Page 67 of Ember and Eclipse
Before she turned away, he grabbed her hand.
“I know it’s a lot,” he murmured. “And I’m sorry. For all of it. At any given time, you can command me to go, and I will.”
She had no words for him, so she merely nodded.
Chapter XXXIX
Shecouldn’tbeinthat house with Devdan any longer. In the three days he had been there, his neck had mostly healed with the aid of lowering his fever and some medicinal salve. He was becoming agitated with resting, and she may or may not have purposely given him tea with the best herb she had that caused sleepiness.
But even more, she couldn’t stand the look of longing and expectancy lingering on his face long after he stopped looking at her. It was unbearable.
She couldn’t be what he wanted her to be.
Numb and detached, she found herself at her favorite swamp for the first time since she had returned. A large crocodile was already on the bank, warming himself in the last rays of the sun. His eyes opened, marking her even before she was fully in view.
“Aloysius,” she hummed with a smile. She sat down beside him and patted his meaty side. “I told you I would come back. Have you been keeping your territory secure?”
She looked out at said swamp. The sunset cast a purplish hue to her vision. The waters were calm on the surface and the algae blanketing the top moved very little. Dragonflies flitted and buzzed, hovering only to disappear again. Pulling her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms around herself, she let the tranquility wash over her.
Darkness descended swiftly, sending the large crocodile sliding back into the water. It was his movement that made her realize her vision had become blurry.
Tears. It had been so long since she cried that she brought her fingers up to her eyes in disbelief. They came away wet, and it only served to make more pour over her lashes and down her cheeks in steady streams.
“Why am I crying?” she whispered, the feeling altogether strange, especially because she couldn’t locatewhatwas causing it. Though sadness had been a companion she knew well, these tears were also something else.
But even as she contemplated why, she knew. The constant coldness within her had melted. She couldn’t pinpoint the exact day it had happened. Outside of the temple when she was nothing but a torch of emerald and vengeance? Before? Or steadily over time as she was dragged back to the heart of Romul?
That lingering coldness had gone, and in its place was something else. Something deep and coiling. Infernal and fanged. As it awoke and surfaced, it brought her magic, broiling and destructive, with it.
At first, it was just invisible heat brewing in the confines of her being. She rose shakily to her feet, the world around her obscured.
She recognized it for what it was, for something she knew intimately and wore her face. Rage. It had been a slumbering volcano, a fire-breathing dragon deep underground. But now, it could no longer be contained. It was a release that was years in the making.
“Rel?”
The voice sounded far away, separated by a veil of undetected fire. There was the world without, and there was the realm she was in. She turned slowly to face Devdan—the unbearable heat twisting her.
“Go away.” She didn’t sound like herself. Her voice came from buried places, from ancient depths.
His hand was pressed to his chest as if he felt everything she did. The look he gave her was open concern.
Some resolve came over him. Through the whirlpool of panic and hurt that she was barely keeping her head above, she saw him stiffen, preparing for war.
“You said you’d go. All I had to do was command you to do so.”
“That offer has expired.”
She grabbed the nearest thing to her, a hefty stone, and threw it with all her strength at him. He snatched it from the air deftly with a curl of his lip. Tossing it up, he caught it again and then threw it into the woods.
He stepped closer, less hesitantly.
Rel, a feral sound emitting from her throat, grabbed one of the knives sheathed at her waist. She threw it directly at him.
He dodged it with a growl. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“I can’t contain it,” she gritted out through clenched teeth as threads of emerald flame burst from her. They whipped around her, a wildfire born of a wild rage. And though she feared she’d set the land ablaze, she couldn’t stop it.
The belt of knives snapped and dropped, her clothes already incinerated and gone.
