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His eyebrows snapped down. “You were imprisoned as well? By what?”
“What do you think?” I bared my teeth. “The fire! It’s always the fire. I—” Tears clogged my throat as Syn suddenly appeared from the grasslands, the adolescent lynx once again chasing after me.
She was the one constant.
The only creature I could rely on.
She came straight to my side and nudged my thigh with her nose, making me flinch at the stinging burn on my upper leg. My sunburst mark had bled again when Darro touched me with his shadows. The fire holding me captive had screeched in my ears not to let him touch me. Not to let him walk in my mind. Not to let him blacken my heart.
I’d fought against it.
I’d embraced Darro’s touch.
I’d fought to go to him.
But the fire had turned demonic.
It’d singed me.
Blinded me with its wrathful light.
And when I’d opened my eyes...Darro was gone.
That pain.
That loneliness.
That agony.
It all crested and added to the loneliness of before. Of walking a miserable existence. Of fighting to keep going when I had nothing to keep going for.
It was too much.
All of this was too much.
For all his promises that we knew each other. For all his belief of a future where we remained side by side, nothing could change the truth.
I was no longer his.
I was no longer my own.
Everything I’d hoped for had been stolen and...
I can’t do this anymore.
Spinning around, I broke into another run, my bare feet crushing grass, waking a few bees who’d chosen pink and purple wildflowers as their beds for the night.
The bees buzzed after me, humming around my head as I forced all my remaining strength into my legs and ran as fast as I could. My hair whipped around me. Bees swarmed like a cape behind me. And paws ran swiftly through the tall grass, shadowing my every step.
I looked at Syn, at her sweet golden spots and tiny velvet antlers.
She’d been the only one to sense something was wrong.
She’d growled and tried to come to me while the fire wrapped its arms tight to trap me. She’d snapped at the heat ribbons feeding from the flames, invisible but oh-so powerful.
I’d fought with everything I had to get free as Solin promised me to Aktor.
I’d cursed and shouted as my bloody ash-tattoo had been pressed against Aktor’s identical, just as fresh mark, smearing our lifeforce together, leaving me to the mercy of the searing, slicing blood bind.
I gasped on another sob.
I felt the bind, even now.
Felt the way the excruciating promise closed its hot, savage claws around my heart. How it sank white-hot teeth into the pathetically pumping thing—a pitiful thing that’d been falling for another—forcing it to now sync to the beat of my enemy.
I hadn’t been able to breathe then, either.
I hadn’t drawn a proper breath since Darro’s shadows touched my blistering light. My power had spat and sizzled over my skin, turning me into an earth-bound sun. His shades had extinguished my glow so quickly, so potently, that I’d fallen backward into a memory.
My first real memory—a memory that was so vivid and so true, I could still taste yesterday’s tears.
Shadows chased his heels as we walked, skimming along the ground. His dark, endless eyes ringed with brightest silver as if a full moon hid behind them. An eclipse in his spirit just waiting to break free and shine.
His fingers linked with mine; clouds churned with warning.
He dragged me close for the swiftest kiss; thunder boomed with threats.
We looked at the sky, united against the constant hostilities forcing us to keep apart, both too besotted and brave to care.
We were different.
We knew that.
Our bare flesh spoke that truth with our dissimilar parts, but it was our beginnings that made us falter. We might be one half of a whole and the balance to this sudden existence, but we weren’t the same.
We were opposites.
We dropped our touch.
We stopped our kiss.
Darro fell back into walking.
I didn’t want to walk anymore.
I wanted to know.
To live.
To be.
I spread my hands at the emptiness around us. The silence that stalked us. The hollowness around every bend. “This place is devoid of anything.”
He sighed. “It is forsaken.”
I didn’t know how much longer we would survive.
I was hungry, afraid, and excruciatingly thirsty...
I wanted rain.
I wanted lakes and streams and rivers.
I wanted things I’d never known.
The preposterousness of our existence suddenly crushed me, and I kneeled in the dirt.
Grief and heartbreak and misery.
It welled within me. It bubbled and toiled, crested and waved.
And when that first tear welled from my desperate, starving form, I was frightened.
“Runa...” Darro kneeled beside me. His hands cradled my cheeks with all the forbidden love he had for me. “You’re crying.”
Another tear breached my eyelashes, rolling slowly down my cheek.
This one he didn’t try to catch, and I licked at the salt as it flowed past my lips.
