Page 74 of Kingdom of Darkness and Dragons
The simple words carried a weight that made my chest tight with emotions I couldn't name. For the first time since I had claimed her, she was looking at me without fear or resentment. There was something else in her eyes now—gratitude, perhaps, or the beginning of understanding.
I tried to sit up, but my vision swam and my head burst with pain. I groaned, and she leaned over me, brushing my hair away from the wound on my head.
“This doesn’t look good,” she murmured and there was definitely concern in her voice.
“I’m… good,” I said, trying again, this time with more success. I managed to stand for a few moments swaying, then took a step towards the treeline. The ground shifted under me and everything went black again.
I floated in a sea of quiet grey. There were no voices here, no whispers promising power or demanding blood. There was only stillness, a profound and welcome silence that I sank into like a warm bath. It was the peace I had craved for so long, a reprieve from the constant war inside my own skull. But something kept pulling me back from that peaceful oblivion. A touch. A voice.
Her voice.
Fragments of reality pierced the grey fog. The rough texture of my cloak beneath my head. The metallic tang of blood in my mouth. The scent of her—rain and river and woman—overwhelming my senses.
Time had no meaning. There were moments of clarity, sharp as broken glass, where I was aware of her hands on me, her voice, a low and urgent murmur. I felt the scrape of rock and wet leaves against my back as she dragged me, her grunts of effort a rhythm that anchored me to the living world. She wasimpossibly strong, her small frame straining with the effort of moving a man my size.
I felt her fingers, gentle but firm, probing the gash on my scalp. The pain was distant, a dull throb that belonged to someone else. What I felt most keenly was the warmth of her hand on my skin, a searing point of contact in the encroaching cold.
"Stay with me," she murmured, her voice a thread of sound in the vast silence. "Don't you leave me alone out here, you hear me?"
I was drifting again, the grey tide pulling me under. But this time, I fought it. I fought to stay with the sound of her voice, to cling to the feeling of her hand against my cheek. The silence I had welcomed now felt like a threat, an empty void that would swallow me whole if I let it. She was my anchor, the one solid thing in a world that had dissolved into pain and confusion. I didn't want the quiet if it meant losing her. I wanted her. Only her.
Another fragment of awareness surfaced. Firelight. The scent of damp earth and smoke. I was lying on something soft—her cloak, I realized—and she was leaning over me, her brow furrowed in concentration. A wet cloth, cool against the burning heat of my forehead, brought a wave of relief so intense it was dizzying. Her touch was gentle, clinical, as she cleaned the gash on my scalp. There was no fear in it. No desire. Only a grim, focused determination to keep me alive.
Consciousness returned in jagged pieces, like shards of broken glass grinding behind my eyes. I was cold, a deep, penetrating chill that had settled into my bones. And wet. My head throbbed with a pain so immense it felt like my skull was trying to split apart. I was lying on something soft—my feathered cloak, I realised.
The whispers swirled in the haze, no longer seductive, but sharp and mocking.
She should have left you. A warrior would have. Slit your throat and taken her freedom.
Through the delirium, I saw her.
She was there, kneeling a few feet away, her back to me. Her shoulders were tense, her movements jerky and frantic as she tried to coax a spark from the damp tinder she’d gathered.
She will leave you,the voices whispered, seizing on my weakness.She will take her chance and leave you to rot.
I tried to tell them they were wrong, tried to call her name, but all that escaped my throat was a pained rasp. It was enough. She spun around, her face pale with exhaustion and fear. The angry red welts on her throat stood out starkly against her skin, a brand I had inadvertently placed there.
She scrambled to my side, her small hand pressing against my forehead. Her touch was cool, a fleeting relief against my burning skin. “Gods, you’re on fire,” she murmured, her voice a mixture of anger and genuine concern.
I was helpless. A creature of shadow rendered useless by the sun and a blow to the head. She was my captive, yet here she was, my protector. My anchor. The world dissolved into a swirling grey mist, and as the darkness took me again, my last coherent thought was that I would burn the world to ash before I ever let her go.
She saves you only to kill you herself, the whispers hissed, trying to find purchase in my delirium.She will wait until you are weakest.
But as she wrapped my cloak tighter around my shivering body, her brow furrowed in concentration, I knew they were wrong. This wasn't the calculation of a prisoner. This was the grim loyalty of a mate. And as the darkness pulled me underagain, a new thought, sharp and clear, cut through the fever. She is not just my anchor. I am hers.
I drifted on a black tide, the pain a distant shore. Time ceased to be a line and became a series of disconnected moments. I was aware of the rain, a constant, miserable drumming that seemed to seep into my very bones. I was aware of her movements—the scrape of stone, the rustle of wet leaves, the low, frustrated curses she muttered under her breath. Each sound was a lifeline, pulling me back from the silent void that beckoned.
A fragile warmth bloomed against my cheek. I forced my eyes open a crack and saw her face, illuminated by the guttering flame of a tiny, hard-won fire. She was huddled over it, shielding it from the wind with her own body, her expression a mask of fierce concentration. She had not run. She had stayed. She had made fire in a drowned world for a man who had taken everything from her.
She was fighting. For us.
I tried to push myself up, to assert some control, but a wave of dizziness slammed me back down. A groan escaped my lips, and she was instantly at my side, pressing a damp cloth to my forehead.
"Stay still, you idiot," she muttered, her voice rough but not unkind. "You've got a hole in your head the size of a coin. You're lucky you're not dead."
Her face was close, her eyes—the colour of warm earth—were filled with a frustration that felt far too intimate for a captor and her prisoner. I could see the fine lines of exhaustion around them, the smudge of dirt on her cheek. I wanted to reach out, to wipe it away, to feel the warmth of her skin under my thumb.
My hand moved, sluggish and clumsy, but she caught it, her fingers wrapping around mine. The contact was a jolt, a spark of clarity in the fever-dream.
