Page 159 of What Lies Within Masks & Shadows

Alora shot her a reassuring smile. “You didn’t run away. We had a plan. You just didn’t get there in time.”

“You could’ve let the reike kill me.”

“Why would I do that?”

“I tried to kill you—more than once. You could’ve done the same. Blamed it on the beast when you returned alone, got your freedom back.”

Alora pulled a waterskin from the pack and handed it to her. “I could’ve also slit your throat as you’ve slept these last few months, but I didn’t.”

A resistant smile formed on Jade’s face. Her fingers nervously clasped around the small bone and melted metal necklace around her neck as she drank.

They sat in the quiet of darkness for a few moments. Shadows stirred around them, gentle snaps of twigs from stags foraging, birds settling in their nests. The trickle of a nearby stream flowed off to the right.

Jade rolled her necklace between her fingers, her eyes as far off as the moon himself. “Can’t see a starsdamned thing out here.”

Heat pooled in Alora’s palm as she held out her hand. Embers sparked?—

“No! No more fire.” Those embers instantly died out. Jade shuddered and squeezed her necklace nervously, scuffing her boot against the dirt to push herself back.

That look in Jade’s eyes … Alora had glimpsed it many times over the last few months. A flame would come too close in the arena, Jade would flinch. Never to hold a torch or stir food over the campfire. Forbidding candles inside their tent. One of the few times Alora had ever seen even the smallest amount of fear in her eyes was around a flame.

“You want to tell me about it?” Careful to ask casually, to coax Jade to talk.

Green eyes glazed over in the darkness. “No,” was all Jade said before she dropped her necklace inside her tunic and tightened her jaw.

Alora tried not to frown. “You know, I would’ve never thought monsters like these existed only a few months ago.”

Jade’s face was unreadable.

“I thought monsters only existed in stories for the longest time. Well, until I lived with one.” Even the mention of Kaine had her skin crawling. Alora pictured him standing there in the darkness, ready to come for her. But she quickly turned away, refusing to let his snickering grin steal her mind.Not now.

Alora pulled the waterskin to her lips and drank deep, closing her eyes with a hard squeeze. Moments passed by.

When her eyes slowly drifted open, Kaine’s visage misted away as if he’d never been there at all. “I wish this was whiskey.” She breathed a laugh and handed it to Jade.

“Me too.” Jade tossed it against her lips. “Garrik told me very little about the monster you lived with.” She paused and tightened her lips. “That … my treatment against you that first night may have been a small example of what you went through and, by his vagueness, I can only assume it was quite often.” Jade’s stare flashed to Alora’s stomach. Perhaps remembering that brutal kick. “Males are truly horrific creatures. I am sorry.” The words seemed sincere, believable.

Alora slipped down to the dirt and reclined against the log. With a calming sigh, she asked, “And the monsters you lived with?” And nodded to the bulge in Jade’s tunic, hiding her necklace.

It took a few heartbeats before Jade reached in and grabbed the leather around her neck, pulling the pendant back out. She held it between her fingers, examining the melted paths of iron seeped deep into ivory bone.

“It’s the last coin my master made off of me … and a bone from his spine when I ripped his neck out.”

An icy chill ran down Alora’s.

Master.She shuddered at the word.

“The Fighting Pits of Torgal. Where my sisters-in-kind died for the pleasure of the males who deemed themselves superior to our sex. My father sold me to make his house—him and my brothers in blood—coin for their coffers and to build their castle high on my back. On my mother’s back. Females were nothing more than for breeding males and entertainment in the pits. My realm, doomed if you didn’t carry a worthless sack of balls between your legs.

“Fire was Kieran’s.” She cursed the name. “Favorite form of punishment. His flame—kingas we call them in Elysian—Killian, bought me and allowed him to do as he wished.

“In my cell, underneath the coliseum and battleground, Kieran would light unending flames, bursting them on my skin until I yielded. I fucking hate fire.” Jade shuddered and tensed. “Which is utterly pathetic seeing as I’m the daughter of the most powerful dragon shifter in Torgal,” she added.

“Even so, I wouldn’t let Kieran or his flame breed me, never let them bed me, which made the punishments with fire worse. I wouldn’t produce either a son, and I wouldn’t bear a daughter into this cruel world. I wouldn’t let them control me—the daughter of a flame would win them enough wealth and power to last centuries with one kill after the other. And when my usefulness ran out, when I could no longer stand to slaughter my sisters-in-kind just to live, I was to die in those pits.” Jade’s eyes turned glassy in the moonlight.

“The last night in my cell, Kieran burned his property. Three of my sisters-in-kind died in front of me until their screaming faded and the steaming piles of charred flesh peppered my senses. All because they tried to help heal my wounds from my last fight. It was the last night he ever fucking breathed again. I took his coin and ripped out his throat before escaping on Aiden’s ship in the night. He found me stowing away below and agreed to sail away with me on board.”

For the first time, Alora saw liquid lining Jade’s eyes. Despair, anguish, hatred, and rage burned within the tear that slowly dropped down her cheek and sunk into the ivory of the bone held in her hand.

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