Page 9 of HeartTorn (WarBride #2)

ILSEVEL

In silence I return to my side of the fire and take a seat. It’s as though the impassioned conversation we’ve just shared never took place at all, those wild confessions still unspoken. Taar sits with his back very straight, his elbows on his knees, and never once raises his gaze from intense contemplation of the fire. Whatever his thoughts may be, they are closed down tight behind the blackness of his eyes.

I pick up my discarded hard cake, turning it round and round. Hungry though I am, I cannot bear another bite. After a little while I simply pull the hood of my cloak up over my head, lie down on my side, and wait a small eternity for sleep to come. Every other breath, I expect Taar to rise, to make a sudden lunge across the fire, and . . . what? Run me through with his sword? Maybe.

Squeezing my eyes tight, I force my breaths to slow. It’s no use; my heart is still racing from that moment when I saw realization dawn in his eyes. I’d thought for a moment that this was it—this was the tipping point. Whatever protection the velra cord offered would be undone, and he would see at last the enemy I am and put an end to me once and for all.

But he didn’t. Of course not. He’s much too honorable and noble. Damn him.

I bite my tongue, force back a curse. Then, opening my eyes a crack, I watch through my lashes how the firelight plays on his face. So grim and scarred and dangerous, and yet so beautiful. My terrifying and desirable enemy.

Shadows seem to creep out from the ring of stones surrounding the fire. They stretch longer and longer, reaching for me, and though I fear them, I haven’t the will or strength to escape. I close my eyes again, let that darkness pour over me, and suddenly I am back in that prison cart, my arms wrapped around Aurae’s trembling body.

“I’ve got you,”

I assure her through trembling lips. “I won’t let them take you—”

But the door flings wide with a metallic crash. Someone stands in the opening, a powerful figure, all scarred and wild, with a black streak of warpaint banding his face from temple to temple. Taar—but not Taar. Not the man as I know him. No, this is the stranger, the warlord, the fae invader. A monster straight out of legend.

He reaches into the cage, grabs Aurae by her slender upper arm. With a yank, he rips her from my grasp. “No!”

I cry, falling over myself in my efforts to follow, to climb from the prison cart. I gain the opening and tumble into the shadow-dancing world beyond. All around me, phantom figures loom and leer, but my eyes remain fixed on Taar as he drags my screaming sister away with him. “No! Bring her back!”

Taar stops, looks over his shoulder. My sister is limp in his arms, fainting with terror. I rush toward them. The ground under my feet goes clingy, each footstep a wrench, but I forge on until I’m close enough to catch Taar’s arm and stare up into his face. Into eyes of pitch, weeping black tears.

“Please,”

I say, shameless and desperate. “Take me instead.”

Then I reach up, grip him by the back of the head, and pull his face down to mine. His mouth is an awful snarl of sharp teeth, but I press my lips to his, drinking in his danger, his darkness. Suddenly Aurae isn’t there anymore. There’s no one in this world but the two of us. My arms are around him, clinging and desperate. For a moment I feel both surprise and resistance. Then he grabs me. Devours me. His tongue in my mouth, his hands on my body, bruising and clawing, ripping me to pieces—

“Ilsevel!”

I wake with a gasp to the pressure of a hand on my shoulder. With a sharp turn, I stare up at the face of a stranger looming over me, half-illuminated by the red glare of firelight and silhouetted by a galaxy of distant stars.

“Ilsevel.”

A voice of rumbling thunder growls in my ear. “The vardimnar—it’s coming. We need to shelter with Elydark.”

I blink. Memories rush in, bringing with them a clash of recognition and horror so overwhelming, it paralyzes my limbs. I simply cannot react or respond, only stare at this man, this stranger, this . . . “Taar?”

I whisper.

His arms slip under me, lift me from the hard ground. I can do nothing but cling to his neck, dizzy and half-convinced I’m still dreaming. “Come,”

he says urgently. “There’s no time to lose.”

Only now do I become aware of the humming song of his unicorn close at hand. Elydark stands braced, his head upraised, his song already burning from the tip of his horn, shining out to create the protective sphere. Taar ducks close to his side, still carrying me. No sooner do we enter that sphere than the Hand of Darkness falls across the world once more.

Whimpering, I press my face into Taar’s shoulder. He cradles me gently against his chest, and his voice murmurs in harmony with Elydark’s song: “It’s all right. I’m here. You’re not alone, I swear it.”

My jaw hardens. Despite what he says, I am alone. Desperately alone. And the more I let myself believe otherwise, the worse it will go for me.

