Page 2 of Flameborne: Chosen (Emberquell Academy #1)

Only one eye and his jawline visible beyond the tree.

Jaw stubbled as if he hadn’t shaved today.

Hair messy because he’d been running his hands through it—which meant he was tense.

I was about to step forward, my lips forming his name, when, eyes bright and hungry, I realized he stared down as he leaned, one hand braced high against the trunk of a tree, the other… The other touching… something.

Something small. Something feminine. Something that giggled and whispered back.

Then he smiled and I blinked.

I gave him that smile. Now he offered it to someone else?

Heart pounding in my ears, shivering with cold and pain, certain this must be a dream, I stared at my love, sunny and strong, in full uniform, the dragonhide leather hugging the lines of his body so that my eyes wanted to follow them.

It had only been a few weeks, but even standing in the shadows of the wood, Ruin seemed larger than I remembered.

The darkness of the cured dragonhide set off the gold of his hair and the sparkle in his eyes… The light that winked out the moment my head grew dizzy and I swayed and his gaze snapped up to land on me. In that blink his expression darkened from heady delight to furious horror.

I was locked in, helpless to turn away as he leaned down and murmured in the soft, reassuring tone he’d once reserved for me.

The blood drained from my heart, through my body, out the soles of my feet as I watched him gather her, carefully turning her, but kept her facing him, urging her toward the launch hollow and the sunlight as he whispered and smiled and touched.

And then, when she seemed reluctant to do as he’d instructed, he kissed her.

My skin turned brittle. My heart raced like a bird’s.

His eyes never left mine.

Then she was gone, slipping through the trees towards the growing sunlight. While Ruin descended on me .

Ruin.

My Ruin.

“Ruin?” The word cracked in my throat.

With one backward glance to make sure she’d gone, he hurried towards me.

My heart lightened as he strode through the trees, closing the space between us so quickly with those long legs.

Almost weeping with relief, I opened my arms and tipped up my head, preparing for a kiss—but Ruin barely broke stride when he reached me. He clasped my hand and jerked me deeper into the trees.

“Bren, what the fuck are you doing here?” he hissed, his face a tense mask, eyes darting left and right as I stumbled in his wake, gritting my teeth against the pain.

“I-I came to say goodbye. You said you might be gone for—”

“Quiet. Not here.”

Swallowing nausea, pushing away the images now burned into my memory of him with that woman in his arms, I trotted, taking two steps to his one, my body clenching with pain at every footfall.

I tried to keep my expression clear, tried to find the words to ask questions I didn’t want answered.

But Ruin didn’t look at me as he dragged me away, further from the light, and the hollow, and the dragons—though he looked over his shoulder every few steps, his brows drawing down harder each time.

But he kept my hand in his until we were deep into the shadows under the trees. Then he turned on me, releasing my hand as if it burned him.

“Bren, what are you doing here?”

I wished I hadn’t come. I stammered and gulped, trying to find the words that would smooth the creases from his brow.

“Y-you said this was goodbye. I thought… I w-wanted to—Ruin, I needed to see you!” Even I heard the pathetic ring in those words, my voice trailing up at the end in a plaintive, childlike plea.

“How did you get here? Did your mother drive you?” Ruin’s tone was dark. He looked over his shoulder, then muttered under his breath and grabbed my hand again, pulling me further into the trees.

“No, I… I walked—”

He pulled up sharply and turned on me, his eyes narrowed and lip curled back from his teeth. “You walked? That must have taken all day—”

“All n-night,” I admitted, my teeth chattering. Why was I so cold? “But, Ruin… aren’t you… didn’t you—”

He stomped on, then caught himself once more and whirled on me, his face twisted and his beautiful eyes afire. “I can’t believe you came! After everything! Do you have no self-respect?”

I felt the blood drain from my cheeks. My tongue suddenly too thick for my mouth. “Why… why would I n-need that? ”

Ruin cursed again and stepped right up to my toes, glaring down at me, gesturing wildly as he spoke. “Don’t you think if I wanted to see you I would have invited you?”

The bricks around my tender heart crumbled.

Those walls I’d fought so hard to erect, to protect, to sustain me, fell away like dust. The events of weeks earlier, the pain, the shock and shame in my father’s eyes, the sound of my mother weeping, and Ruin…

The hole he’d left in my soul when he never returned.

“I didn’t ask you to come—don’t you get it, Bren? I don’t want you here!”

The veil that had shrouded my eyes for the past month suddenly tore away, and I could see.

Ruin’s revolted stare. The contempt in those beautiful eyes. The way his chest rose and fell in very real rage.

