Page 16 of Grim and Oro (Lightlark)

I need her to know. I need her to know that I know .

“I can feel flashes of emotions.” Yet another secret I’ve shared with her and almost no one else.

The blood slowly drains from her face, panic blooming within her, and it pleases me far too much to see her this affected.

To see her realize that I have felt every emotion she has had in my presence. “And yours were very, very clear ...”

She’s stops breathing.

“Just as they are now.”

Spiraling panic. Deepening desire.

Still, her posture never falters. Her eyes are fierce with that endless conviction. “Your powers are wrong.”

I tilt my head, considering. My gaze lingers, shifting from her prickled chest to her delicate collarbones to her captivating neck to her lips. I don’t just want to kiss her. I want to devour her. I want to mark her .

“No,” I say. “I don’t think so.”

Her lips part in the gentlest of gasps that sharpens my senses, sends a chill down my spine. Her eyes drop to my mouth, to my arms, to my chest. Suddenly, her desire surges, merges with my own to create this blinding, pulsing want.

In that moment, I am certain.

This is not one-sided. I’m not the only one watching and wanting. She wants this just as much as I do.

My blood is roaring, pulled toward hers, something unexplainable and unmatched thrumming between us.

I didn’t know it was possible for two people to have a gravity between them until I met her.

Now all my thoughts and dreams revolve around her, like I am an admiring moon, rotating around the planet that is her.

This will ruin me. She will ruin me.

And I might just enjoy it.

If I don’t move, we’re both going to do something that will make it nearly impossible for me to do what I must for my realm.

With every remaining shred of willpower I have, I pull away from her, returning to the chair. “Go to sleep,” I say, knowing I won’t be sleeping a moment tonight.

I watch her crawl back to her place in bed and wonder how we are both possibly going to survive this.

All night, I watch her sleep, remembering how her normally ironclad confidence had wavered when discussing portaling. Remembering how her emotions had hardened when her guardians yelled at her.

My hearteater can be an idiot, but she is not weak. She’s going to learn to bend the starstick to her will. She is going to learn to go wherever she pleases.

I am going to teach her.

The sun has just risen. I shift in the chair, aware of how heavy my limbs feel. This amount of feeling is exhausting.

I almost laugh. Centuries of self-control and this ruler who doesn’t even know she has powers is turning me into an utter fool.

I can’t deny it, I care about her. I need to ensure she’s protected.

It’s ironic, really, her would-be killer trying to keep her safe. It’s wrong, I know.

But none of this is right.

I leave for a while to change and complete my duties for the day, then return that evening. She seems surprised to find me back in her room. If only she knew that her room is more familiar than my own, lately.

“If you are going to insist on keeping my device to portal anywhere you wish, I will teach you how not to be an idiot.”

She glares at me, her anger like an iron grip around me. “Or what?”

Stubborn hearteater. Her defiance is as alluring as it is irritating. I step close to her, towering over her, so she’s forced to look up at me. “Or I will take it back,” I say, looking at the place I know she keeps it.

Fear. She swallows. “Fine. When are you going to teach me?”

“Now.” I grab her arm and portal her away.

She blinks. I watch, fascinated, as she takes in her surroundings. I care about where her eyes linger. Where they don’t. “This ... this is in your palace.”

“It’s a training room.”

“I didn’t bring anything.”

With a flick of my wrist, the device she calls starstick falls from the sky. Her look of amazement sends a warm rush coursing through me.

“How did you—”

“The first thing you should know is that your device is unreliable. I did not pour much power into it.” I remember that day, going to the blacksmith with her father, like it was yesterday.

The process had been painful. “Around other portaling ability, it won’t always work.

Portaling power is all about visualization.

That is why you believe you can’t go anywhere you haven’t already been. ”

It’s strange, explaining my own power to someone else. It’s one of my most coveted secrets. One of my most personal attributes.

Stranger still that she ended up in my palace in the first place. It was almost like she—or my own power, within the device—was pulled toward me.

“So how do I go somewhere I can’t visualize?”

“Maps help,” I say. “It’s easier to go places when you have a sense of the distance and relation to other locations. Now. About the short distances.”

I portal right behind her, close enough that I can smell her.

And her scent ...

Her scent is just like her feelings—the most potent poison and also, maybe, a cure. I wonder if there is an antidote. I wonder if I would take one, even if there was.

I speak to take myself out of my own dangerous thoughts. “It requires far more control. And control is developed through practice.” Clearly, she’s been using this relic for years. Still, she hasn’t mastered it. I motion toward her device. “Try to portal across the room.”

She shifts her stance, and her eyes narrow in focus. She draws her puddle.

I follow her—

To dark volcanic sand.

To the same place I first portaled.

Suddenly, I’m thrust back centuries. I’m a child, clutching sand. Panic ripples around me—

It isn’t my own. It’s hers now too.

What are the chances of her portaling here , of all places? As if she could know? As if ... we are even more similar than I thought.

She can’t know. She can’t know what she’s doing to me.

“You overshot by a bit,” I say, mind racing.

I portal her back.

Again, and again, we try, and she’s a fast learner. Portaling short distances can be more difficult than traveling hundreds of miles. It requires focus. Skill.

Still, I can’t get the beach out of my mind. We are similar ... so similar . Though, at the same time, so vastly different.

Does she think of us as the same? Does she think our lives could ever intertwine at all?

She finally gets it right, after many attempts. Pride rises within me, again, as if her win is shared. As if her own flash of excitement and pleasure has elicited the same feelings within me.

Her happiness wilts away as I make some rude comment. And this, I think, is the truth of our situation.

She is a rose, blooming, and lovely.

I am a shadow, blocking out her sun.

No use in pretending anything different.

When we finish practicing portaling, we switch to swordplay. I should tell her to leave. I should leave . The gods know I have a thousand things to get done.

But I stay.

I teach her everything I can, starting with the most important lesson of all: I can kill her at any moment.

“Dead,” I say, slicing the thinnest of lines across her chest. I slice against her stomach next, slashing only her clothing. “Dead.”

My sword sweeps across her throat, and I have two alarming thoughts.

One. If I was wholly committed to saving my realm, I would kill her now. Have the augur drain her body of blood and use it to break the curse on the sword when I find it ...

Two. I imagine something very different from the thin, almost imperceptible line across her throat.

I imagine a necklace.

“Very dead,” I say, our mouths just a breath apart, and that’s how I feel.

Too far gone. Hurtling us both toward a ruinous fate.

A low growl sounds in her chest and a fire ignites in mine. Good .

The hearteater is fighting back.

She advances again and again, skillfully, until she manages the smallest cut on my chest.

She grins, and then she makes a small gasping sound as her back hits the floor.

I’m over her in a moment. “Another lesson. Sometimes your opponent will let you get a hit in, as a distraction.” My blade travels to the center of her breast. I tap once and say, “Dead.”

Her annoyance and heat rise in equal measure. “I get it. You could kill me any number of ways, including with a sword. Teach me to be better.”

I do as she says.

I teach her. I teach her everything I can, until the unlikely words, “Thank you,” leave her mouth.

Thank you .

When was the last time someone thanked me? When was the last time I did anything for anyone outside of pure obligation?

This is pure obligation , I remind myself, though it doesn’t feel that way.

The thieves in the den told us that whoever has the sword will be at a very specific event, happening soon, on my lands. “The celebration on Creetan’s Crag is in three days,” I tell her. “Before then, do me a favor, and don’t die.”

Please , I think, before I portal away.