Thorne

D ust and debris hung heavy in the air, so thick I could barely see.

“Clarissa?” I choked out, trying to rise from my knees but disoriented from the fall and the ringing in my ears.

My throat tightened as the dust began to settle.

She was crouched to the floor with a hand on the back of her head and another gripping her leg.

We were trapped in a small corner of the cave with no light other than a single torch burning to my right.

The ceiling between us and the others had caved in, leaving a solid wall of rock.

Marigold .

I scrambled to the pile of stones. “Marigold! Mother!” I roared as I clawed at the jagged boulders, willing them to part. I just needed to see her face. Hear her voice. Know they were safe.

My movements barely dislodged two rocks. I ripped them away and pounded into the barricade. My fingernails split with a sting, but still, I kept going. We had to get to them. We had to get out of here. We?—

We were trapped.

A fist squeezed around my lungs. I struggled to breathe, drawing in a single, gasping breath before my vision flickered.

I couldn’t move my fingers. Slowly, I fell down the mountain of boulders, sharp edges snagging my skin and clothes.

Gray spots appeared in my line of sight, and I blinked them away with another ragged inhale.

“Thorne. Thorne!” a distant voice yelled. Soft hands found my neck, but all I could see were gray stone walls closing in, crushing me, crushing her , crushing my daughter…

Blonde hair haloed by the glow of the torch hovered before me, blurry and glimmering like a mirage.

Lips moved, and while I couldn’t understand what she was saying, I kept my eyes focused on her.

Her, and not the image of the mountain slowly collapsing.

Her, and not the idea of my little girl stuck behind layers of solid rock.

Her, and not the air being sucked from my body with every labored breath.

Just her.

“Thorne, can you hear me?” Clarissa asked.

I nodded as a cough racked through me, making my vision sway. But her hands kept me upright.

“Listen to me. You’re alive. You’re okay. We’re okay. We’re going to get out of here, but you need to breathe.” She wasn’t panicked, only resolved. A safe, strong beacon in a sea of darkness.

I took a deep breath, and suddenly it was as if I couldn’t breathe fast enough. My chest expanded and contracted as my lungs tried to catch up. Air swooped in and out of my nose faster than I could control it, my pulse pounding to the rhythm of half-formed thoughts flying around my head.

Marigold.

Breathe .

The cave.

Breathe .

Not enough air.

Breathe .

Crushing.

The back of my legs hit the floor as my spine crashed into the wall of rock. My hands grappled for anything, anything to hold on to, and they landed on something soft and smooth.

“Thorne, please. Please look at me,” Clarissa pleaded, her voice now lined with a hint of fear.

“I’m trying to help you. I need you to stay with me.

” A weight landed on my thighs. Her face came back into focus, those dark eyes glittering like onyx in flames, beautiful lips turned down, with tendrils of blonde waves framing her cheeks.

Hands cradled my neck as she breathed in and out, motioning for me to copy her.

“If you can hear me, tell me three things you can see,” she said shakily. “Just three things. Nothing else is here.”

I took another breath, slamming my eyes shut and opening them again to clear the haze. They landed on the lit torch to my right. Just three things .

“The fire,” I rasped, then forced my gaze onto the wall behind her, drowning out everything else. “A—A diamond.” It was peeking out from the edge of a rock, caked in dirt but giving off a faint shine.

My eyes flicked back to her. “You.”

She nodded. “Good. You’re doing so good. It’s going to be okay. Tell me two things you can feel,” she said in a whisper, her hands trembling at my neck and cheek.

I slowed my breaths, and my heart steadied with it. A sensation that had been dull before now sharpened at my back. “A sharp rock.” I shifted to get away from it and realized what the weight on my legs was. What I’d grabbed when I couldn’t see.

Clarissa was straddling me on the cave floor, two thighs wrapped around my waist with her chest mere inches from mine.

My hands rested on her lower back. My fingers had crawled up the fabric of her tight shirt, her smooth skin hot beneath my fingertips.

Without knowing what I was doing, I trailed my hands around her waist, and she let out a gasp when they skimmed over her stomach.

My panic began to slip, only for something else to take its place. Something just as unsteady, just as uncontrollable. One hand squeezed her waist while the other traced a path to the top of her thigh and gripped it tightly.

