Page 15 of Grim and Oro (Lightlark)

My shadows continue, and I am jealous of them for the first time in my long life. I wish my fingers were the ones stroking down her temple. Running through her hair. Being any balm at all.

I wish she would look at me.

All at once, she awakens, as if she heard me.

I could turn invisible, but I don’t. I want her to see me.

She finds me immediately, eyes blinking rapidly, still blurry with sleep, and she stifles a scream. I feel everything . Her emotions are unguarded. I feel the full depths of her initial terror, then relief, and ... something else.

“What are you—”

“I’m making sure you don’t bleed out in your sleep.”

She raises a brow. “I’m fine.” Her blood-soaked bandages tell a different story. “You can leave.”

Her emotions say she doesn’t want me to.

Interesting.

I lean back into the chair, making myself comfortable, relishing in the outrage I see growing in her expression.

She really is adorable when she hates me.

Her green eyes are narrowed. Her hands are fisting her sheets.

A thought runs through me, imagining her fisting her sheets for a very different reason, and I have to dig my fingers into my own palms to keep myself from imagining more.

Because of course I’ve imagined her. Several times. Under me, over me, next to me, gasping into my ear, clenching around me.

I speak to get myself out of my filthy thoughts. “Your death would be most inconvenient. I’ll stay a little longer.”

Her outrage almost makes my lips twitch into a smile. “Inconvenient?”

“Inconvenient,” I repeat. “You are an investment.”

It’s true. I’ve spent decades looking for this sword. Every moment I spend with her is for one outcome. I need to remember that.

She doesn’t seem to appreciate that word either. “An investment?”

“My time is valuable. I have a lot to do. Choosing to work with you ... fitting you into my plan. You are an investment. You’re no good to me dead.”

And worse to me alive, if I’m being honest with myself.

She glares at me, and she wouldn’t do it so much if she knew it was one of my favorite expressions of hers.

She huffs and tucks herself back into her sheets. She shifts back and forth. She’s in pain. I can feel it.

I can also feel something else. Something that makes it almost painful for me to be sitting here, so far away from her.

Finally, she sits upright, as if she also can’t take it anymore. As if she could be feeling even a fraction of the torture that I am.

“I can’t sleep,” she says.

“Clearly.” I consider this situation. Both of us here, in her lands. “I suppose I could have allowed you to stay at my palace. Let you heal there.”

I shouldn’t have made her leave. I have a fierce desire to keep her where I can see her, where I can make sure she’s safe.

For the sword, of course.

Her rush of distaste surprises me. “I hate your palace,” she says.

Does she? “Why?”

“Besides the fact that you live there?” That almost makes me smile. No one else would dare speak to me that way. Only this cursed hearteater would have the gall. “There’s no color. It’s so ... dark. I could never live in a place like that.”

Color. Huh. I’ve never noticed. Perhaps that’s why she seems so out of place. This shining, bright spring of life in my dark castle.

Her words hurt me more than they should.

“You know,” she says, already moving on, oblivious to my own thoughts, “my guardians closed my window because of you.”

I raise a questioning brow at her, even though I’m very much aware. A flare of anger ignites in my chest at the memory. That guardian of hers should thank the stars every day that I still haven’t killed her.

“There was ... a loose pane. You saw it when we dueled. It was the only way I could sneak out. I had to tell them about it, to explain my ankle injury.”

I can feel the pain, separate from her wound. It’s clear the window meant a lot to her.

“Can’t you use your portaling device to go outside?” I absolutely refuse to call it a starstick .

She’s suddenly ashamed. Shy. Her green eyes leave mine and find the floor. I have the urge to turn her chin up, to force her to look at me, but I stay very still. “I—I’m awful at traveling short distances with it. And I can only reliably go places I’ve been before.”

Ah. She hasn’t mastered its use.

I’m mentally transported to centuries before, when I had the same issue. When I had also been trapped in a room, desperate for a way out of it.

No ... this hearteater and I are not as different as I previously thought.

I remember, for a crushing moment, the helplessness I had felt in my room before discovering my flair. The loneliness.

She is the same, I realize.

“I’m sorry,” I say, the words spilling out of me before I can think about how long it’s been I’ve uttered them. “About the window.” I really should have killed her guardian , I think. Before she could seal it. Before she could hurt her.

She asks me something that pulls me back into the present. “If you created my device, then how did it get to Wildling?”

