scorched lie.” I spit at him.

I’d rather die than let him help me because then, I’ll owe him… the thought of owing Kieran is humiliating. I’ll do this my way.

“Not a lie,” he mocks. “An offer. I’m willing to help you.”

I scoff and ask, “For a price?”

“There’s a price to everything in this life so why would this be any different?” He twirls the blade again. “I’m still willing if you are.”

“You hate me.”

He wouldn’t have brought me here if he didn’t.

“Hard to hate a blade. If you cut true when I need you, hatred is irrelevant.”

The pressure in my chest increases. I swing for him, and he kicks out with the dagger, sending me back a step. I ignore the tip of the blade, ignore the curve of his lips, and punch for his ear. The blade is only one of my problems when Kieran puts me straight on my backside.

Pain from my tailbone splinters up to my head. My next inhale brings dust and loss into my lungs but no lifegiving air. He covers me with his body, one hand pushing down on my chest with enough pressure on my throat to let me know he controls my air.

I’m out of time, I’m out of options.

Kieran is the judge handing down his decision and I don’t have to read minds to know exactly what comes next.

Twenty-Seven

Kieran

She’s braced for impact and expecting a punch, the kind of hit you don’t recover from.

I see it in the slight quickening of the pulse beating frantically to escape her skin. Her chest hitches and skips an inhalation and the color leaches from her cheeks. Her eyes squint but only for the briefest second.

The warmth of her skin seeps into mine and I want hinges to grow from my chest, so I can open it and push her inside, to always have her warmth with me.

I’m a madman.

I’m losing the threads of reality and yet the single point of steadiness is the quivering and absolutely furious woman beneath me.

It’s my job to subdue her—to take Morgan by the wrists, her arms wrenched behind her back, and march her past the audience so they can bear witness to her mortification. They watch her and catalogue each move she makes and every one she doesn’t.