“I promise if you let me hold you, I won’t hurt you. Won’t do anything other than keep you warm.”
“I’m surprised you care anything about asking me for permission. Would have thought you’d be the type to force me into it, thinking you knew my own good.”
Farin examines me for a while. “I’d rather it not come to that.”
I swallow. “All right, then.”
Farin doesn’t hesitate. He crosses the width of the cave in a moment and slips into the sail I’m clutching around my shoulders.
Instantly, the heat of his chest warms me. Like stepping into a hot spring in the middle of winter. His heat spreads across my back, soothing the aching pain. When he slides his hand around my waist, running his fingers over it, careful to avoid my injury, I let out a sigh.
Mortification immediately overwhelms me. I wait for Farin’s conceited comment about me sighing for his touch, but it never comes.
“Better?” he whispers, his breath steaming at the tip of my ear.
I nod, and he pulls me in tighter, contouring his chest to the curve of my back, wrapping his legs between mine.
As good as it feels, the shivering doesn’t stop, not when the cold has seeped into my bones.
“Zora.”
“Mhm?”
“There’s a way we could warm you up faster.”
My body goes rigid under his touch. I know this, of course. The first survival rule for dealing with the cold is that body heat is most efficient if it’s skin-to-skin, surrounded by a blanket of some sort.
But it’s bad enough allowing a murderer to wrap his arms around me, to hold me through the night.
Lying naked in his arms would feel like brandishing my bare throat to the sharp edge of a blade.
“No.”
For a moment, Farin doesn’t answer, and I wonder if he’s contemplating forcing me to strip for my own good. Anxiety prickles my lungs, making it difficult to breathe. But then Farin just tucks his cheek into my hair and says, “Whatever you say, Wanderer.”
CHAPTER 66
BLAISE
I hear Piper, the Red, speaking, but only barely. Like water’s flooded my ears, and she’s above the surface, calling out to me.
Autumn has settled into the outskirts of Dwellen, the trees beginning to burst into a cacophony of scarlets and yellows.
Not that I’ll ever see their hues outside the shade of night.
We stalk through the forest, Piper’s steps so light they hardly make a sound.
Mine don’t make a sound either, which is strange, considering my entire body feels as if my veins have been filled with lead.
“We’ll camp tonight, then take off first thing in the morning,” Piper says, though something about that feels wrong.
“Morning?” I shake my head, bringing myself back into focus. “No. No, I can’t travel in the daytime.”
Piper offers me a confused look. The kind of look a female wanted in every kingdom for trafficking affords someone who claims they can’t travel during the day. “We can get you a hood, a disguise even…”
I shake my head again, and it’s like ridding water from my ears. “No, it’s not that. I’m…” How does one explain vampirism? “I’m cursed. Sunlight burns me.”
Piper takes that surprisingly well, though she doesn’t hide the inconvenience written all over her expression. Still, she stares up at the sky while the warehouse smoke behind us fills my lungs.
Abra’s body is burning in there, her head tossed casually aside from the rest of her, crumpled on the warehouse floor.
Assuming none of her landed in the vats.
I can’t quite rid myself of the visual.
I would have thought I’d feel something surrounding the death of the female who made my life miserable, but I can hardly feel anything at all.
All I can feel is the pang in my chest when Nox’s eyes met mine the moment he chose not to save me.
It was stupid of me not to realize why he was tagging along with me after the Old Magic cursed him not to love me anymore. I hoped there was something deeper there, something the Old Magic hadn’t been able to touch.
But no. Nox just wanted Abra.
He wanted revenge, and I was the mechanism to get him there.
The strangest part is, I can’t even blame him for it.
Isn’t that what I used Evander, Ellie, and Asha for? To get me to the Rip so I could open it and get Nox back?
