Page 99 of The Trials of Ophelia

“Fine.” My brows pulled together as I looked at my scar. Those warring forces tugged within me.

A presence hovered over my right shoulder, though. Whipping my head around, I searched the trees.

Nothing.

A breeze rifled my hair on the other side. I spun.

Still, nothing.

My stomach knotted as I tried to wade through the haunting sensation and focus on the lulling sway of Sapphire’s trot. She continued through the curtain of autumn leaves blanketing the forest, pine needles crunching beneath her hooves, right on Elektra’s tail, but that phantom feeling kept its grip around my gut.

“You sure?” Tolek asked, and it was clear he knew I was lying. “You have a theory.”

“I have a…I’m unsure what I have.” An instinct, maybe, but I wasn’t even sure how to put it into words, yet. “I’m trying to work it out.”

We stopped and dismounted, the pressure in my arm mounting again, pulling at the strings of my thoughts.

Tolek studied me for a moment, putting my pieces together, then tugged me into the trees, away from our friends. “Give me a thought,” he said. “Something you’re afraid of right now.”

He brushed a stray lock of hair off his forehead. It fell right back down, and my gaze followed it, drinking him in for a moment. Scruff growing out, leathers open at his chest, hair more disarrayed than its usual intentional mess. Disheveled. That’s what Tolek had become. The first strands of it, at least, like the full control hadn’t snapped yet but the limits were being tested.

Because of me. Because of this Angelcurse and the threats of a queen desperate for my life. It was ruining him, utterly and painfully. And to watch that happen to him ruined me, too.

“I don’t know what to think of any of this.” Truthfully, I was scrambling and lost. Overwhelmed, but not succumbing. “We’re walking unmapped territory on this journey, the words of the story not yet written. That scares me. Your turn.” I crossed my arms, trying to stifle the pain in my scar.

His gaze tracked down my body, cataloging every mark, and stopped on my necklace. Tolek sighed, the sound heavy with defeat. “I’m afraid of what’s going through your mind when you won’t speak. What decisions you’re making because you think you need to, not because you want to.” His eyes flared as he let out the frustrations piling up like bricks inside of him, his voice rough with irritation. “I’m worried about you, Ophelia. I can’t—nothing can happen to you. Every time that scar pains you it rips through my chest, like I feel it, too. The queen? She’ll die before she ever touches you again, I’ll be sure of that. But I’m concerned, because I can hear your mind working out a way for you to be the only one in her path, and I can’t let that happen. I need to keep you safe.” He dropped his forehead to mine. “Please. I want to help.”

So much pain weighed those words; I could see their edges fracturing. Felt it like it was my own ribs cracking and pouring my heart out between us. I was doing this to him.

My Angelcurse. My destiny. Me.

“I will ask for help, Tol,” I promised, voice rising in desperation to take away anything hurting him. “I don’t know what I need yet, but I swear I’ll tell you.”

Something played out behind his eyes. A decision being made maybe, but I wasn’t sure what.

He pulled me to him, cradling my head against his chest with one hand and rubbing his other down my back. I wound my arms around his waist and breathed him in.

“Honestly, Alabath, I’m fucking terrified. I know you are, too, and all I want is to take those fears away, not take it out on you.” He kissed the top of my head, the heat of that small action spreading all the way to my toes.

“I don’t want us to fight, Tol.” Flashes of my past’s heated arguments and the pain that always followed danced in the shadows of my words. “We’re fighting everyone else. Can’t we just be?”

He laughed gently, his hand slipping beneath my hair to rub the back of my neck. I leaned my cheek on his chest as his fingers toyed absently with my necklace. “We will fight with each other, sweetheart. Spirits, I know you’ll be angry with me at times for the idiotic things I do. But we’ll always make up.”

“Sometimes the dumb things you do end up being my favorite.”

“I’ll remember that,” he promised.

My heart thudded in realization of how subtle these feelings had been. Promises woven between us for years to create an inherent foundation, like we had never truly existed without the rope tethering us together. It ran bone deep, his breath and blood my own, a thing that always called us back despite how far the walls may push us.

And each time it did, it changed a bit. Became something new and exciting and rich with possibility.

That was another thing to be scared of, though. Where there was the possibility for good, there were infinite chances for mistakes. We were living through war and prophesied secrets, and it was unraveling him. From the shaking tenor of his voice to the way his hands gripped me, it was clear.

And it twisted my gut.

At times it felt like there was an iron chain around me, pulling me further and further toward a fate desperate to crush me, and I could do nothing about it but reach out to him and hope that together we were strong enough to withstand the Angels.

But Tolek would allow himself to break for me. If that happened, I’d curse every being in the heavens until their blood coated the land, flooded the rivers, and scorched the stars. As he and I looked at each other, I sealed the promise within my warrior heart, anointed it with the Angelblood running through my veins and whatever other power I may have held.

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