Page 66 of A Reign of Storm and Madness

No. She wasn’t. The Gods and their children are shallow people. Even if my own features and Divinity are dampened by the brimstone in my neck, compared to a girl of short stockiness and plain features … the fury on her face makes it clear she understands my assumptions.

Without another word, she turns and stalks off. Rodney stays behind for a moment, his unibrow furrowing in confusion as he glances between me and his quickly departing sister, then he too, turns and follows. At my back, Niall releases a sound of relief.

“Kiera, you shouldn’t have done that,” he says, stepping to my side.

I turn to him and fix him with a dark look. “Don’t ever lie to me again,” I snap.

His brows arch up, nearly reaching his hairline, and his lips part in surprise. “I-I didn’t want to burden you.”

I shake my head. “I don’t care. Don’t”—I suck in a breath—“please don’t hide shit from me again. Whatever it is, don’t lie.” I already deal with enough deceit that it’s liable to one day drive me to madness. I can’t stand more, especially not from him.

Niall ducks his head, and his brows lower at the same time. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs and I believe him. I want to believe him.

Whether Ophelia realizes it or not, with this stupid test of hers, she’s sparked the desire for freedom that has been slowly building since the night she bought me from those bandits. It felt so close, the reality of being free of the shackles of servitude and the contract that binds me to her. The fire inside me slowly kindling over the years is now aflame and I don’t think anything can put it out now.

Chapter 34

Kiera

The light outside my slender bedroom window is a blurry dim ray on Sunday morning. No birds sing. No footsteps sound overhead, but I find a pair of dark trousers and a matching tunic—both too large for me—waiting outside my door. Quickly grabbing the clothes, I scan the corridor before closing the door, and quickly change out of the brown gown I’ve been wearing for days. It’s starting to smell.

The trousers are loose on my hips and I use one of my daggers to cut slits in the waistband before weaving the dress’s belt through the holes to keep them from falling down. Tucking the tunic into place and shoving my feet into my boots, I grab my cloak and hurry from the room within minutes.

The hallways are quiet as the sun peeks through the windows and I walk faster, practically racing through the slowly receding darkness until I’m sweating beneath the new clothes and panting for breath through raw lungs. The cold air slaps my cheeks when I reach the outside and I flick my hood up as I rush towards the southern gate.

I spot a figure dressed in dark fabrics waiting for me. Ruen turns as I approach. I don’t know how he’s tipped off by my approach, my footsteps are quieter now that I’m actually trying, but his expression doesn’t change when he spots me.

“How are we doing this?” I ask as I come to a standstill beside him. I glance beyond him to the locked gate and frown up at him. “We are getting out through this gate, right?”

Ruen holds up a hand and quiets me with the movement. The sound of footsteps further back alerts me to an approaching third person. I glance at him with outrage and betrayal. Again? Before I can say anything, however, Ruen’s hand reaches out and he snags my arm, jerking me into his body.

Rippling muscles beneath soft clothes and heat permeate my thoughts as my side slams into his chest. Wrapping his arms around me, Ruen lifts me off my feet and slides a few steps back and into the shadows of a large, perfectly propagated bush. With one hand still wrapped around my hips, keeping me pinned with his chest to my back, he lifts the other and clamps it over my mouth to keep me from making a sound.

Together, we stand in silence as the third person curses, their footsteps stuttering slightly over the snow-covered ground and the cleared stones underfoot. They’re unaware of our presence, I realize a moment later as they bypass us and march toward the waiting gate. My head tips back and I scan Ruen’s hard features, pinched with tension as he leans out of the shadows and looks towards the back of the person’s head.

It’s wrong, I know it is, but as his chest bumps against my spine, I close my eyes and can’t help picturing how he’d looked in his sword training classes. Ruen is paler than both Theos and Kalix, but no less cut. His abdomen is carved perfection beneath the fabric of his tunics, but on those oddly warm days, when he does feel the need to remove them, all the women and even a few men in the vicinity are enrapt by the dips and valleys of his frame. Ruen might enjoy books and solitude, but his body is a work of art.

Even now, I can feel the outline of his hips as they press into me. Something thick and long presses into my asscheeks. Fuck. My eyes pop open as if that can disrupt the memory of Ruen panting in front of an opponent, sword in hand as sweat gleams on the powerful mass of his shoulders and chest. It doesn’t. The memory continues with the sight of a bead of sweat sliding along one of the two deep lines at his hips that carve an arrow right for his…

“Let’s move,” Ruen whispers, disrupting my wayward thoughts.

He releases me and my body sways with disappointment. Thankfully, though, Ruen reaches back, snagging my hand. I blink in surprise and he turns, lips frowning. “It’s better for the illusion if I touch you.”

Is it? I want to ask. Then how was he able to show me an illusion during my punishment? I don’t comment though, and neither do I pull my hand from his grasp as he leads me towards the gate. When his words hit me, I understand his intentions. We’re sneaking out under the guise of his illusion and somehow, Ruen had known that someone here would be using this gate.

More questions fill my head, but as I spot the figure ahead—Hael, I recognize—I go silent. Hael unlocks the gate with what looks like a long metal key and then struggles to push one large iron side out of the way. The rattling of a cart sounds in the distance, coming from inside the Academy grounds. I glance back but see nothing, turning just in time to see Hael get one side of the gate open. Once it’s set firmly in place, he kicks a larger rock to hold it and then hurries to the other, and once again, it’s another struggle for him to move the heavy metal with his scrawny arms.

The rattle of wheels and the sound of a horse huffing get closer until a gray-bearded man clicking his tongue at a horse hauling the open cart at his back comes into view around the corner of one of the Terra residences near the southern gate. I lean up on my toes, squinting as I try to see what the cart contains.

Ruen flashes me an annoyed look and shoves me back down, stepping in front of me. A ripple of air moves through the space between us, and my eyes widen as it shimmers. Divinity, I realize. He’s cloaking us in an illusion.

Hael puffs out cloudy breaths in the cold air before blowing into his bare hands and standing to the side as the cart rattles through the opening. Ruen tugs and the two of us are circling the side of it as it slides right past us. Neither Hael nor the driver glances our way even though we’re now very much in the open.

Something gray falls out from beneath the tarp covering whatever the man is leaving the grounds with. I narrow my eyes. It’s a stick … I think. A long, grayed stick that’s almost shaped like a hand with gnarled fingers curled inward. As the cart moves in front of us, the smell of something rotten hits my nose and I clamp my only free hand over my nose and mouth, blocking out the foul scent with a choked nose.

Ruen doesn’t glare at me this time, but his expression changes too. His nose wrinkling and his face blanching as his eyes land on the stick jutting out of the cover. I choke down another breath, turning away as I drop my hand and try to breathe through my mouth more so than my nose. It doesn’t help. It’s like a lingering piece of whatever those sticks are is permeating the air and I can almost taste it.

“Hurry.” Ruen’s whisper is followed by a sharp jerk as he grips my hand tighter and pulls me along behind him. Together, we slide out of the southern gate behind the cart just as Hael quickly closes the iron bars behind us and re-locks it.

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