Page 63 of A Scar in the Bone
I smiled back.
16
TAMSYN
THE NIGHT WAS SWOLLEN WITH MIST AND MAGIC ANDlonging.
The mist and magic were the trappings of the Crags and the labyrinthine caves that made up the pride’s home. The longing, however, was all mine.
Still, stepping into Vetr’s den, I wondered if I had gone too far coming here—if it would be another mistake I would recount later alongside all the rest. Then I reminded myself thathehad enteredmyden without an invitation (on more than one occasion) and that the only mistake would be if I failed to act, if I ignored the voice in my head and the throb and pull in my stomach that drove me here. Something had shifted inside me, deeply, profoundly. I couldn’t identify exactly when this change had occurred, but it had. It didn’t happen overnight. I didn’t go to bed and wake up one morning wholly and uniquely transformed, but, ultimately, I was.
It was a series of things, events that reshaped me, blunted my edges, sharpened my teeth, and deepened my hollows. Starting but not ending with losing Fell. Getting struck down in the arena again and again and again. Landing on my face and then getting to my feet, spitting out blood over and over and over. Tasting the wind on my dragon skin. The stroke of clouds on my face. Feeling my wings stretch out like wide sails behind me. The whip returning to my back with a vengeance, more brutal, more vicious than ever before.
The blood.
The pain.
And Vetr.
Vetr.
His hands and mouth and gravelly words had worked a spell on me.
It was all of this. Moments big and small and everything in between that had built and grown into the expanse of a year. Pebbles that accumulated, creating the rocky shoreline that I now stood upon.
Gone too far.Did such a thing exist anymore?
Besides. Where else were we to have a private conversation? With everyone trapped indoors, waiting out the squall, there was nowhere to go without someone else already there, without bumping into another body stretched tight as wire, humming with restless energy, with eyes that seemed present but not present, the pupils vibrating, one moment contracting, the next dilating in a desperate hunger to be elsewhere. Outside. In the embrace of clouds. Suspended in wind. Airborne.
The pride’s cave was spacious with all its many rooms and chambers, but after a week of being stuck inside together, there was no space on earth big enough for all twenty-nine of us. Everyone was climbing over everyone. Quite literally.
Coupling was rampant. Everyone who was old enough was doing it, escaping into the pleasure and distraction of the flesh. Those bonded (especially), and those who were not, exorcised their pent-up energy. At night. In the daytime. Whenever the need took them. Moans and cries choked the air. The pungent scent of sex draped like heavy moss throughout the caves. I could not walk down a tunnel without hearing evidence of it, without smelling the scents. It only heightened the tension, creating a breathless, pulsing energy. Even I was not immune. My skin felt afire, too tight for my frame as I breathed in the miasma of desire.
And now here I stood in the center of Vetr’s den. My pulse thrummed like flickering flame at my throat as I rotated in a small circle, assessing the space. He wasn’t here, just his scent. Loam and crisp snow.
Dinner was over and done, but he could be doing any number ofthings. He was always busy. Always moving. Always commanding and directing. He seemed the only one unaffected by our confinement.
I decided to wait for him. If I put this off any longer, I might lose my nerve.
His den was not much bigger than mine. It was acquitted with similar furnishings except, while my den had the air of a guest chamber, an accommodation for someone who was just passing through, his had a permanence to it, a lived-in-ness that I envied. It was a space that he belonged to as much as it belonged to him, and I couldn’t help imagining what it might feel like to live here, with him, to sleep in that bed of furs alongside him every night, to reach out and touch him whenever I wanted to.
His bed was larger than my own, also covered with thick furs and pelts and situated low to the ground. A stand with a basin of water for washing stood nearby, the requisite mirror positioned on the wall above it. Instead of a single chest, he had several, and an armoire and a desk. The top of his desk was littered with papers and other detritus. As someone who had lived in these mountains for a lifetime, he’d naturally accumulated many possessions. Unlike me. The only thing I owned was the necklace at my throat.
The words I planned to say to him were not fully formed in my mind. Now. Here. In his space, I wasn’t so certain of anything. Perhaps words were not needed at all, though.
Swallowing, I pressed a hand against my rioting stomach, hoping to calm the butterflies there.
Perhaps the time for talk was over and action was required.
Air escaped me in an anxious shudder as I considered that. Considered touching him and kissing him and tasting him … fusing myself to that hard-slab body of his until we became one.
I paced, trying to quell my overexcited nerves. Surveying his den again, I admired the gemstones embedded in his walls, wondering if any held special significance to him. I was unable to stop myself from searching for a black opal among them. It was a habit.
I had yet to see one among all the jewels of the pride. With apang in my chest, I wondered if I would ever see one again. If the sight of them was lost to me. A page left behind that could not be read again, only remembered.
I supposed Fell’s black opal was out there somewhere in the vastness of the Crags, likely gracing the neck of one of his killers. Perhaps the infamous Kaldr.
Shoving that grim thought down, I continued evaluating the space, considering it as one might a prospective home. I lifted the heel of my shoe, hesitated, and set it back down, telling myself I shouldn’t snoop.
