Page 65 of What Whispers in the Dark
“Come with me,” he breathed and gestured his head toward his right shoulder despite the blade that slipped along his skin. Blood pebbled and beaded, but Aiden didn’t so much as wince.
Did heknowshe needed blood? Needed tobleedsomething? Is that why …
For a fleeting moment, her jaw loosened, releasing not only the tension but the emotion clawing out of her chest.Curse the fucking Flames,she couldn’t stand feeling so vulnerable. Likeany minuscule amount of weakness in the form of an aching chest or stars-fucking-forbid, a tear slipping down her cheek would have her enemies and memories and nightmares reigning down, staking their claim.
It felt like Kieran stood there with his flames … like Vaddrach would?—
A sharp breath. As scathing as dragon flames and just as cruel.
But Aiden remained there. Waiting as he always did. Watching her. Allowing her rage and fear to stir and settle for either pushing him away or something much,muchworse.
Allowing him to see her break.
He was theonlyone she would allow to see it. The only one who never took advantage of it and punished her for the humiliation it brought to her kind and kingdom.
And for some damn reason, she never killed him for it. The only male alive, not even Thalon or Garrik, who had ever seen her fracture.
Maybe that’s why, despite her every logical protest, she scoffed, “To where?” It wasn’t an indication she was interested. Even if she had been, she wouldn’t tell him that.
Mischief played in those summer sky-blue eyes, which, in the silver moonlight glittering between the trees, appeared entirely colorless. Aiden squeezed his hand around her waist, smiled, and promised, “You’ll like it.”
“You’re so sure,” Jade snapped back between her teeth, surveying his face like it held the plague.
“And you have forgotten that I know you well.”
That hand still didn’t move. His face, still offering …
It was an hour later, through the castle gates and around the High City, that Aiden led her to the lesser parts of Karanagar. Some sense of belonging waved over her as their boots squelched in the aftermath of a downpour.
In all the years she’d spent alongside Garrik, living in the castle and accepted as one of Airathel’s adopted elder faelings, the ornate halls and rich belongings never felt … right. Not to one born in moldering tunnels and a city doomed for an eternity below the Upperground.
But this place he’d brought her …
A place that stenched like sweat earned in a full day of weapons training just for survival and not sport. Of mold from muddy streets soaked in a downpour. Of ale and piss spilled beneath boots with far too many holes in them and soaking into the only other pair of socks she had once owned …
Jade couldn’t help but feel a small sense of home. Of … belonging.
In that moment, she wanted to hate Aiden for it—for knowing herso well. But only gratitude surfaced as they strolled alongside crippling walls and rain dripping from roofs with gaping holes, as if winged creatures had burst through the rafters to find their next meal.
Twisting through the rundown buildings, some with nothing but a single candle flickering inside windowsills with no barrier of glass to keep them from the cruel skies and heat of sunlit days, Aiden ushered her forward. She nearly grumbled to him when he stopped outside a place smelling no better than the piss and ale she thought of earlier.
By the time her boots slipped to a stop in the mud, Aiden had ambled forward and skidded a wooden tankard off a table, straight from the hand of an unconscious male, before he tossed it to his lips. Aided by one flickering glass-and-iron lantern hanging above a rickety wooden door, Jade studied the carving inlaid in the grain: a silhouette of a howling bear, chin angled toward a crescent moon with arcane lunar symbols encircling its head like a Celestial crown.
The Moonbrew Maw.
This realm and its infatuation with the moon—she almost rolled her eyes again but tore them away from the tavern to find Aiden enjoying the male’s drink and muttering something likemustn’t let it go to waste.
She’d read the stories of Elysian’s creation but never believed a Celestial’s love formed the land. Her beliefs took on a quality of skepticism, suspecting more of what Garrik thought true than anything else. Love could apparently create incredible things … but hate and wrath … she understood those moved more than just mountains.Hatecould do so much worse.
“The last time we were in a tavern,” she warned and crossed her arms over her chest, “Garrik nearly handed us our asses.”
Aiden grinned, dropping the tankard back on the wood and cursing when the metal handle fell off, clanging on the table. “We’re not goingin, love.” He fumbled with the handle, decidedly giving up when it wouldn’t stay on. “Not yet, anyways.” And gestured with his chin upward.
Jade bunched her brows and followed his inclination. With a quick roll of her eyes and a grunt of illusioned disapproval, she uncrossed her arms and followed him beside the building before climbing the crumbling stones.
It hadn’t been rainingat the castle.
And sitting there on that tavern roof was going to have her melting into a mess of tears in a matter of seconds if Aiden hadn’t distracted her with a ramble about how overly cooked the boar was at dinner that evening. How he thought it a crime against faemanity and humanity that the castle chefs couldn’t produce a honey glaze adequately, but she didn’t question it as she closed her eyes and took in every pebble of frigid rain against her face.
