Page 34 of Beyond the Winter Kingdom
Amidst the blood and gore, it still wore her eyes as it died. And the sight of them lifeless sent me reeling.
I stumbled back, fighting the bile rising up my throat.
Silence dropped like a curtain.
“Vareck?” she murmured softly, and I tensed. Was I certain this body was truly hers and not another creature that learned her mannerisms while I was fighting? How sure was I that the real Meera stood before me?
I turned toward her.
She didn’t speak. Neither did I.
We just stared at each other; her eyes locked on the blood at my side, mine on the way her hands shook. My fury receded in slow increments, enough for my claws and wings to shrink andvanish into flesh, but the edge of it remained, like heat clinging to the last embers in the hearth.
“You okay?” she asked.
I nodded once, chest still heaving. “Yeah.”
“You hesitated.”
“I know.”
And she didn’t say anything else.
She didn’t need to.
I took a step forward, the distance between us charged with silent tension.
“How do I know it’s really you?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
“Ask me something only I would know,” I replied.
Her lips parted, and her breath stuttered.
“How many years did you dream of me?”
“Four. Why did it take you so long to find me?”
A flash of something sparked across her features before she buried it. “I didn’t think you were real.”
Then she was running, stumbling forward with an urgency that couldn’t be denied.
Crack.
Her palm connected with my face.
My head turned with the blow, not from the force—though she’d put some oomph behind it—but from sheer shock.
“What the fuck was that for?”
“Youcompelledme,” she seethed. “You stole my will and made me run away like some helpless damsel!”
“I had to.” My voice was low. Firm. “You weren’t leaving, and?—”
“Howdareyou. It was my choice.”
“You chose wrong,” I snapped back, my own anger rising. “I’m sorry my decision hurt you, but I’m not sorry I did it.”Her mouth opened, red cheeks flushing a deeper color that concerned me.
“Why?”
