Page 64 of A Legacy of Wrath and Reckoning

All her doubts eddied from her thoughts when she focused on her task, let the sound of Holt’s steady breaths guide her, leaning into his touch a little more than she probably should have. She couldn’t help it. He steadied her, settled something in her and quietened all the doubts and emotions that had been warring inside. Zylah tugged gently at first, pulling on that place her healing magic resided until it warmed her chest, flowed through her arms and down her fingertips, pouring into him.

Holt sucked in a breath.

“What is it?”

“It’s alright,” he told her, catching her hand when she made to pull away. “Keep going.” She did as he asked. “I saw you,” he said quietly, his voice tight. “A vision, or a memory. We were in my cabin. I gave you Adina’s cloak. Fastened the buttons over your heart.” His fingertips brushed just below her collarbone, a featherlight touch there and then gone, and Zylah had to force herself to focus.

“A memory,” she murmured as she felt his wound stop bleeding, knew the moment the flesh knitted back together beneath her touch.

“You looked different then.”

“I was different,” she admitted. She should have moved away. Should have pushed to her feet, given Holt space, but nothing could make her move away from him.

“Something tells me every version of you has been just as incredible, Zylah.” He helped her stand, his hand warm in hers. “Tell me about the water serpent.”

So Zylah did. She told him how she’d arrived in the cave, the skeletons strewn across the shore, certain he was looking down at them all. Told him about the spear she’d stolen when she had no weapons and no magic to aid her. How the beast had risen from the water, three heads snapping and snarling. He listened to all of it quietly, his hand never leaving hers, but she could hear the racing of his heart at her words, the way he stilled when she explained that it was his vines and roots that had reached for her, pulling her up onto the platform where they stood as if his presence was lying beside her, gasping for breath.

“I thought it was your ghost,” she whispered, and his fingers squeezed hers gently.

An echo of his pain hit her, but Zylah didn’t want to draw attention to it, didn’t want to do anything that might make him slide his hand from hers.

“The purple crystal,” he mused, and she felt him turning, taking in the cavern. “It’s like the stone in my mother’s sword. Like your eyes.”

“You haven’t seen my eyes.” Only glimpsed the ruined mess they were now.

“I remember them.”

“That’s…” Zylah swallowed. “That’s good.” She hated how afraid she was. Afraid of hurting him. Afraid that if she told him the truth and it wasn’t what he wanted now, that she would lose whatever remained of the bond between them. “I can’t evanesce yet,” she said instead. “You’ll have to take us in much shorter bursts for a while, I don’t think we should linger for too long.”

“I don’t know how I helped you, but it was you who killed the water serpent.” There was no denying the reverence in his tone. “I’m sorry I took Rhaznia’s death from you.”

Zylah shook her head. “You saved my life. You have nothing to apologise for.”

“I’m starting to sense a pattern here.”

That elicited a laugh. “Perhaps.”

“Where were you going to begin our search?” He uncurled her fingers and pressed the hilt of her sword into her open palm.

He must have summoned it to him. Zylah sheathed it at her waist, nodding her thanks and calling the staff to her next. “Where Raif kept me.”

“I think I know the way.”

She didn’t ask him how. Just let her mate take her hand and pull them together through the aether.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Ifithadbeenany other location, surprise and delight would have warmed her chest at what he’d done. But Zylah could feel neither of those things in the room where she’d been Raif’s prisoner.

Anger rippled from Holt, easing his hand from hers to walk around the space. Not that there was much. She wondered what he made of it, if it looked as much of a prison to him as it had felt to exist in it.

“He kept you here in the dark?” The words were clipped, and a whisper of his power brushed against her skin.

“I had an orblight,” Zylah said quietly, trying not to inhale too deeply for fear Raif’s scent still lingered in the air. She gripped the staff so tightly she was certain her knuckles had turned white.

Holt didn’t answer, but pieces of wood scraped together where she’d left them by the wall before her escape. The scent of the spilled stew hung in the air, the baylock heavy among the aroma. “You poisoned him?” he asked.

“I tried to. After Aurelia’s first visit, he…” Zylah swallowed down the acid taste of bile. “His blood. It healed me, but…” She thought of the way Raif had held her, forced her to drink from his vein, the way he’d pressed his skin to her mouth and she fought back the urge to be violently sick. Magic flickered over her skin for a moment, gone before she really had time to register it.

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