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Setting the wooden canteen carefully against the trunk of a pine, I began to rub my hands together, feeling the warmth of flames erupting against my fingertips.
Zen stood back as I crouched down to set the pile on fire. I caught the gleam of appreciation in his eyes before he could hide it and grinned at him. “I’ve been working on my magic in my spare time,” I admitted. “You caught me one day in the greenhouse.”
“Right. When you were hiding who you were,” he said coldly, flopping down and snatching the water from where I’d put it.
I frowned and shook my head. “No, I wasn’t hiding it. I was trying to remember—”
“Honestly,Mirielle, I don’t really want to talk about it, okay? There’s nothing you can say at this point that will make me comfortable around you. I don’t trust you, and I never will again. Can we just leave it at that?”
Every word was a knife in my heart, but I swallowed my pleas, pressing my lips together before I could release a sob of frustration.
“Okay,” I managed to breathe.
“Good. Let’s just get through this awful night and forget we ever met each other.”
Tears pooled in my eyes, and I turned my head away from the flames before they could slip down my cheeks.
“If that’s what you want, Alpha.”
“That’s what I want,Mirielle.”
I hated the way he was saying my name. It was worse than when he was calling me Grendel.
Chapter5
Zen
Pain. So much pain from every single angle.
My body hurt in the aftermath of whatever spell Agnan had used on me. My bones ached as if my limbs were still calling out to shift, but the spell forbidding them was causing some ongoing battle inside me.
My head ached from dehydration and hunger, the hours of walking in the hot sun in the hoodie and too-tight runners wearing heavier on me with each passing minute. I eventually caved and took off the sweatshirt, only to be attacked by the insects swirling through the Bellewoods, who took my flesh as an open invitation to feast. It quickly forced me to put the hoodie back on again. The magic net I had used to fend them off didn’t seem to be sticking, my aggravation dimming my abilities some. Or else Agnan’s attack had done more to me than I expected.
But most of all, my chest was in agony. Every time I stole a look at Mirielle, my heart felt like it was being squeezed out and wrung to dry until there was nothing left but bitterness.
How could she have done this to me? How could I have let her?
Those same two questions ran the gauntlet through my mind over and over as we hiked through my woods, the answers never coming any closer as we moved, just like the castle remained too far away.
I wished I’d ignored her and called for a ride in Catalonia when I’d had the chance, but secretly, I had also wanted the time alone with Mirielle, as if we might make sense of what had gone so terribly wrong.
Yet every time she opened her mouth to speak, it just made me more defiant, angrier. I couldn’t listen to her. I didn’t want to listen, lest she woo me back into the submission of her charms again. I couldn’t fall for it.
At some point, she was with Agnan, even if he did take her memories away after. She’d been a part of the Order of Souls, and therefore, was my enemy. I let my enemy into my house when I swore to the kingdom that I would never let anything like that ever happen again.
That was unforgivable—for both of us.
The fire crackled, and I listened closely for the night sounds, my senses on high alert for the scavengers that might venture toward the fire, but they had no real reason to come. There was a thin veil of protection between us now, enacted by Mirielle. We had no food, much as we needed it. If I’d been able to shift, I would have gone to hunt us something to eat, a sentiment I shared with Mirielle.
“I’m hungry, too, Alpha,” she muttered, her irritation with me mounting.
I rolled my eyes. “You’re the botanist. Go find us something to eat.”
Her blue eyes widened. “Now? In the dark?”
“No one told you to sit around when I was collecting water. You could have done it then.”
“It’s dark now, Ze—Alpha. There’s barely any moon, and the little that there is can’t be seen because of the trees.”