I push away abruptly, surprising him, I think. He staggers slightly, thrown off balance, then quickly sets me down on my feet. Though everything in me urges to stay within the safe circle of his arms, I step back, swipe hair out of my face with both hands, and turn from him. My eyes gaze out through the shimmering light of Elydark’s song-sphere into the hell beyond.

The membrane-like veil flickers with movement. That something—unnamable, unknowable, but so enormously real—pulses with eagerness to break through. I feel the power of it, the vastness of that un-song. How anyone could be foolish enough to attempt to control such power is beyond me.

A wild desire comes over me to throw myself through the sphere of song, out into that waiting darkness. To let it claim me, drag me into itself, ending this gift of mine, ending my life-song. It would be so easy. Just a few swift steps, and then . . . what? Unmaking. Discord. A brokenness and pain unimaginable. My blood chills with terror at the prospect. And yet I want it.

Little black tendrils seep through the sphere-song, crawl through the grass toward my feet. I watch them coming, knowing that they mean to wrap around my ankles and drag me out. But it’s no better than I deserve, and I—

“Ilsevel!”

Taar looms in front of me, his back to the darkness, his great broad body between me and it. His hands grip my forearms to the point of pain. “Don’t listen to it,”

he growls, shaking me so that my bones rattle. “I know how tempting it can be. Don’t listen. Concentrate on Elydark’s song.”

I shake my head. It feels so heavy, like a lead weight supported on my reed-thin neck. I don’t want to hear the unicorn’s song anymore. I don’t want music in my life, this paltry gift of the gods which proved utterly useless in the end. I want that un-song to undo me, to break apart whatever melody still tries to sing through my spirit.

Taar wraps his arms around me. “I’m not letting you go,”

he says. “I’ve seen this before—the pull of the darkness. I won’t let you give into it.”

Tears seep through my lashes, trail down my cheeks. I feel the great strength of this man and know there is no way I can resist him. Perhaps the darkness itself would be strong enough to break his hold on me, but it has already relented. The little tendril arms retreat from Elydark’s song. So I close my eyes, lean into Taar’s chest, and listen to the thud of his heart, like a counter beat to the unicorn’s flowing melody.

“Why did you save me?”

His arms tighten a fraction, squeezing air from my lungs. Then he pushes me back from him, his hands still gripping my upper arms. His black eyes gaze down into mine. He doesn’t answer, but the way he looks at me, so intently . . . it’s like he’s searching for his answer in my face.

“Why?”

I say again, the word little more than a whisper. “Not now, not with the velra compelling you. Before. Why did you save me from Lurodos? Or even before that, back in the temple?”

His eyes are strangely wide, vulnerable even. But no matter how I seek, I can find no answers in their depths. “I don’t know,”

he says at last, dropping his lashes.

A sigh passes through my parted lips. Suddenly I don’t care about anything else—not my guilt, not my fear. Not the enormity of life waiting for me on the other side of this sphere. I care only that I am standing in this space, with this man. This man, who doesn’t want me and yet will not let me go. Perhaps that’s as close to being wanted as I’ll ever deserve. Perhaps it’s enough.

Hardly conscious of what I’m doing, I rise on the balls of my feet. His fingers tense around my forearms, but I manage to lift one hand, to rest it on his chest. Slowly, slowly, I glide my palm up over his shoulder, around to the back of his neck, underneath that curtain of thick, black hair. He’s far too strong for me to move against his will, but when I tug, he bows a little, inclining his head toward mine. Soon his face is so close, our lips a mere breath apart.

“Zylnala,”

he whispers. I feel the shape of the word against my flesh. It seems in that moment as though there is but a thin veil separating me from the whole great endlessness of eternity. I’ve never been so very aware of my own mortal shape and yet, simultaneously, so certain of the power contained in its feeble confines. I part my lips, my eyelids heavy. Vertigo fills my head. A single small step, and I will fall upward, up into that infinity.

The darkness breaks.

It’s so abrupt, like the bursting of a soap bubble. One moment it’s there—the next utterly gone. The world reappears around us, so solid and real, even the sky feels heavy somehow. Elydark staggers, his forelegs bowing, as his song resolves itself in a series of swift, fading notes.

And Taar and I stand where we are, gazing at one another. His eyes are wide with shock, as though he doesn’t know how we came to be like this.

He frowns, wrenches his hands free of me, and turns away abruptly, staring out at the cold, silent world. It all feels so weirdly untouched. Our campfire burns where we left it. The stars gleam overhead. The air is almost painfully quiet, without even a breath of wind to enliven it.

As for me? I’m left with nothing. Nothing but the cold patches on my arms where Taar’s hands had gripped. And the prickling emptiness on my lips where his kiss almost, but didn’t quite, touch.