Rage against me.

I took a step back, brought my hands up to my chest to cover the gaping wound he’d left there.

How had I not understood that he’d discarded me?

Why had I convinced myself that my parents were wrong?

Why hadn’t I seen the truth?

I glanced furtively left and right, willing my salvation to appear between the trees. But there was nothing. No one. Just a furious Ruin. The man I had thought loved me. Of whom I’d been so proud. So certain he was the hero, charging into my life to save me.

Oh, how wrong I had been.

We stared at each other in silence as my heart slowly tore in two, my mind shrieking, conjuring the tingling pleasure of his touch. The salty musk of his taste. The sweet, soul-filling sigh of his kiss.

Then he raked a hand through his hair and swore and the moment’s respite shattered.

I flinched.

What the hell was I doing here? How had I ever believed he would wish me anything but gone?

Though shadows had haunted my mind ever since that dreadful day, I’d never wished myself dead until that moment. Not until I looked into Ruin’s eyes and saw the loathing there. The pinch of disgust wrinkling his nose.

I’d never before asked for God’s hand against me. Never pleaded for the earth to open and swallow me up. But I did then.

As I stood in the half-light of the forest shadows, the nearby launch hollow echoing with the groans and snorts of the dragonfuries, and the hum of male voices, and I saw the man I had loved for three years despise me, I wished for death.

Ruin shook his head, but he turned to look over his shoulder again, back towards the hollow. Towards her .

He swore again, then clawed his fingers through his thick, tousled hair before meeting my now tear-blurred eyes.

“You need to leave.”

I tried to nod, but nothing wanted to move.

“Get the fuck out of here and never come back, Bren. Do you hear me?”

“Y-you said…” I swallowed the painful lump in my throat. It went down slowly, clawing at my flesh as it descended. “You s-said you wanted to m-marry me—”

“Are you fucking with me? You can’t honestly believe—”

“Y-you said—”

“And you opened your legs, just like I wanted. Now, open your eyes, Bren. There’s nothing here for you. No one.”

“But you said you loved me—”

“You’re a fucking lowborn farm girl and I’m a Furyknight.” His face turned red, the veins on his forehead popping as he grabbed my shoulders and shook me. “Go home and hang yourself in the barn for all I care, just don’t ever come back here!”

“You bastard!” The words hissed through my clenched teeth without my permission, but it broke the spell I’d been under.

“Better than being a little whore.” Then Ruin’s eyes widened and he laughed. My jaw went slack and my insides shriveled as he chuckled, “No, wait. You’ve been fucking Ruined . ”

He howled as my heart tore. Heedless of anything but the churning pain he’d caused, I lashed out, slapping his face so hard the crack echoed through the trees.

He grunted and froze. No longer laughing, he glared at me, his face turning red again.

“You little bitch!”

Fast as a whip-crack his hands shot straight for my throat. I screamed and shrank, tried to turn, stumbled one step, and fell on my ass in the dirt. My stomach sparkled with pain and my teeth closed on my tongue. With a small cry, I looked up at him, pleading. I only needed—

“Go!” Ruin roared. His beautiful, full lips peeled back from his teeth and his hands balled to fists at his sides as he towered over me.

My eyes widened as I looked at those fists, shaking.

I knew under those leathers his forearms popped with veins, the lines I’d so admired as a testament to his strength—and my pleasure—now heralds of my death.

Ruin could snap me in two and leave me here and no one would be the wiser. I was too weak to stop him.

“I said, GO!”

I panicked, scrambling off the forest floor and pushing myself into a stumbling run as his voice echoed in the trees behind me.

If he took hold of me here in the dark, with the noise of the crowd and the dragons below …

If he chose, he could crush my body as easily as his contempt crushed my heart.

Those hands, so much larger than mine—big enough to hold my head like a fruit.

Those arms and thighs, strengthened and trained by hours on dragonback, that had lifted and carried me against that broad chest—hot steel under warm, soft skin…

But the steel that had once been my protection now turned against me as a weapon.

I ran faster.

“Get the hell out of here and don’t come back!” he snarled, his feet pounding on the dirt behind me. “Nobody wants you here. Get the fuck out!”

I tripped on a tree root, arms pinwheeling, sobbing as my body screamed in pain, but I caught my weight on my fingertips and ran on.

“Keep running!” he snarled from behind me, his footsteps finally slowing. “Don’t ever show your face near me again. Do you hear me, Bren?” He fell further and further behind, his voice echoing in the trees around me, haunting me.

“I don’t want you, Bren. I don’t want you. I don’t love you. And I never did!”