Page 65 of Thorns & Fire
With his cock already straining against his leathers, Torj yielded a step.Whose terrible idea had this been?
Wren closed the gap again, only a breath away.Gods, she hadn’t been joking about driving him mad.He’d overplayed his hand, and now he was once more at the poisoner’s mercy.Wasn’t he always?
She gazed up at him through her thick lashes, her mouth slightly parted, her lips wet and tempting.‘Tell me about the soul bond, Bear Slayer.’
Had it only been days before that Wren had told him she had the book in her possession?Torj had no idea how much she’dmanaged to read, but he knew she was looking for evidence.Once she knew...He didn’t know what was worse: that he’d lied to the woman he loved, or that he’d taken her choice away.Would she ever look at him the same way again?Or worse still, would she bind herself to him and risk her safety once again?Was that even possible after what he’d done?
He yielded another step, only to find his back against the wall.‘There’s nothing to tell.’
Wren’s fingertips dipped beneath the fabric of his shirt, tracing the outline of his scars.She watched the place where she touched him, as though she expected to see literal sparks fly.‘No?Why did you have the book, then?What’s it about?’
‘Didn’t finish it,’ he gritted out.‘I was bored shitless.’
Wren’s fingers dipped lower, dragging over his shirt now, down his abdomen, tracing over every ridge there.She looked every bit as powerful as she did when she called a storm forth from the sky.
‘You’re a shitty liar, Warsword.’She tilted her face, so that if he dipped his head a mere few inches, he could kiss her.Gods, he wanted to.Every part of him was screaming to take her in his arms.
Her hand drifted south and his head hit the wall behind him.She wastestinghim.Trying to figure out what would make him crack.Whatever she’d read in that damn book had her research process well underway, and he was her experiment.
‘Is this where you tell me you’re not wearing undergarments again?’His breath caught in his throat at the pain of not being able to touch her.
‘Wouldn’t you like to know.’Wren stepped back, leaving him cold and wanting.
This woman would be the end of him, and she knew it.
But Torj had told no one of what he’d discovered.While Audra, Kipp, Thea, and Wilder suspected, he had never confirmed the soul bond’s existence, nor had he told anyone that he’d severed the tether between them to save her life.Whenever he wavered, he thought of that moment – the moment where he’d seen the lightleave her eyes – and resolve found him once more.He would do it all again to keep her safe.He would do it a hundred times over if it meant Wren still walked the midrealms, even if he couldn’t walk beside her.
He straightened, adjusting himself.‘Tell me what to do, Embervale.’He could feel the sparks of storm magic crackling within her, a flurry of raw power that she seemed to struggle to control.
‘You want an order, Bear Slayer?’she said sharply, thrusting her hand towards the corner of the room.‘Clean those pots over there.I need empty vessels to propagate the silvertide in.’
And then she was back at her desk, shoving aside the clutter and whipping out her notebook, as though she hadn’t just had his heart beating in the palm of her hand.
Torj cleared his throat, hoping the action would somehow steel him against the utter turmoil roiling within.It did no such thing.
‘Right,’ was all he managed.
For the next hour, they worked in silence: Torj cleaning out small pots in the bathing chamber and bringing them back to her, Wren filling them with soil from a large sack at her feet.Torj didn’t ask how or when she’d managed to obtain such a thing.He just did as he was told.
He watched as Wren planted a range of silvertide rose samples in the freshly potted soil.Her workbench was even messier than usual, covered in clumps of dirt and puddles of water, but she didn’t seem to notice.Instead, she was intent on noting down the time of planting, how much water had been given, and where the soil had come from.He shouldn’t have been surprised to find that there were, in fact, multiple bags of soil beneath her bench, from different parts of the academy grounds.
‘I’m trying to determine where it might best grow.The soil consistency is different all over Drevenor,’ she muttered, more to herself than to him.
Torj was more fascinated than he cared to admit as he glancedbetween the alchemist and the silvery blooms at her fingertips – their petals soft as whispers, their thorns sharp as broken glass.
Wren had dirt smudged across her scarred cheek and mud lining her short nails when she came to stand in the centre of the room, her hands on her hips.She looked from the floorboards to the stained-glass window, the crease between her brows deepening.‘They won’t get enough light here.’
Before Torj knew it, she was barging through to his room, examining the angle of his window.
‘The seedlings will have to live in here,’ she declared.‘Your room gets more sun.’
Though Torj didn’t particularly care, he asked, ‘For how long?’
‘No idea,’ Wren replied.‘Some seeds can take as little as seven days, some up to two months...It depends on what conditions they find ideal.’She dusted her hands off on her apron.‘That will do for tonight.I’m going to bed.’
As she turned to leave, Torj couldn’t stop himself; he caught her arm.‘Wait.’His voice was low, his heart pounding as his hand closed over her warm skin.‘You’ve got dirt on your cheek.’
His thumb gently brushed over the scar there, lingering a heartbeat too long.He had tended to that wound himself.He’d nursed her for weeks after the Gauntlet, washing the blood from her skin, treating her injuries with salves.
