Page 4 of A Bond of Ice and Glass
He… loves me?
I should say it back. This is Loch, of course I love him, but the three words feel frozen in my throat. “Shout out if you need anything. There’s always someone nearby. You have guards outside.”
I only really feel calmer when the door’s shut and he’s left me alone. I must be sicker than I feel because that is Loch. My Loch! I push the sheets off my body and see I’m wearing a short red nightdress. Red. The colour of my parents’ rule and a colour that I’ve never been allowed to wear before.
My legs feel like jelly as I hobble over to the only window in the stone room. The window’s frosted with steam, and I rub it to see outside. I have to see where I am, and it’s worth the risk of passing out to get to the window. The view isn’t great because we aren’t that high up, but I’m in a small town with gigantic red stone walls, and on each of the walls, there are cannons. Massive cannons and huge ruby red arrows sticking out of them. Fear lurches in my chest, and I touch my racing heart, wondering why I’m so scared of them.
They are good… they protect me from the Dragon King, who has married me, hurt me and taken everything from me,beginning with my parents and my crown. No dragon is getting anywhere near here without being dead first. They should make me feel safe, but instead, the sight of them causes a heavy feeling to plummet in pit of my stomach.
I back away to the bed, my eyes dropping to my wedding finger again. For a moment, I imagine a ring there as someone else kisses my hand, and the feeling in my chest isn’t fear.
It’s love.
Chapter 2
The mist surrounds me again, wrapping around my body and pulling me in until I’m trapped in its embrace, unable to see or hear anything. Except from him. His burning leaves scent, invading all my senses, and his voice, sweeping down over me like an icy current, shocks me to my core.
“Mine,” he growls in a deep, possessive voice. “You’re mine, and I don’t share what’s mine.”
Something soft and silky brushes against my feet as I’m slowly dragged forward.
I try to open my mouth to speak, to scream at him that I don’t know him, but my lips remain shut as if they’ve been sewn together. I’m placed on the ground, my feet sinking into a cushioned surface. I glance down to where a wave of mist ripples around me. Flames cover the ground, hissing and crackling, but I feel nothing when I walk through them.
“Where are you?” I can finally speak again. My voice echoes around me. “Whoare you?”
The male doesn’t reply, but somehow I know he’s close. Watching. I continue walking forward. The train of my longred dress trails behind me, wafting up flames and kicking ash into the mist.
“Why do you keep appearing in my dreams?”
There’s another rush of ice-cold air, and then a pair of hands grab me from behind. Firm, possessive hands that yank me hard against a strong, muscular body. Warmth floods me, instantly erasing the chill gnawing at my bones.
“Because I need to,” he whispers, his lips lowering by my ear. “Because I fucking want to.”
Hot breath trickles down the side of my face and neck. The hairs lift on my skin, and a shudder rakes through me. I should pull away from him. Fight him. Turn around and identify the man who now haunts my dreams. But all I seem capable of doing is freezing in his arms while my heart beats wildly in my chest, and a strange yet familiar warmth gathers low in my belly.
Why… why can’t I breathe all of a sudden?
Why am I not fighting him?
He trails his lips softly down my throat before rubbing his nose against my skin like he’s breathing me in. Taking in my scent.
“Fuck, I’ve missed you.” His lips move upward again, kissing every inch they touch. His fingers dance along the contours of my throat. “I’ve been thinking about all the ways I’m going to kill these motherfuckers for taking you away from me.” His lips press against the bottom of my throat while his hand roams upward, roughly turning my head to the side, his fingers digging into my cheek and jaw. “The seas will fill with their blood for depriving me of you. Of this… Somehow none of it matters unless you come back to me.”
I want to scream at him, ‘I don’t even know you!’but my words die in the back of my throat. Or rather, they’re choked from me when his grasp suddenly tightens briefly to cut off myair supply. Still, I don’t move. I don’t even fight him. I’m utterly powerless in his arms, and that warmth spreading through me? It feels good.
So, so good, and familiar.
It’s the first thing that’s feltrealsince waking up.
“Do you remember what I told you when we first met?” he breathes against me. His voice holds a possessive growl to it. “When you tried to run away from me?”
I remember nothing, not even his name. Something keeps me from admitting that. I shake my head and try to ignore the way my body trembles against him when he once more kisses me, his lips moving slowly along the planes of my neck. They’re like a branding iron against me, searing my skin all the way to the space between my thighs. An area that’s never wakened until now, igniting with a warmth so powerful it snatches the air from my very lungs. Again I shake my head at him, unable to say anything. He chuckles against me, his lips spreading against my flushed skin.
“That I will always find you, Maelena. Even in the mist.”
Warm,golden light stretches against my eyelids. I pry them open slowly, and for a moment, my surroundings are unrecognisable. Until reality slams into me again, and my stomach flips as awareness sinks back in. I’m in Lochlan’s family home. I’ve been rescued from the Dragon King and brought here for my own safety.
The fact I can’t remember how I got here still feels utterly surreal.
