Page 204 of Of Blood and Banes
Squeezing my eyes shut and gritting my teeth, I force the dagger down through my jacket, my shirt, my?—
An overpowering resistance blocks me from sinking the blade further, like I’ve hit an invisible wall. And that invisible wall pushes my hands farther away from my chest.
“Don’t youfuckingdare!” a growl rips out from behind me a split-second later.
I flash open my eyes and find two scarred hands wrapped around the blade between my hands and my heart. Forcing the dagger away from my chest, blood seeps through their fingers as they slowly pull it away.
“Let it go!” the voice roars in my ear.
I fling my head back and connect with a hard mass, and the hands slip from my blade with a pained grunt before strong arms wrap around me, pinning my arms down to my sides. I fight against it, and Daeja rears back with a roar. I fight to free myself before I’m spun around to face my attacker.
Darian’s narrowed green eyes meet mine, his face hard with unkempt anger as he digs his fingers into my shoulders.
He slaps my hands down and attempts to keep the dagger from rising higher than my hip, then grapples for it. “Stop it! Let it go. I said, let.Go!”
He pries the weapon from my hand and chucks it off into the river. A sob works its way up my chest until I cry. As I sink to my knees, eyes fixed on the water, he snaps forward and catches me.
The two of us kneel on the ground, his bloody hands grabbing my face as he roars, “Look at me, look at me!” He fights desperately to pull my face up, before his voice softens. “You can’t. You can’t do that?—”
“Why? Why not?” I whisper, tears still blurring my vision. “It would be the easiest way?—”
“You don’t give up that easily! We don’t do easy!” He holds my face in his hands, and his gaze collides with mine.
“You shouldn’t be here…” I whisper, my voice trembling like I’ll crack and melt into his arms.
“I know, I know. But I didn’t mean what I said—” His breath comes out in quick, heavy rises and falls. “I—...I fucked up. And I…I hurt you. I’m...”
Everything slows around us.
He searches my eyes and brushes a thumb underneath my cheekbone. His voice trembles like it’ll collapse. “I’m…I’m sorry.”
The words pierce me, sinking deeper than any blade straight to my heart. I’ve never heard him speak those two simple words. Never even hinted at it, after all the awful things he’s done. He’s never one to be sorry, but here and now…he means it.
I can see it in his eyes.
He shakes his head, the rain plastering his brown hair to the angles of his face and dripping off his thick lashes. His anger melts into an array of other chasmic emotions I can’t quite place. All at once, he pulls me into his chest, pinning my face right above his heart and holding me. His heartbeat pounds underneath my ear, one hand wrapped around the base of my skull and the other rubbing my back. He holds me in the silence.
Silent tear after tear slips down my cheeks until I focus on the rise and fall of his chest, his gentle strokes down the back of my head.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers again into my ear. “You were right, okay? I lashed out at you. I was scared.”
As my emotional overwhelm slows, he pulls my head back to look at me for a moment before darting a glare at Daeja behindus. “How could you let her even get to such a thought, you stupid flying lizard?”
“Tell him I’ll bite his head off and toss him downstream if he wants to call me that one more time,”she growls back.
An echo of a chuckle rumbles in my chest. All this time he called me kitten to taunt me. Flying lizard is just another one of his nicknames.
He directs his attention to me. “There’s another way, okay? We’ll save him. I’ll take you to Arterias.”
“How? The King will never let me within a league of the castle.”
He drops his hands from my face, his shoulders relaxing as he breaks our eye contact.
“What?” I murmur. “What is it?”
“You’re not going to like it.”
“You’ve never been one to hold back saying what I won’t like. Let’s not start now.”
