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Chapter24
Ember
Sunlight streaks through the trees, illuminating our path as it sprawls before us. The mossy ground is covered in various topiary, the trees around us so thick we can barely manage to move through them.
Rafferty hasn’t spoken a word to me since we left the guards behind. I’d heard them crying out, screaming, begging Joaquin to stop as he did what Rafferty ordered—why? I still have no idea, and I haven’t really had the confidence to ask.
So I follow, silently, waiting for him to confide in me—if he ever will.
It was either this or your life.He’d looked so tortured, his words so broken as he’d spoken them; I could all but feel the weight of his regret pushing down on my shoulders, and yet he’d done it.
To save me.
Me.
Why?
“Why did you do it?”
Rafferty stops in his tracks but doesn’t face me. “I told you.”
“You said it was either ‘this’ or my life. What did you do?”
He takes a deep breath and turns toward me. The gasp leaves my lips before I can stop it. My eyes instantly meet his own—a gaze that is much darker now, rimmed with black, the golden color dimmed.
“Rafferty.”
“It was either them or you,” he snaps. “Or would you rather I let him take you back to Taranus? Back to a future of being forced into marriage, of being raped?”
“No. I—”
“You what?” he snarls the last word, and I take a step back, honestly not sure what the hell to expect. This change in him is so drastic—and then I remember the day in the cell. When he’d nearly lost it.
“The dark magic. That’s what’s doing this to you, isn’t it?”
He glares at me, and a muscle in his stubbled jaw twitches. “Does it matter?”
“Yes. It does.” Taking a step toward him, I place a hand on his arm. “Do you need to let some of your blood out?”
“Let some of my blood out,” he repeats the words, carefully, slowly.
“Yes.”
“Why the hell would I do that?”
“Because you’re not acting like you.”
“You don’t even know me,” he replies. “Therefore, what gives you the right to decide what I should be acting like?”
“Rafferty.”
“You needed to be saved. I saved you. I’m not seeing the problem.” He turns around.
“If it wasn’t that much of a problem, why didn’t you use that nifty ability to stop Taranus before he cut your wings off?”
Rafferty explodes on me, whipping around with such force I jump back. My feet slip out from under me, and I hit the ground with a heavy thud. Pain radiates up my spine from what is potentially a cracked tailbone.Fun.
But that pain goes mute when he bears down on me, golden gaze even darker now. “You know not of what you speak, woman,” he snarls.