“I feel you ,” I breathed out, pulling her closer, pressing into her. She was all I could feel, all I could see, all I could think about as I tried to force away the fear.

I thought she was going to push me off. She’d been ignoring me for days, ever since what happened at the bonfire, and I couldn’t blame her.

But she didn’t.

She melted into me. A sob broke free as she buried her face in my neck. Her body shook with small tremors, and I held her against me as I guided us to a seated position against the stones.

“You scared me,” she said on an exhale. Her breath hovered at my neck, sending a shiver through my body and making my fingers clench around her legs. “I thought…you weren’t breathing, and then you fell, and I couldn’t get you to… I didn’t know what to do.”

“I’m fine, Empress,” I said hoarsely. “I’m with you. Don’t be scared.”

She pulled back an inch, still close enough that I could see a tear lining her eye. When she blinked, it fell from her lashes and rolled down her cheek.

“I’m always scared,” she whispered.

I didn’t think. I pressed my lips to that tear, its salty taste bursting on my tongue.

Fates, she felt good. Her legs wrapped around me, my hands covering her back, our chests pushing together with each shared breath.

I let my lips linger on her cheek, then the column of her throat, inhaling her scent like I could draw her into me.

Like I could keep her golden light with me wherever I went.

She made everything brighter. She took away the gray.

When she let out a small moan and tilted her neck to the side, I nearly lost my mind.

I placed another kiss on her throat, murmuring her name against her skin. A small part of me knew I shouldn’t be doing this. There was a reason this was wrong, a reason this felt like temptation and pain all in one. But I couldn’t remember the last time I felt so right .

The sound of rocks shifting above us caught our attention. Clarissa’s face snapped up, and her body tightened as she started to move away from me.

I pulled her closer. I needed her. She was the thing that kept me grounded. The pulse in her throat beat to mine, steady and sure and safe. “Please, Clarissa,” I begged, sliding one hand up her back and the other gripping her thigh hard enough to leave a mark.

“It could be someone trying to get through.” Even as she said the words, she sank back onto me, as if she was also caught in whatever haze I was in. Like a string tied her to me, and we couldn’t rip ourselves from it even if we wanted to.

“I don’t care.”

“Thorne, it could be Marigold.”

The string snapped. Marigold .

Her name pulled me back to reality. I nodded and dropped my arms, and we both scrambled from the ground.

“Clarissa! Thorne! Are you there? Are you alright?” Galen’s muffled voice sounded from the top of the rock pile. If I squinted, I could see a small hole someone had cleared away, enough to let us hear through to the other side.

“We’re fine!” I shouted. “How are you? Where’s Marigold?”

“She’s safe,” he responded, and my shoulders dropped in relief as my head rolled onto my chest. “She and your mother went back to the entrance. They’ve got some miners here with equipment to get you two out, don’t worry. It shouldn’t take long. Shout if you need anything.”

Clarissa’s hands were steepled in front of her face. I instinctively reached for her and pulled her into my side. “We’re going to be fine,” I said into her hair, more to reassure myself than her. “They’re all safe.”

When she pushed away from me, I knew the moment had burst. This fragile bubble we’d found ourselves in, where the outside world didn’t exist, where for a single heartbeat, she was mine.

It was gone.

“Thorne, we—we can’t,” she said quietly. She crossed her arms over her chest as if trying to make herself smaller as she took several steps back.

“I know.” I scrubbed a hand over my beard. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“It’s the stress,” she said. “I feel it too. Everything is chaotic, and we don’t know what we’re doing. It doesn’t mean anything.”

My hand flexed at my side, where the imprint of her skin still seared into me. “You’re right.” The lie tasted like ash in my mouth.

She slumped against the wall and slid to the ground. “Has that ever happened before?” she asked. “Your panic attack?”

I shook my head. “Not to me. But like I said before, Marigold gets them sometimes. I think they started when her mother died, although she doesn’t really remember it.

They happen whenever she’s scared someone she loves might be in danger.

” I crouched to the ground and closed my eyes.

“I hope my mother kept her calm. I hope this didn’t—that me being trapped here didn’t trigger another one. ”

“Me too.” Clarissa’s eyes found the small hole at the top of the wall. “Hopefully it won’t be long.”

