Page 19 of Grim and Oro (Lightlark)

SNAPPED

I have been stabbed on countless occasions. I have been sliced with shadows like daggers. I have been skinned and beaten until I’m a whisper from death.

Nothing has been more torturous than having to stay away from her since that night. I have been without her for a full, agonizing month.

She is a drug.

She is an addiction.

She is the bane of my existence.

She is my undoing.

“She’s pretty,” Astria says, after the council meeting.

I scowl at her familiarity. I don’t care who she’s talking about. I don’t deign to respond.

“The girl in your room just now. She’s pretty. Like, kind of infuriatingly pretty, you know?”

I go still.

Infuriatingly pretty. There is only one person who could possibly earn that distinction. Very slowly, I turn toward her.

“I should have knocked. I’ve just—I’ve never seen you bring anyone in there.”

Because I never have. Until her.

I portal to my room in a moment.

She’s not here, but I can taste her lingering emotion.

Worry. Worry for who?

Me?

Of course. I’ve been avoiding her for a month, preoccupied with fending off the dreks, and, if I’m honest with myself, avoiding the certainty of her fate when we find the sword. She must be worried I’ve been working without her, that I’ve cut her out of my plan.

There’s another emotion ...

Jealousy.

Jealous of what?

It almost makes me laugh.

If she could see my mind for even a moment, she would understand that she owns it, wholly and completely.

Now, it’s my turn to be worried. Though it has nothing to do with the sword.

She went to my room . Is she okay? Is she hurt? A thousand worries race through my mind, and most of all, the fact that I care . The fact that I am in danger of leveling this entire castle, because she is gone.

I consider portaling to her room, using my shadows to conceal my presence, but no.

I have a feeling if I go there, if I see her again right now, I’ll never leave her alone. I won’t do what needs to be done.

I tense as pain courses through me.

The scar. It’s broken open. I hesitate for a moment, weighing going to her room ... or going to my people.

Instantly, I’m filled with shame. My people ... the innocents ... those defenseless subjects in my realm, they are my duty. She doesn’t truly care about me ... she’s not my responsibility.

I portal to the dreks. They’re everywhere. Dozens of my warriors are dead. How many were doomed by my momentary hesitation?

She is making me reckless.

Fighting the beasts usually relieves my tension, but this time, it does nothing to release my fury, my frustration.

Hours pass before I return to my room. Everything hurts.

My muscles ache from all the power I had to give.

All the creatures I killed. My armor weighs heavily on me.

I’m tired. So very tired, and not just physically.

I take a step toward my bathroom, still in my armor—

And a portal forms.

Hearteater . I tense, waiting for her to appear. Anticipation filling me.

Then someone falls through ... and it’s not her.

The man’s neck is in my fist in a moment. There is only one way he could have gotten here.

“Where is she?” I demand, my voice swallowing the world. A roaring sound fills my ears.

He doesn’t answer, and I don’t need him. Still clutching his neck, I drag him along as I follow the path of the portal, and there—

There she is.

Surrounded by a dozen men. On the floor.

Bleeding .

I crack the neck in my fist, discarding the body onto the ground. White-hot fury blinds my vision, but my voice is smooth with the focus I have mastered on endless battlefields as I say, “Which one?”

She doesn’t answer. Her green eyes are wide. I can taste her fear all over the room. Her pain .

“Isla.” My voice is lethally calm as I say, “Which one did this to you?”

She doesn’t answer fast enough, and I realize I don’t care. She’s hurt. Everyone in this room is complicit.

“Fine. All of them, then.”

And I break all their necks at once.

They collapse to the floor. But my eyes don’t leave hers. I walk toward her, gripped by fury and fear. This dark room is covered in shattered glass. We’re in the market, in one of the abandoned floors of one of the surrounding buildings.

The bastards cut her with shadow-blades. I know how badly they hurt. She felt that excruciating pain ... they had inflicted it on her. She could have died .

It is my fault for leaving her for so long.

And hers.

“You idiot,” I say, before gently taking her in my arms, where she belongs. I portal us away.

My anger is blinding. It emanates from my very marrow. I wish I had kept them alive. I wish I could skin them and rip out their throats with my teeth.

I place her on a couch in my quarters—a new piece of furniture—as gently as possible. “I’ll be back.”

I rip into the castle storage, making a few warriors jump, but I don’t give a damn. I fill my arms with bandages, ointments, everything I can find, and portal back to her.

Her cheek is bleeding. Shards of glass litter her delicate palms. I again regret breaking their necks. They should have felt every second of their long, slow deaths.

How did I let this happen? I thought by staying away, I was keeping her safe ... but instead, I put her in danger. She’s clearly determined to find the sword. Our agreement is not one-sided. She needs our deal to work just as much as I do. She’s a ruler acting for the good of her realm as well.

She is going to get herself killed.

I sit next to her and begin with her shoulders. She shivers and bucks as I tend to her wounds, but I pin her down with one of my hands.

“These are Moonling,” I say, motioning toward the bandages. “They’re good at healing cuts.”

“Do you ... trade with them?”

I ignore her, too focused on her injuries.

“Let me see your hands.”

She tries to hide them, but nice try . I snatch one, cursing when I see the damage up close.

Her beautiful hands ... they have been shredded. Some fragments glimmer from where they’re embedded in her skin. They need to be removed.

