Page 135 of The Legacy of Ophelia
It sent a wave of fire crashing through my blood. It had me gripping his arm around my waist and reveling in the corded muscle, in the heat pouring off his skin. In the bob of his throat when he swallowed and the way his pupils dilated. Gods, I might fall right into that dark stare.
“What are you doing?” I breathed, with a deep swallow of the floral coated air.
Lancaster didn’t speak—something told me he couldn’t, that he didn’t feel in control. Instead, he reached to the side, and from midair, pulled out a pair of boots.
Not just any pair. An exact replica of the ones I’d been wearing for weeks.
“You remembered what they looked like that easily?” I asked.
“I have a very good memory.”
That sentence said too much. Had he been studying me as an adversary? A Hunter and his prey. The Bounty who was now in his grasp, his teeth close enough to dig into the skin of my neck?—
I straightened at the thought, stepping back. “Thank you,” I said as he extended the boots.
And when I slipped them on, abandoning the one remaining from my old pair, I had to hold back a gasp. Lancaster had not simply created a pair of boots for me—they were worn in the exact places I needed so my feet wouldn’t blister when I broke them in.
I dismissed the odd rush of emotion that thought wrought, the string in my chest being plucked again, and we resumed packing and strapping weapons to our bodies.
“What do Bounties smell like?” I asked, returning to our earlier conversation.
“It’s smoky, like an earthy sort of ash,” Lancaster said, sheathing a sword down his back. He didn’t typically carry his weapons where they were visible, storing them wherever his magic allowed him to and pulling them out as needed, but today, he clearly wanted to intimidate.
“That doesn’t sound pleasant,” I said.
And Goddesses be damned—Lancaster laughed. It shocked me enough that I dropped my dagger to the dirt.
Picking it up, Lancaster extended it to me. “The scent is not meant to be appealing,” he said, my fingers brushing his. “But I’m finding I like it.”
Hum. Hum. Hum.
I had to tell that instinct in my chest to shut up. The sensation was drowning my thoughts.
“I smell roses,” I blurted, my voice much more breathless than I intended.
Lancaster stiffened, and my cheeks heated. He was quiet for a long moment, sharp jaw ticking. Then, he said, “Let’s go find the Bounties we’re recruiting so we do not have to stay here another night.”
He stalked off, his shoulders tight and steps precise down the dirt lane.
I watched him go, wondering what in the Gods’ realms had just happened. But my worries were overshadowed when something ruffled behind me, and a Mystique ink letter flared to life over the lantern just inside the tent.
Scooping it up, I recognized Cypherion’s handwriting.
“Well, I suppose it’s good Lancaster doesn’t want to stay,” I muttered to myself.
We had to leave today.
Chapter Fifty
Cypherion
This could be a catastrophic idea.But then again, when it came to the gods, there weren’t many good ideas, were there?
I supposed if I wanted to figure out how we’d ended up here, I’d have to go back to when I was twelve years old and met my friends. I wouldn’t trade that for the world, though. Them, and the Starsearcher before me with a serene, unworried expression on her face as her eyes swirled silver. Those were the things that mattered.
But this extremely reckless idea put everyone at risk.
It putherat risk, and that made the Fatesworn tattoo burn. Made my stomach tighten and my hands ache with the need to fight.