We sat in silence for a moment until she said, “You don’t have to talk about it, but…how did your wife die?”

I brushed my fingers through the dirt to give myself something to do. “Heart disease. It was inherited—her father died of the same thing not long before her. It happened four years ago.”

“I’m sorry, Thorne,” she breathed out.

I nodded. “Thank you.” Fire crackled from the torch as echoes of steel chipping against the rock wall filled the air. “She was…incredible. Not afraid to speak her mind, like someone else I know.” I gave Clarissa a pointed stare.

“But unlike someone else, she wasn’t great at hiding her thoughts.

You could read her from a mile away.” I chuckled.

“Which caused some problems with my parents, seeing as they didn’t get along in the slightest. You don’t know how many fights I had to break up between them.

Marigold entering the picture helped with that a little. ”

“I can imagine,” Clarissa said with a grin. “It’s impossible not to love that girl.”

A pang shot through my heart. “And Iris did. So much.” I stared at the rock wall, aching to be able to see through the stone and find my daughter. “I wish she could see how much she’s grown.”

“I’m sure she would be proud of her,” Clarissa said. “And you. You’ve done such a good job raising her.”

I swallowed hard. “Anything I am is because of Iris. She changed me. I don’t think you would have liked the man I was eight years ago.”

“I highly doubt that,” she said, looking down at her hands.

“What about you?” I asked. “The night at Silenus Manor when you…when you were so panicked. Has that been happening your whole life?”

She shook her head. “No. That’s a more recent development, actually.” She turned her head to the side and bit down on her bottom lip.

“You don’t have to tell me anything you’re not comfortable with,” I said.

“That’s not it.” She took a deep breath.

“It’s just that I don’t talk about it with many people.

It…it started last fall. After everything that happened with Emperor Gayl.

He—he tried to kill me the night he died.

Me and a close friend.” Her voice quieted.

“He would’ve succeeded, but my Shifter abilities heal me too quickly. ”

I moved closer to her on instinct. “What happened?”

“He cast a spell to break most of the bones in my body.”

My eyes widened. I closed the distance between us and knelt at her side, covering her hand with my own. “He what ?”

She closed her eyes. “It was…the worst pain I’ve ever felt.

And he aring it happen to my best friend at the same time…

” A single tear tracked down her dusty cheek.

“We’re both alive, but I haven’t been able to escape that day.

Not fully. I’m not sure I ever will. It’s like I’m this…

this fragile little girl who can’t even control her own mind.

Any time I hear something that sounds like the c-crack of a bone—” She inhaled sharply and shivered.

I wrapped an arm around her shoulders, tucking her under it.

“I’m so sorry, Clarissa.” I couldn’t even imagine.

To endure such trauma and live to tell the tale…

to relive it, over and over like some nightmare taking over her body.

And here she was, leading not only her own empire but doing everything in her power to save my kingdom.

Putting on the confident, capable, brave face she wore so beautifully to hide the pain lurking beneath.

“You’re the strongest person I’ve ever met, did you know that?” I asked.

She looked up at me. “Then you haven’t met many people.”

I took her chin firmly between my thumb and forefinger.

“Stop that,” I said. “Stop downplaying the kind of person you are. How everything you’ve gone through has shaped you into who you are now.

You shouldn’t hide from your past and how you got here.

You shouldn’t hide from the way those memories make you feel.

It doesn’t mean you’re out of control—it’s exactly what makes you so strong .

Because you take what’s happened to you, all that you’ve seen, all that you care about, and you turn it into this passion for your people.

For everyone .” I brushed my thumb along her jaw.

“Your emotions are what make you you . Don’t ever apologize for them. Don’t ever push them away.”

Her dark eyes held mine as her tongue flicked against her bottom lip. “I have to push some of them away,” she said, her voice barely a whisper.

My gaze fell to her lips.

A few rocks tumbled from the hole at the top of the wall. I stiffened and put my body in front of hers when a muffled voice sounded. “ Get out of the way, you two!”

We rushed to the far corner as the mountain of stones trembled, and, in the next second, half the wall came crashing down.

We were free.

But it felt like I’d found myself in an even more dangerous trap.