Page 42 of Kissed By the Gods
Ryot moves before I even register it. One second, the guard is at my side, the next, he’s slammed against the wooden frame of the gate. He releases my arm as his hands come up to claw at Ryot’s forearm, now pressing hard against his throat.
“She’s about to fight for her life, Pavir. She doesn’t need to waste strength fighting you, too,” Ryot growls.
The guard gurgles, his hands scrabbling, but he doesn’t beg. Ryot holds him there a beat longer, his jaw clenched, muscles taut like he’s still deciding whether to let go—or snap the man’s neck.
Finally, he releases him with a sharp shove.
Pavir stumbles but catches himself, shoving Ryot back in what’s meant to be a show of defiance. It only makes him look smaller.
“One of these days, Ryot, you’ll pay for that arrogance,” he spits. “You’re not as invincible as everyone thinks.”
Ryot doesn’t flinch. He levels him with a stare cold enough to freeze bone. “Get out.”
Pavir takes his time leaving, but despite his saunter he watches Ryot warily on his way out. The door creaks closed behind him, shutting us into this tunnel-like room. Candles cast shadows on the walls, casting an eerie glow on the stonework.
The wavering flame makes him look almost otherworldly—like something caught between light and darkness. Then he exhales sharply, stepping toward me from the shadows. The tension in his frame dissolves as he rolls his shoulders.
He gestures to a wooden table set up at the back of the room. I follow him warily—this man has a temper. I realize suddenly I don’t know him at all, not really, though the last few days have felt shockingly intimate.
“What’s your family name?” I ask him.
“Altor don’t have families,” he tells me, stoically. But there’s the smallest catch in his voice that tells me he’s lying. Not only to me, but to himself. “We forsake our family name in our unnaming ceremony.”
Unnaming ceremony … I file that away to learn about later, if I survive today.
He picks up a strap of leather sitting next to a bowl of oil. It’s clear he’s already worked with it. The leather is soft, shaped by the oil. He’s been here for a while—oiling leather until it’s this pliable is a long, tedious process.
Ryot reaches for my hand. I should pull away.
Instead, I let him take it.
His grip is firm, his calloused fingers brushing against my wrist as he turns my palm over and wraps the leather around and around, forming tight, precise layers across my knuckles. The motion is quick and smooth—he’s done this a thousand times before.
There’s no softness, but there’s care, and that unsettles me.
He shouldn’t care—and I sure as the Veil shouldn’t care that he does.
My jaw tightens as he starts wrapping the leather around my other hand. I should be thinking about the fight, about Maxim. About how I need to be faster, smarter, stronger. But instead, my mind keeps circling back to him.
I should still hate him for dragging me here, for stripping me away from everything I knew, but that old fury has dulled at the edges, softened by something I don’t want to name.
Maybe this was always meant to happen. Maybe the goddess put us both here, on opposite sides of a line neither of us had a say in crossing.
I break the silence. “Why are you helping me?”
A muscle in his jaw jumps.
“You kidnapped me,” I press, stepping closer. “You brought me here.”
He raises his eyes from my hands and looks at me. “You think I had a choice?”
I don’t know why I push him here, now, but I can’t help myself. “So, you’re just a puppet following orders?”
His eyes flash with temper he keeps carefully leashed.
His voice is low when he speaks, rough at the edges. “If I was only following orders, I wouldn’t be standing here. And you would be dead on the forest floor.”
The smart thing to do is to let it go. But that old defiance, the one that got me dragged here in the first place, won’t let me.
