Page 19 of An Empress of Air & Chaos

She was livid.

How dare he waltz into this room after what she had just gone through and expect her to thank him? And call him handsome?

The heat rushed up past her ears, washing through her face, and her hands balled into fists. She ignored the pain in her arm and focused on the anger that consumed her. “First of all, how dare you insinuate that I am not capable of speaking just because I didn’t answer you. You are just about to find out how capable of speaking I really am. Secondly, I didn’t ask for you to save me. So, leave your macho ego at the door. Thirdly, I don’t care who you are, and I certainly don’t care who thinks you’re handsome! I don’t give a flying fu—”

“Woah, woah! Em, calm down!” Cally interrupted before Emara could continue. She caught Emara’s hand and squeezed hard, trying to calm her. “It was just a joke, it’s no big deal. He didn’t mean anything by it. I am sure he was just trying to lighten the mood.”

Something inside Emara snapped.

“Do you really think I want to be joking right now?” she fired at her best friend. The anger turned to something else entirely, “Do I look like I am someone to mess around right now?” She flicked her gaze over to Torin, who had gone utterly still.

His eyes narrowed and the smugness left his face.

“To be taken somewhere without even asking my permission, leaving my dead—” She stopped herself. She couldn’t say it out loud. “—lying on the floor? I haven’t even said goodbye and—and I have been taken from her!”

The only remaining heartstring she had left intact snapped, disconnecting her from every rational emotion she had tried desperately to hold on to. She opened her mouth and let out a scream.

Torin Blacksteel couldn’t make out the next few words that came out of the girl’s mouth. She started screaming and shrieking. It was a shrieking that Torin had never heard before and he could have sworn a cold wind drafted through the room at the sounds of it.

In the selection, he had been schooled about the levels of grief and how to shut it all out. As a Hunter, he would lose people. He had lost people to the hunt. Torin had heard men roaring for help as they died, and he had even heard the bellows of men who had lost a brother or friend—or maybe even a wife or child—to the dark army.

He knew loss.

He had even heard the rumbling roars of a demon right before he’d hacked it to pieces or severed its head. But this girl’s screams shot through him in a way he had trained emotion not too.

He ran a hand through his hair and gathered himself. Torin approached her, the screams still vibrating in his ear drums, and held her arms tight. Tight enough for the pain in her arm to send shock signals to her brain and cease the panic. She was in the wave of an aftershock of loss, and he had triggered it. Torin felt a niggle where his heart used to be.

“Hey!” he yelled a little louder than he meant too. Fuck. He wasn’t good at this shit.

She looked him dead in the eye and her mouth shut immediately.

“I am sorry for what happened to you.” He was uncompromisingly direct as he spoke. “I understand you are in shock, but you must control your emotions better than this.” He could see the surprise in her eyes, but he didn’t stop. “You must gain control of yourself. You can overcome this. Do not let this drown you.”

He didn’t care if the other girl was watching as he said, “Sorrow can take you under, down and down until you cannot breathe anymore.” He gripped her tighter. “Do not let this own you. The world is bigger than your grief.”

He took a moment, realising that he had been harsh.

Again.

This time, he controlled the softness in his voice. “That is a cruel way of putting it, but it is the truth. And that is what brought you here. The truth. What is about to happen to this world is much bigger than your grief.”

He let her go of her arms, realising he had been gripping her a little too tight. The bandage on her arm began to seep a reddish orange colour and she opened her mouth, but no words left her.

He stepped back again in disbelief at his words and how emotion had escaped him. He looked over at her. She hadn’t moved an inch since he had held her. Her lips remained parted, her hands shaking.

Fuck, he hissed internally.

He hadn’t meant for it to come out like that; he only wanted to calm her, but clearly he had done the opposite. Her unusual eyes were unruly with a dam of emotion that threatened to burst at any moment. But she held it in.

Were her eyes changing, turning black? He could have sworn they were hazel before.

He had to be imagining it.

He blinked.

The girl’s hair lay around her like a blanket of ink, spilling around her shoulders and down past her undergarments. Her cheekbones lay high in her oval face that was still smeared with dirt and blood.

But through all the filth, she was intriguing to look at.

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