Page 73 of Storm of Blood and Shadow

“Yes.” Jessiva leaves the pants on a rock and follows me, halting when I do, a few paces from the cliff’s edge.

I stare across the channel at West Fang, nearly the mirror image of this island, its sheer cliff a match for the one we’re standing on. The island is beautiful, with its lush, forested slopes, blue sea encircling it, and the waves foaming white at the foot of the cliff.

Jessiva gazes at the view, too, standing quietly at my side while I contemplate my own emotions.

I’ve always been more introspective than Kyreagan or Vylar, but thanks to the Mordvorren, my thoughts have been a roaring tempest of confusion lately. It’s more difficult to discern my own motives.

Eventually I speak, the words slow and methodical. “I’ve given up so much control throughout my life. Choosing you was the first major decision I’d made on my own in a long time, and it felt good. It gave me a sense of control at a time wheneverything was in turmoil. This sounds wicked, but… controlling you and your future offered me a feeling of security. But it wasn’t only about that.” I turn and seize her hands, searching her face for understanding, for affection. “Believe me, I always wanted to protect you.”

“I believe it,” she says. “You and I have had a strange, convoluted journey so far. But surely now you understand that we must be on equal footing, if we are to be partners. If I want to do something, if I believe it’s the right choice, you can’t forbid it.”

“And you can’t forbid me from doing the same,” I counter.

She doesn’t like that.

“Look inside yourself and tell me why that disturbs you,” I say.

She lets out a gusty, frustrated sigh. “Because I’m used to making decisions for myself without anyone’s input. Sometimes I had very few choices, and sometimes they were all terrible, but they were mine, more or less.”

“But you were never really free,” I murmur. “Tell me, darling, how do you feel with me? Do you have more or less freedom than before?”

“It’s different with you.” She pulls her hands out of mine and gestures to the island, to the sea. “Look around us. This isn’t real life. This is temporary, an interlude before I return to the drudgery of routine and expectations.”

“So you still plan to go back to them.”

“I don’t know!” Her cheeks are red, her eyes bright with tears. “I’m torn, Varex, and it hurts. I chose to come to this island with you, and I’m trying to make a choice for the future, but I have to know what a relationship between us would be like. Will you listen? Will you yield to me, sometimes? Can we agree to yield to each other, to reason it out when we disagree, to find acompromise or a solution? Can you let go of this impulse to hold onto me so tightly and dictate what I do?”

I want to say yes. But all I can manage is, “What if I yield to your will, and you do something that leads to your death?”

“You honestly think I’ll do something foolish?”

“Not foolish. Something unselfish. Kind. Compassionate.” I bite out each word. “You’ll do something for my sake, or for someone else, and you’ll die, when I could have prevented it. I have to limit the risks around you. I have to protect you, no matter what.” My voice is rising now, terror and anger threaded through my tone.

Jessiva seizes my shoulders, her nails denting my flesh. “You can’t protect me by controlling me.”

“I can try.”

“What happened?” she hisses. “What made you like this?”

I don’t respond. I know the answer, but the pain is too cruel, too deep. There are things about my mother’s death that I have not shared with another living soul.

When I don’t answer, Jessiva releases me, a pained resignation in her eyes. “Then you’ll continue to be tormented. And the Mordvorren will fester inside you, feeding on the thing you refuse to confess, until it conquers you and swallows you whole.”

22

Over the next few days, we coexist. We cooperate. But we don’t converse too deeply about anything, and we don’t make love. Either Varex is past the ferocious impulse to breed, or he decided that he isn’t attracted to a woman who challenges him like I did.

Or perhaps his containment of the Mordvorren has superseded everything else, occupying most of his body and mind.

He’s having more trouble changing shape. When he attempts it, his form becomes unstable, sometimes for morethan a minute, shifting into odd, frightening configurations of limbs and teeth and eyes. When he sleeps in dragon form, he occasionally emits bursts of red or purple lightning, or vomits out a small void orb. I have to sleep far away from him, in a makeshift shelter we built from driftwood, tree limbs, and large leaves.

When Ashvelon comes to check on us, he reports that many dragons have fallen ill after eating prey from the Middenwold Isles. Apparently Vohrain’s soldiers infused the animals with a lethal, magical poison intended specifically for dragons. But the males of Ouroskelle are no longer merely dragons—they are also part human. Their new nature protected them, so none have died, and they are slowly recovering under the care of Thelise and the other women.

I know Varex wants to be there, to help the others, but he’s too volatile. Though I don’t mention it aloud, I can tell he’s getting worse. He’s quieter, more restless. The only time he seems like himself is when he’s in human form and we’re working on our second shelter.

The second shelter is more like a cabin, erected on a flat area along the mountain’s slope. When he’s in dragon form, Varex chisels stones for it. Together we create mortar from a sticky type of clay found on the island. Neither of us really know what we’re doing, but we’re learning as we build it together—learning to listen, to compromise, to take turns giving in.

Varex is so proud of the structure that I don’t tell him how rudimentary it is, or how it will probably collapse in the first hard storm. The work helps him cope with what’s happening to him.

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