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“Nice work!” Ozias shouted.
“Stay light on your feet. You’re tearing apart everything in your path,” Calem added.
“This is ridiculous,” Gaige sputtered. “How long do you intend to keep this up?”
“As long as it takes,” I said. I launched toward him and cut around his body, crouching low and jabbing at the back of his knees. He keeled and hit the ground with a loud curse. Flailing wide with one arm, he attempted to smack my shoulder and missed. I was already several feet away, waiting for him to regain his composure. With mud splattered across his cheeks, he glared up at me through his disheveled locks. Shadows began to pool beneath his feet.
And then they swallowed him whole. One moment he was before me, bruised and covered in muck, and the next he was behind me. He brought his fist to my side, nearly connecting with my kidney, and I fell to the earth to avoid being struck. I hit the groundand rolled, swiping his feet out from under him. Cicadas took flight in a flurry as his back cracked against the earth.
He screamed, more in frustration than pain, and shadows immediately wreathed his ankles. Within seconds he was on his feet again. I charged after him as Ozias barked techniques, and Gaige managed to control his tendrils just long enough to sidestep my advance. Rather than swing around, I ran headlong into the shadow realm.
And Gaige followed.
Our surroundings trembled with the addition of his snarling, barely contained tendrils. I spun on my heels to face him, blocking his wild punch and sidestepping as he tumbled to the ground. All around us the erratic strands of darkness spired. Stepping into the shadow realm was like pulling a veil over our world. It was still there, we just looked and moved through it differently. But when Gaige’s shadows added to mine, everything blurred out of focus. Hesitating, I glanced at the space where Ozias and Calem had been not a second before.
And then Gaige knocked me off my feet and pinned me to the ground. The action dislodged my glasses, and they arced through the air until they toppled onto a jagged stone. The splinter of glass was unmistakable, but Gaige’s attention was fully on me. With his legs on either side of my hips, he settled his full weight against my hips. His breath was hot against my skin as he fought to catch his breath, arched over me.
“Got you.” He smirked. Okean’s bronze key slipped free of his collar, dangling from its chain to ghost the base of my throat, light as a kiss. I could hardly think straight. Gaige’s sheer presence, theheatit inspired low in my gut, made me both want to wrap him in my arms and disappear into the safety of the shadows. And yet, we were already in the shadow realm, and I had nowhere to run.
So I looked anywhere else but at him. “The realm. Something’s not right.”
“How so?” He barely glanced at the snarling, black void that had encompassed us, brilliant eyes locked on my face. On my mouth? Surely not.
I forced myself to focus. “Can you see Ozias? Or Calem?”
“No.” He frowned and finally looked up from me.
“That’s not right.” I blew out a breath, painfully aware that his thighs were still pressed against my hips, his weight still bearing me down against the soft earth. I couldn’t remember ever being this close to him, in such a compromising position, no less. It had been literal decades since I’d felt this way, and the rising heat was making me increasingly flustered. Each second that passed was a dangerous game that was both thrilling and terrifying. I wanted him close. I wanted him gone. I wanted to stay exactly as we were, and yet never revisit it again.
Unable to take any more conflicting emotions, I attempted to sit up and put some much-needed distance between us. As I pressed my hand into the soft loam of the earth, it gave way beneath my grasp and I toppled back to the marsh. Gaige, too, was thrown off, and his knees slipped out beneath him, bringing his body flush with mine, hip to hip, chest to chest.
For a moment, neither of us moved. I felt his chest expand against mine, the heat of his shocked breath against my neck. A shiver raced over my skin.
Gods, I didn’t want to care, but I did. Why did I let my emotions get tangled up with him? A tightness invaded my throat, and I swallowed thickly as I kept myself completely still. I would not react. I would not do something that would only hurt me more in the end. Slowly, Gaige braced himself on either side of my body. I hated the way it felt cold when his weight shifted away, but I refused to let it show.
He didn’t pull away entirely, though, and instead studied me with a look I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to unpack. Slowly, he dusted his gloved fingers beneath my eyes, swiping away beads of muddy water.
The twisting pressure in my heart was unbearable, and my world narrowed to that strange look in his eyes.
“Your ears are pink,” he said quietly.
Heat traveled to my cheeks, and I looked away to see that the shadows had disappeared. So wrapped up in the weight of him, I hadn’t noticed the sudden return of the cicadas, or the startled shouting of Calem and Ozias as they blundered about the marsh calling our names. The stench of salt and grime did nothing to chase away the tantalizing scent of cedar and pears clinging to Gaige’s collar. He’d invaded all of my senses, rendered me useless and compromised. And of course, that was the exact moment Calem pushed through the cattails to find us still tangled up together.
He took one look at us and burst out laughing. Hands on his knees, he keeled over as he called to Ozias between sharp, uneven inhales. “I found them.”
Before Gaige could move off me, Ozias was there, too. His expression shifted from worry to embarrassment in one second flat, and he gripped the back of his neck as he stared at the evening sky. “We thought we lost you guys.”
“Nope. We’re fine.” Voice airy and full of nonchalance, Gaige was anything but perturbed. He stood easily, brushing the dirt and grime from his shirt as best he could. I envied the way he unabashedly regarded his friends. Meanwhile, I scrambled to my feet with much less grace.
“Good work.” I made a beeline for the log and snagged my vest, avoiding eye contact with Ozias or Calem as I viciously fought to regain control of myself. “Let’s freshen up and then meet in the tavern for a meal.”
Calem bounded toward me and draped a lazy arm across my shoulders. “Wait, I want to hear all about what happened in the realm. How muchtrainingdid you actually accomplish?”
“I feel rather trained,” Gaige added, a flicker of humor coloring his response. I’d forgotten how much I’d missed his incessant banter.
“Enough.” I didn’t trust myself to say more. I didn’t know what to say. I could deny—and I would—that anything romantic happened between Gaige and me. But his look, the way his breath instantly fell into sync with mine, the feel of warm leather against my cheeks… I didn’t dare unpack it. I brushed Calem’s arm off and called to my shadows. They covered me in an instant, and I relished in the cool kiss of the wisps against my burning skin. “Be at the tavern in thirty minutes.” I stepped into darkness, knowing full well that they could still see me striding across the marsh, but feeling better under its cover nonetheless.
For the first time in the decades of my shared history with Calem and Ozias, they arrived before me at the tavern and were already seated. I hadn’t sensed Gaige when I left my room, but I wasn’t sure if that meant anything anymore. He wasn’t at the table my brothers had picked, and a cursory glance around the establishment revealed nothing, save that we were in for a loud evening.
