Page 48 of A Fate of Ice and Lies (Fated #1)

He tugged on my hand again, but my legs wouldn’t budge. My chest tightened at the way Victoria called to me with a loud shriek.

Just as Nalari barreled into the creature, Elias leaped off her back and tackled Javier and me to the ground.

We rolled down the hill before suddenly stopping.

I gasped in an eager breath, grateful when air passed through my throat to my lungs.

The fall should’ve hurt, but Elias somehow sheltered me from it.

On top of me, he took in his own raspy breath.

Wanting to keep him with me, I gripped his loose-fitting shirt.

He’d lost weight. A lot. The planes on his face were sharper.

His muscles twitched at the light graze of my fingers on his skin, but his frame was thinner.

His eyes, the color of coal, faded to a dark violet before he shook his head, and they returned to that deadly color .

I clung to his shirt, only letting go when he leaped off me to plunge his sword into the hardened shell that made up the creature’s body. He used that leverage to jump onto its enormous head with an agility that startled me. It tried to shake Elias off it, using its spindly fingers to grab him.

I watched, fear raking its fingers through me so that I trembled.

Somehow, Elias managed to hold on and climb the large creature until he drove his sword into its neck.

The creature screeched an awful sound that made my ears hurt. Its trunk-like legs stumbled as it struggled to stay upright. Just as Elias jumped off it, it crashed to the ground, and the other tree-like monster seemed to melt into the woods behind it.

Elias rolled and tumbled down the hill before he stopped. On his hands and knees, he pushed himself off the snowy ground and turned toward Nalari, whose glare could’ve burned right through me.

I whispered his name.

He fisted a hand by his side but didn’t turn. Didn’t acknowledge me.

With my limbs trembling, I helped Javier up, and while he ran back to his sisters, Victoria ran to me.

“Eli,” she shouted. Okay, not to me.

This time, he turned around slowly. He waited patiently for her to reach him, his softening gaze on the little girl. Just as she went to hug his legs, he dropped his knees to the ground and held her to him.

I stood there, remembering how it felt to be in his embrace. Wishing it was me he hugged.

Nalari stepped closer to them, wrapping her tail in front of them as if to protect them. Him. From me. White smoke billowed from her nostrils and her glare became even more menacing.

With a braveness I didn’t feel, I forced my steps forward. I ran my hand through Victoria’s tangled hair, all while staring at the peace in Elias’s expression.

“You came,” she whispered, her voice shaky. “You saved us.”

He hugged her tighter, his eyes closed and brows pinched together.

“I’ll always do what I must to protect you.” His eyes, now back to their beautiful violet color, fluttered open to peer up at me. “And Teddy.”

It would be so easy to run my hands through his hair. To touch his cheek that carried a deep, angry scratch.

“You’re hurt,” I said.

His eyes dulled, and as he released Victoria, he swallowed. “It’s nothing.” He pressed two fingers to his cheek, and the scratch disappeared although blood still stained where it had been. “Are you hurt? Javier?”

I lied when I shook my head, not wanting him to worry more than he already did.

“Right, well.” With a bow of his head, he ran a hand through his dark hair, stopping when he saw the gash on my shoulder. He lifted a hand toward my shoulder but stopped, closing his hand into a fist a few inches from me.

“It’s okay if you don’t want to heal it.” I swallowed past the anguish that collected in my throat. Past the rejection that made my insides flare in pain far greater than the cut on my shoulder.

“Don’t want to heal it?” The pain that swam behind his eyes seemed endless. “All I want is to keep you safe. See you happy and alive.” The tears that brimmed in his eyes made the violet more vibrant. “Don’t ever doubt that.”

I ran the back of my hand under my eye to catch the tears that fell. His pain intensified as he took each drop in.

“Will you heal my shoulder?” I asked quietly.

His hand shook when he raised it to my shoulder, but the warmth of his skin on me was a balm to my soul. His magic buzzed around me, in me, so that the burning of my shoulder sharpened until it faded away.

