Page 137 of Wings of Lies
I wiped away the tears trailing down his cheeks, not sure what to say to all that. His confession didn’t exactly excuse his behavior. He didn’t have to say the horrible things he did. It didn’t sound like that was one of his commands. Even if Brock was watching his every move, Aspen took out his rage and fear on me for coming to a world he couldn’t save me from. I understood it but didn’t forgive him for it.
“How long until you’re back to the evil bastard,” I joked, kind of.
“Maybe if we continue to always touch, he’ll never come back.”
Oliver groaned a few feet away, and a shot of guilt hit me. I forgot about him. “Not sure how that’ll work, seeing as Oliver’s waking up, and soon his knife will be at your throat.”
Aspen sat back, sweeping a deadly gaze over Oliver’s moaning and groaning form. At his severe expression, I looked at his rune under my thumb, relieved it wasn’t glowing. This was a facet of Aspen. The utter confidence, as he sized up Oliver, that I once thought was arrogance was really self-awareness. Aspen grew up in Elora. He knew this world. He had years of experience. And yeah, maybe he was a little arrogant, but most of it was backed up by the fact he could kill someone without a thought.
“You can’t hurt him,” I said, not exactly sure where we stood but hoping he listened.
Aspen glanced back to me and nodded before taking my hand from his face, placing it on my chest and almost releasing me, but I squeezed it in a death grip.
“What are you doing?” I panicked.
“You’re right, we can’t touch forever. I need to put my gear back on if your friend is gearing up for a fight, and you need to put your pants back on.”
Dirt and sticks dug into my exposed skin. I swallowed. If Aspen hadn’t shown up or he was even a second later… I squeezed my eyes shut.
Warm, calloused hands smoothed away the frown between my brows.
“Hey, sweetheart, look at me.” I did, staring into his vibrant blues. “I will always come for you. I will always find you.”
“Can you sense my emotions?”
He cocked his head to the side. “No, but I’m intelligent enough to put two and two together.”
I was wrong. He was arrogant.
“I can sense yours,” I admitted, knowing he needed to know the other facet of our bond.But why couldn’t he sense mine?
“What?”
I nodded. “It’s true, but I think your rune affects when I can and can’t sense them.”
“For how long?”
Thinking back to my dream-walks, I remembered a couple of instances I sensed emotions that didn’t feel like my own. “From the beginning.”
“I wonder?—”
“Ahh, fuck-a-duck, how did that twig knock me out?” Oliver groaned, interrupting our conversation.
Aspen grabbed my chin, turning my attention back to him, and ignored Oliver. “The male I decapitated was an Archangel bounty hunter. Grab the feather from his belt and the cuffs from his pocket. I want you to cuff my ankles. They’ll stop my power and make it harder for me to take you.” He fished something out of his pocket and handed me a black key—the one that matched the color of my cuffs. “Then I want you to run as fast as you can back to the Earth portal and get the hell out of Elora.”
“And leave you?” I asked, pocketing the key so I didn’t lose it.
He nodded, earnest.
I smacked him across the face.
Chapter
Thirty-Two
“Are you out of your mind?” I yelled, winding up to smack him again.
Aspen snatched my wrist before my second hit landed. The smack wasn’t hard, but it stunned him. Oliver scrambled to push between us like he would save me from the big bad prince who told me to leave him in Etherea, cuffed and without his powers.