“This will take a while,” I say. I need a better angle. I need to make sure she won’t move and I don’t do more harm than good.

In a moment, she’s in my arms, and then on my lap.

“What are you doing?” she asks, breathless in my grip.

I have no idea what I’m doing , clearly, because I put her on my lap, and now, she’s squirming right against me.

“You need to keep still,” I grind out. “Or the glass is going to move while I’m working and make removing all of it almost impossible.” I offer an alternative. “I can make you pass out, if you prefer.” That way, I could lay her down. I wouldn’t have to hold her still. She wouldn’t be on top of me.

She bristles. “I most certainly do not prefer that.”

I wait for her approval. I won’t do anything she doesn’t want. Finally, she says, through her teeth, with a cutting glare, “Fine.”

As if I’m not here, healing her, helping her. Even now, she looks at me as her enemy. I suppose I deserve it, but it doesn’t erase the sting. My eyes narrow. “So charming,” I say, before snaking my arms around her, pinning her in place.

I swallow down my body’s response to this position. It’s made harder by the fact that I can taste her desire in the air, sweet and heady. Gently, I open her fingers. I pluck the first piece of glass from her hand, and she bucks against me. I keep her in place.

She gasps.

I rest my chin atop her head and look at my work. “There are about a dozen more on this hand alone, so I would find a way around the pain.”

She looks up at me, and I’m momentarily blinded by green.

How I missed that green.

How I missed her .

She missed me too. I can feel it.

I both hate that and crave it.

“Where were you?” she demands.

Guilt stabs me through the chest. I tense my jaw. Exactly one month. Had she been counting the days, like I had?

“I was preoccupied,” I finally admit.

It’s true. The scar has widened. I’ve had to visit it nearly every day.

But it’s not the only reason I stayed away. No, that has more to do with the fact that I knew if we kept seeing each other, I would do something stupid, like put my realm at risk.

She’s proving to be more a danger to my realm than the dreks are. She’s my enemy. I should hate her.

I hate myself for how much I don’t hate her.

She scoffs. “What could be more important than finding the sword?”

“Not more important, simply more ... pressing.”

She’s angry. I can feel it, flames against my skin. “You could have told me. You could have visited at least once ... allowed me to tell you what I learned.”

If only she knew how every night I had to force myself to stay in bed. To not visit her.

I raise a brow at her. “Miss me, Hearteater?”

Admit it. Tell me how you feel. Rip this barrier between us once and for all. Let me lose my mind .

She doesn’t. She huffs. “No. Every time I see you, I get injured or insulted.”

I frown. She’s right, isn’t she?

I focus on her hand and removing the glass. I shake my head. “What were you thinking?”

She sighs, and finally, she tells me the truth. “I was thinking I could find the sword without you.”

Then she does something else unexpected. She leans back against my chest, and it is far too pleasurable, far too familiar, to have her in my arms. I want to hold her tight and never let go. I want to run my lips along her jaw and down her neck. I want to bite her again.

If she had any idea the thoughts I have about her, she would be repulsed. She would never want to see me again.

Perhaps I should tell her.

“I went looking for you before,” she says, her voice a rasp, in between bouts of pain.

“I know,” I admit.

“Who was that woman?”

There it is, again. The jealousy.

Of Astria?

I almost laugh.

If only she knew who the general was, perhaps she wouldn’t feel so much animosity. For a moment, I want to tell her.

But I cannot.

“She’s my general,” is all I say, some part of me shriveling at the fact that I am keeping so much from her. I have no choice.

“Does she suspect ... ?”

“I told her you were someone I found to bed from another realm.”

That seems to not only anger her ... but hurt her. Why?

She’s silent for a moment, and I have the urge to ask her, to make it better, to know her. But I don’t say a word, and she finally says, “I know where the sword is.”

Of course. I didn’t even ask what the thief told her, because in the moment, I was so distracted by my desire.

Part of me knows that on some level, I was also trying to buy time, find another way to end the dreks.

Now, a month later, there’s nothing—only the fate that seems increasingly inevitable.

And the betrayal that might kill us both.

The sword should have been my first question, my main concern. “Where?”

“The Caves of Irida.”

Interesting. “I know it.”

She peers up at me, surprised, as if she was expecting me to sound happier.

If anything, this development fills me with dread.

It is not lost on me that I should not care so much about a few shards of glass in her palms while simultaneously marching her toward her death.

But I do. I do care.

I get every single shard of glass, then lean down, my mouth at her ear. “This is going to hurt,” I whisper, before I pour alcohol on her injuries.

I anticipate her scream, and press my hand over her lips, smothering it just in time. She writhes against me, squirming at the pain, and I go still. My every nerve flickers on. I clear my throat and pin her hip down with one hand, holding her still.

“If you can help it,” I force out, “please stop that.”

She freezes.

She can feel me.

I can feel her, on every aching inch of me.

I finish my task quickly, then lift her off my lap, desperate to be both on top of her and far away from her.

“Tomorrow,” she says.

That’s when we’ll meet next, to go to the thief’s cave, and finally find the sword.

“There’s one problem,” she continues.

I can think of several, but I just say, “Problem?”

She nods. “There’s a monster, guarding the cave.”

My eyes narrow. “What kind of monster?”