Page 4 of The Rose in the Shadows

“I won’t ask again!” He snapped.

His voice sounded like death and pain, and the room had somehow heated to a nearly unbearable temperature with him in it. And yet, as terrifying as he was, it wasn’t his interrogation or the ten guards who stood with weapons at the ready that made my body erupt into trembles.

It was the fact that as hard as I searched for an answer, no name came to my mind.

How could I not know my own name?

His eyes narrowed at me. “How about this? For every question you refuse to answer, I’ll burn another part of your body until nothing is left of you but ash.”

To prove his point, he grasped onto my wrist suddenly, ripping away the leaf and exposing a patch of still-healing skin. Without breaking eye contact, he raised a brow and jammed his thumb into the blistering wound. The pain was instant and nearly blinding as I pulled my arm away and the motion tore the fragile skin. Swallowing my sharp whimper, I blinked through the tears to glare up at him.

"Theadora," I grunted through a locked jaw, grasping onto the first name that came into my mind and claiming it as my own.

“Now, we’re getting somewhere,” he remarked with a self-satisfied smile that sent my blood boiling. “You, of course, know who I am."

Arrogant, wasn't he?

"And I assume you know exactly the power that I have. Athenia does not take kindly to attacks during a time of peace.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

He moved impossibly fast. In an instant he was at my side, bent over me with hands thrown on either side of my head until all I could see were his eyes and all I could smell was his cinnamon and burnt oak scent rolling over me in waves.

“You put the lives of hundreds ofmypeople at risk on that bridge, Theadora, and you will tell me why!”

Heart frozen, my gaze locked on his hands. Like my nurse, his coloring began to change. But where her fingertips had exploded in a comforting light, his did something… different.

As he spoke, the veins in each hand darkened, mutating into something sinister, leaving his fingers and hands as dark as midnight. Golden scales erupted violently from the skin and the nails on each of his hands grew intotalonsthat sliced effortlessly through the cotton pillow my head rested on.

I wasn't able to swallow the scream that burst from the deepest parts of me.

“Clayton Vail, you’re going to give the girl a heart attack!”

I didn't dare look away from him to see the woman who had entered the room.

His eyes. They were blazing, sparkling with shimmers of light that grew in intensity until the only color that remained was a glowing bright golden.Unnaturallygolden.

How was that possible?

We stared at each other for a moment, both breathing heavily. Then, slowly, the light in his eyes dimmed, and they settled back to their dull gray haze. He looked away first to the stranger at the door, and I quickly focused back on his hands. He was quick to fold them behind his back, but I caught sight of them as he did. There was only tanned skin, as if I had somehow imagined the whole thing.

“Iris, you don’t need to be here.” He sighed, turning to her.

She was a beautiful girl, albeit a bit extravagant. Her pastel pink hair hung to her shoulders in tight curls and was pulled back from her face with a flower crown. Shades of gold and sapphire decorated the lids above her dark eyes, and she wore a long gown falling towards the floor in waves of rose-hued taffeta. Her caramel skin was doused in sparkling pink and blue glitter that caught the light in the room as she walked towards me.

“Call it moral support.” She smiled at him and winked. “So, who do we have here?”

She addressed me directly, stepping forward to the side of my bed with a smile. With her head tilted, she looked down at me, and one of her cheeks dimpled as she tried, and failed, to hide a grin.

“Theadora,” I mumbled, repeating the stolen name that had become my own with a glance towards the man.

Clayton, I reminded myself. That’s what she had called him.

“I see,” she noted. “Well, Thea, everyone is dying to know how you ended up on that bridge!”

Clayton sneered at her. “Nice choice of words.”

She only grinned back fondly at him over her shoulder. As she turned her attention back to me, her wide eyes sparkled with amusement.

---