“I’m not entirely sure,” I say, and it’s the truth. Though, it’s not the full truth. That, she can’t know.

Panic.

“Did you ... did you know my mother?”

I frown. “No. I haven’t met another Wildling since the curses.”

Relief.

We watch each other. I wait to feel another emotion, to get another clue to what’s happening inside of her mind, but all she does is watch me back, with the same fascination.

What could she find so fascinating about me?

No one has held my gaze for this long before. No one has dared. I can feel her emotions shifting. She’s starting to become all too conscious of our positions. Her, in bed, in barely any clothing. Me, sitting here, watching her, from just a few feet away.

“Do you always play with your hair when you’re uncomfortable?” I ask.

She immediately puts her hands in her lap, and it almost makes me smile. “No.”

“Liar. I’ve watched you do it on no less than three occasions.”

It’s true. I don’t know if I’ve even been aware of how much I’ve noticed.

Her pretty eyes narrow at me. I feel special, being the object of her study, even if it’s in distaste. Without breaking my gaze, she crawls toward me on the bed, and does she have any idea what she’s doing to me? I swallow.

“Here I was thinking that you couldn’t even bear to look at me, and you’ve apparently been studying me quite carefully,” she says, her voice different. Raspier.

You have no idea .

I keep my expression steady. “You are my enemy. Of course I study you carefully.” Anyone outside of my realm is my enemy. It’s the way it’s always been.

She doesn’t look convinced. “Right. Tell me, Nightshade,” she says, and I’m watching her lips with far too much interest. “What do you do when you’re uncomfortable?”

“I rarely am.”

She looks smug. “You seemed pretty uncomfortable when I stabbed you in the chest.”

The reminder of that doesn’t have my desire cooling as much as it should. “I’m used to being stabbed.”

“By someone you were trying to bed?”

My jaw tenses. I remember that day. The day when, for the first time, I felt aching, otherworldly want, and it ended with her trying to kill me .

“You tricked me. Had I known who you were, I never would have touched you.” If only that was true.

I know who she is now, and here I am, hard as steel, barely able to keep myself from telling her every single thing I want to do to her right now.

She scoffs, and it does nothing to temper my want. If anything, I want her more .

“Had I known what was about to occur, I never would have joined that line.”

“Why were you there, then?” I snap. If only she had never appeared in my palace. If only she hadn’t cursed me with this unrelenting want, with these thoughts that are like blades, meticulously slicing at my self-control.

She recoils, shocked by my tone. Good. Get far away from me , I want to tell her.

I will only bring you pain . Her voice is small.

“I accidentally portaled there with the starstick. It wouldn’t work, and I was chased by your idiotic group of guards.

The head woman grabbed me, and the next thing I knew, I was in that line. ”

Ah.

Then it wasn’t a part of a wretched plan. It was an accident. I shake my head and cross my arms in front of me. “I should take that thing away from you. It’s bringing you closer to death.”

It’s bringing you closer to me .

“You could try,” she says, her voice threatening. Good. I like it when she threatens me. I like it when she knows her own strength.

“So. You have a harem?” she asks. Her tone is casual, but her emotions are confusing. Is she ... angry?

“No.”

She laughs, but there isn’t any amusement in it at all. I realize I’ve never heard her laugh out of joy.

I have the strange desire to hear it. To hear her happy.

“So, women just line up to sleep with you? They volunteer for the honor?”

I glare at her.

“Who would want to sleep with you?” she says, very clearly trying to get under my skin.

It works.

That’s it. I slowly rise and approach until I’m towering above her.

I watch her swallow. A typical sign of fear.

I await the expected, stabbing cloud of it.

It never arrives. No ... she’s feeling something else entirely.

I can feel it as if my lips are running along her pulse, as if my tongue is laving against it.

“I don’t know, Hearteater,” I say, my voice rough with restraint and desire. “You seemed pretty willing.”

She swallows again, and her throat ... it’s so close. I have the sudden, blinding urge to bite her, to taste her any and every way she’ll let me.

Her voice is brittle. Her words are very clearly false. “No. I was disgusted.”

This time, I smile. She’s trying so hard to fight it. Almost as hard as I am. She’s trying so hard to hate me. “Is that so?”

She nods, her chin high and proud even as I brace my hands on either side of her on the bed, and lean down, so our faces are level. Her desire flares, I can practically taste it on my tongue. It almost brings me to my knees. Would she like that?