When I peered back at my shoulder, not only was the gash gone but also the blood.

I bit my bottom lip. “There was another tree-like monster by the trees over there.” I pointed at where I’d seen it. “I could feel it watching me, could feel it wanted to hurt me, but it never attacked.”

“It’s called a lirio,” he said. “They’re another breed of faerie that lives in the forest.”

I shuddered in a breath. “This. . . Leanora, the nyxx and lirio—none of it is a coincidence, is it? They’re all here for me. That’s why she’s been coming to me. She’s angry with me about something. In my last dream, she called me a traitor.” I ran my hands over my chilled arms.

I tried to forget the slow, torturous way she’d killed Elias.

He pulled another blanket from his magical pocket and gave it to me. I tucked it around my shoulders.

“I won’t let her or anyone else harm you.”

“She wants you dead,” I whispered. “I saw how she wants to kill you.” I could still hear the echoes of his screams in my head. “Promise me you’ll be careful, Elias.”

He eyed me curiously and seemed to consider my words.

“I won’t let anyone harm you,” he repeated.

I knew that. Even when he was lost behind those black eyes, he still came to protect me. But what about him? Would he do the same for himself?

Once Ryenne, Donnie, and Nate arrived after the girls had been put to bed, I told them and Javier about my dream journals. About how Elias, Nalari, and the other fae had been reading them and trying to figure out where she was.

While they discussed everything I’d told them, I slipped outside to where Nalari lay in an open field. I gave her a piece of raw meat that she swallowed without chewing.

“Is he all right?” I asked her.

She huffed.

“You know I care for him,” I added for what felt like the hundredth time.

She could hear my thoughts and feel my emotions. She knew exactly how I felt for him.

“I know how he feels for you as well,” she said. “I feel his pain as if it were my own.”

I hissed in a breath through clamped teeth. When she shifted her body away from me, I headed back to my front porch, where Ryenne waited for me.

“Thanks for staying and watching over me although I’m sure you hate me,” I told her.

“I could never hate you when I feel the magnitude of his love for you,” she said.

He loved me?

Or did he believe he loved me because of the mate bond he hadn’t rejected? A part of me wanted him to reject it while I hoped beyond hope he never would .

There was so much wrong with that thought. So much wrong with me. But I couldn’t stop hearing Nalari’s words.

“I could never hate you when I feel the magnitude of his love for you.”

While Elias had acted in my best interest time and time again, I hadn’t done the same for him. I hadn’t fought for him.

The truth was, I wasn’t sure I could. Self-preservation and all that.

Where was his self-preservation, though?

While I hated the idea of him forcing me to reject and forget him, it was a sacrifice he’d made for me. Because he thought I’d be better off without him.

The memory of his face, his expression slashed with pain when I’d rejected him the first time, was etched in the back of my mind.

And despite my disdain toward him, he’d still taken care of me without asking for anything in return. Instead, he seemed to live for the small moments I’d given him. Relish in my smiles or laughter. Soak in any attention I offered him.

And then I’d rejected him a second time.

I sat on the porch swing next to Ryenne, not for the first time wishing Mom were with me. Maybe she’d know what to do, what to tell me. Perhaps she wouldn’t, but I wanted her here all the same.

I rested my head on Ryenne’s shoulder. “I don’t deserve him,” I told my best friend.

“For an intelligent, beautiful, strong woman who, by the way, has the bestest best friend anyone could ever ask for, you sure are stupid sometimes,” Ryenne said.

I snorted.

“You deserve the very best the world has to offer you,” she continued. “And Elias deserves to choose who he thinks he deserves. And if he’s dumb enough to think he’s too good for you, I can teach Hee-haw to headbutt him in the nuts.”

I giggled the way I knew she wanted me to. “I do have the bestest best friend anyone could ever ask for.”

“When are you going to stop moping around and let Elias choose you?” she asked.

I wasn’t sure I was ready for the complications that would follow.

Besides, what if I went to him, and he turned me away?