AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Myron’s soft, dark chuckle is as unexpected as it is bone-chilling—and beautiful, but I don’t acknowledge that. Not when he just shoved my shoulder back into its socket without a warning.
As I finally open my eyes, his all-black ones are already waiting for mine, dancing with amusement and a challenge I don’t fully understand.
“Try something else, and maybe you’ll land a hit.”
It takes me a moment to understand he means names, but my head is clearing up as is the pain in my shoulder as he seems to be sending his power into it.
“Bastard?” I try instead of focusing on the way his grip becomes lighter, almost tender against my arm.
“Not quite there yet.” He crooks a brow, encouraging me to continue.
“Wretched ass?” I strain my mind for something more original to call him but find nothing as his features flick back into their bird form. “Monster. Beast.” The words are out before I can bite my tongue, and judging by the way he pulls back an inch, I have landed that hit, even when he does his best not to let me see it.
“Perhaps I should leave.” He starts pulling his hand away, but I catch it with my bad one, wincing as my fingers wrap around his taloned ones.
Myron’s gaze locks on mine, blatant surprise lightening the darkness for a heartbeat, and much as his bird features scare me, if I let him go now, I might never get a single answer. I might not get all healed either, but that doesn’t seem as existential right now as making sure he stays to answer all those questions piling up inside my head now that the pulsing ache is retreating to the background.
I can see he’s embarrassed about how hideous he is with his beak and those feathers, but he doesn’t make them disappear the way he usually does, almost as if he needs them there to protect himself—a mask that will keep me away, will keep anyone away.
I don’t know why it matters or why I have the courage to say what I say. Maybe it is the knowledge that he made an entire host of Crow Fairies flee so he could take me to safety—because that’s what he did. He doesn’t want me to die, and he doesn’t want me to know that there’s a Myron deep down who might not be the monster he believes he is.
“Perhaps this isn’t about those beaks and feathers and talons,” I say, clutching his fingers as tightly as my aching hand allows. “Perhaps it’s about the fact that there is a part of you who is willing to face the wrath of an entire people in order to save me.”
The beak and feathers melt away, and for a heartbeat, he holds my gaze, chest heaving as if he hasn’t taken a breath in a million years. That tingling energy runs down my spine again, but before I can wonder what it is, Myron lowers his gaze to examine my wrist.
“What happened here?” He slides his hand out of mine, running one careful fingertip along my mangled wrist an inch above the tattoo where my joints are stiff and unyielding. The pain hasn’t receded here as if it were impenetrable by his power.
I shake my head. “It doesn’t matter.”
But that only seems to bring back the fury from when he picked me up in the forest. His breath shudders as he blows it out once, twice. “Even if things don’t matter to you, you’re a Crow bride now, and they matter to me. If someone hurts you, they’ll need to stand trial before me.”
I don’t know what it is about his words that touches a long-forgotten part of me deep inside of me, but a strange warmth spreads through my belly, all the way to my chest as his eyes meet mine again.
“Who hurt you, Ayna?”
Because I don’t even remember who destroyed my hand—I’ve locked all those memories deep in my memories so I’ll never see Ludelle’s agonized face again when he realized we were doomed—I shake my head. “It’s an old injury from when I was captured by the Tavrasian soldiers.”
“From the Wild Ray.”
How he knows about the ship, I don’t know. Perhaps the same way he knows about my father, so I simply nod, hoping he won’t dig any deeper.
“They never cared to set it in prison, so it healed crooked.”
The way his free hand balls into a fist is the only sign of how angry that idea makes him. He is the one to shake his head now, and for a moment, I believe he’s not going to continue the conversation, but he gently sets my hand beside my hip on the sheets and gets to his feet, the muscles in his chest and stomach rippling with the motion. “I’m sorry.”
Silence stretches between us as he stares out the window, and the need to say something almost overwhelms me, but so does the way the pain is leaving my body even now when he’s no longer touching me.
“You just saved my life… and healed my injuries.” Even with everything he’s done, I can’t deny that, without him, I’d be crows’ feed by now.
“After forcing you into this marriage neither of us wants.” His laugh is bitter, and I’m glad he’s facing away, or he’d find the same bitterness in my own features.
“So, why do it?” I’m not sure I’m asking about the marrying or the saving, and it doesn’t matter as he whips his head around, locking his gaze on mine with an intensity that makes everything tighten in my stomach
“Because if I don’t, I’ll lose my throne.”
I push myself up, muscles shaking from exhaustion even when the pain has turned into a mild soreness reminding me of a heavy workout rather than having survived a Crow attack. “If you don’t save me, you’ll lose your throne?”
He stares right into my eyes, black arrows so piercing I sense something come to life deep down inside of me.
