Page 53 of Court of Treachery

“Yes, but it’s so muchmorethan that,” he said impatiently, stepping back and running a hand across his hair. “He’s returned, Harper. I won’t lie. I played my part in it—” she stilled at his words, “—but you know the rotten depths of the sinful court I seek to topple. Surely you can imagine the better Pelenor I desire more than anything to build. The time fast approaches, Harper, when there will be little choice in the matter. Soon, he will be the master of Pelenor, and a new age of peace and prosperity will dawn?—”

The blood drained from her. “Are youinsane?” she shouted. “This isyourdoing?”

“Well, I?—”

She jabbed her finger at the mountain beside her. “Myfriendis in there. He suffered unimaginably at the hands of those… those…monsters. Peopledied! I saw inside the mountain, Dimitrius. I saw what they did to all those dwarves.” Now she felt nauseated. She swallowed, and her tongue darted out to moisten her lip. “Please tell me you didn’t take part in that. That is no better than Toroth. In fact, that is worse.Please.”

It was a plea for so much more than she could voice. He could not be complicit, willingly a part of that, surely. If so, she had misjudged him entirely and she was a fool. For all she had disliked discovering Aedon’s hidden depths, she had known quite how vile Dimitrius was. Or at least, she thought she had. Thought she had at least appreciated the honesty with which he presented his callous shards.

“It’s not like that,” he said desperately, stepping forward again. “There are always casualties of wa?—”

“No! I won’t hear it. I thought… I thought you might be different. Decent. You were so kind to me. You protected me.” She looked at him as though he were a stranger. “But you’re just like the rest of them. Greedy and self-serving. Willing to do whatever it takes,hurtwhomever you need to, in your race to thetop.” She shoved him away, wanting and despising the solid bulk of his muscled torso, but he yielded, perhaps in surprise, and she stormed past him, back to the mountain—knowing full well he would not give up.

“I’mnotlike that!” he snarled, and his steps chased hers. He grabbed her arm as she entered the hollow of the tunnel and spun her against the wall. Rough rocks bit into her back. “For heaven’s sake, Harper,listen.”

This close, she saw the raging passion in his eyes, the desperation with which he implored her. Even though the cold wind stole every shred of real warmth it could from her body, the heat of his magic burned her right to her core. With his hand on her body, pinning her upper arm into place, a conflict of an entirely different kind raged within her. She hadn’t realised that in the heat of the moment, she had grabbed a fistful of his shirt in her hands, and she released the luxuriantly soft fabric, clutching her hand to her chest as though it had stung.

His next words came more softly but no less filled with fervour. “I promiseyou, it’s not like that. That’s not who I am. That’s not what I want.” He closed his eyes for a moment, then sighed. At his slumped shoulders, the stiff resistance in her limbs melted away. This was no threat—he was in agony. This, whatever it was, gutted him. She did not understand him at all. His hands slipped from her shoulder, and he braced on the stone to either side of her. When he opened his eyes, he flinched at her hard expression, but shewaslistening.

He shook his head. “I’m not sure I can stop him now. It’s like a river tumbling over a waterfall, picking up speed. I’m trying to steer it away from disaster with what power I have. I just—I had to warn you. If you stay, you’ll all be caught in the middle. I cannot protect you from what is coming. And…” His voice dropped so quiet that she could barely hear him over the rumbleof the river in the canyon below. “…I want to.” He hung his head, so close his forehead almost touched hers.

She wondered at his choice of words. A dangerous feeling took a hold deep within her as she stood, cradled in the cocoon his body created around her. “Why do you care?” she asked quietly, the stinging vehemence gone from her voice. The warmth of his breath caressed her cheek.

He opened his mouth. Shut it again. Swallowed. “I shouldn’t,” he admitted. “I shouldn’t care at all. But I do. Just as I suspect you do, because you are brimming with magic and you have not yet attacked me as you ought to, if you knew what was good for you, even if the chance of you besting me is utterly futile. Somehow, you make me lose all reason, Harper. You offer me a sliver of brightness in this hell of an existence that I want to seize and not let go of, even though I have no damned right to deserve it.”

It was so honest, so free of his confusing masks, that it felt too raw for her, speaking to the deep, piercing ache building inside her chest and closing off the breath from her chest. However much he meant well, however much she felt the bitter truth to the agony of his words, his actions spoke of a different story. One in which he was complicit in horrific acts. What did it make her if she wanted a monster? If she pitied him for the consequences of his ill-intended actions? If that made her feel only more conflicted, not less, by his shades of grey?

“He may kill me if he finds that I am here with you. Warning you.” Dimitri groaned. “And yet, I still cannot stop myself. This is how much you affect me, Harper, and believe me, I despise myself for it. I despise that you make me so weak. I do not beg anyone—but I will beg you if I must, to see you safe. Do not make me.”

He wouldbeg? Did it thrill her to see him this utterly broken at her expense? Or horrify her? She would not yield to it, for thatway, madness lay. “I cannot go. I will not go. There is too much at stake, and I am no coward,” she said, raising her chin to look him directly in the eye, the tip of her nose threatening to brush his. The shock of his violet gaze searing into her so close clutched at her chest, and now her legs threatened to buckle at the not at all unpleasant swoop in the pit of her stomach.

“Of course, you can’t. Of course, you won’t,” he murmured, the words dropping from his lips to hers. “I would not be so consumed by you if you fled.”

Consumed. The shock of that confession stopped any retort.

He let out a bitter laugh. “Oh, Harper. You will be my downfall.” He hovered there, and the only sound was the sawing of their heavy breathing. His eyes flicked to her lips and back again, and his neck corded, his jaw clenching as though he restrained himself at great cost.

Harper felt as though she were aflame and utterly lost to common sense and reason now. What hung between them, intense and charged, lured her in. If he stooped to kiss her now, she did not think she wanted to push him away, much as she knew she ought to. This was the forbidden fruit she had thought of, after all. A taste lay right before her, ripe for taking. The moral conflict of that lay heavily over the desire coursing through her. The energy thickened between them until she could have carved the tension with a knife, like a bolt of lightning needing the release of discharge to clear.

“Dimitrius…”

He groaned. “Damn it. Do not utter my name. I shall lose all semblance of control.”

Harper took in a shuddering breath as he leaned closer still, just one fraction, showing his slipping leash. And she did not resist as she should have.

“Oi!” The wind lulled, revealing clattering footsteps heading their way. Dimitrius pushed away from the wall at once, snarling at the intrusion.

“Harper?” Aedon’s voice carried across the bridge. “Is that you?” He emerged into the light, stopping suddenly at the sight of them. “Get away from her!” Aedon surged forward, magic lighting his palms.

Dimitrius looked at Harper and stepped back.

Harper’s pulse thundered with something more primal that cut through the haze of desire. She sprang away from the wall and from Dimitrius as though they had burned her. To her surprise, she found herself moving in front of Dimitrius, holding up her hands.

“Stop!” she ordered Aedon. “It’s all right.”

Aedon halted, but the magic in his palms kept flickering. Suspicion darkened his face. Harper turned to Dimitri. What had brewed between them was shattered with Aedon’s arrival, the spell broken. Yet he still gazed upon her with such intensity it stalled her breath anew.

“Heed my words, Harper.Please,” he murmured to her, too soft for Aedon to hear. He raised a hand to her arm, but Harper stepped from his reach. That was far too dangerous. She narrowed her eyes, stared at him for a few seconds more, then turned on her heel and strode away, steeling herself against his intoxicating presence.

---