Page 15 of Fire Kissed
Ultimately, my determination seems stronger than his as I overpower him and carry on with his hand tightly in mine. I keep going, but the warrior of a man behind me drags on my speed until I’m forced to jeopardize my life to the shadow man. I acknowledge Torben with a small glance over my shoulder as I try to continue on toward the growing towers ahead.
“He’s gone! He’s gone! Stop trying to break my fucking arm!”
With my drilling heart and my pounding blood telling me to keep moving, my body believes every word this man says. It’s strange how easily trust can be changed. So quickly taken away and so carefully given back.
My boots sink into the ground as I finally look out into the blackness of the night. It’s no longer hidden in shadows. Just a pure night sky that no longer crawls with the sensation of being watched.
“Where did it go?” I ask on a trembling breath.
Torben’s green eyes are big and watchful, looking me up and down as he takes his hand from mine and rotates his arm this way and that.
“It fucking got scared off.” He scowls at me a minute longer while massaging his shoulder.
“Scared off by what?” I blink at his anger. I literally just saved his life. But I guess thank yous are like swear words in the Realms of Hell.
“By what? By you! What the hell was that?” His wild eyes search my features as if something is hidden beneath my confusion.
“What was what?”
His big arms lift at his sides to fully display himself as if he needs to remind me of his godly status. The lines of his biceps alone draw my attention from the simple gesture.I get it. You’re a perfectly made man. I have noticed. I have appreciated. Please don’t distract me during this important moment.
“Are you... you just blew through a hundred miles of Hell in under ten seconds, Princess. I’m pretty sure my molars got lost somewhere along the way.” He rakes his palm down his unkempt beard as though his beautiful facial hair is the real concern in this situation.
“A hundred miles?” I ask slowly.
“Your damn boots are shot,” he says weirdly.
I lift my right foot, slopping it from the mud just to find that the material at the sole of it is torn away at the front, barely holding together in the middle and at the heel. Beneath the thick mud, my toes of my left foot curl slowly, but the wetness within the shoe tells me it isn’t in any better shape.
“Where has all that been? Where was all of that when Hela was pressing down on you for the last few days?”
My mouth opens, but I don’t know what to say. I know I’ve physically be getting stronger without my wolf to lean on but it’s never been like this. My wolf warms me inside and out. She’s accepted her prison within me, but she isn’t the type to give up. She never has been. I’m just unsure if this was a fight-or-flight reaction. A one off that may never come up again.
What... what if it really does never happen again?
My stomach sinks, and I hate the thought so much that I push it all from my mind. All of it. Is it worse to live your life not knowing what you’re capable of, or is it worse to know you’re capable but unwilling?
Guilt for myself, my mother, and my friends sits heavily within me. Even as I pretend to ignore it.
“I don’t know,” I say rather lamely. “Let’s keep going.” I use his line that he loves so much. I shove thelet’s keep goingright in the warrior’s face, and he clearly is not a fan of unresolved emotions.
Yeah, welcome to the club, asshole.
I take his brooding silence as a response, and the two of us eventually wander pass the first broken-down building that signals we’ve enteredthe City. Broken glass cuts into my toes, and large bricks litter the mud here and there. The road, or the slop of space that separates one building from the other, is isolated. A hanging light held together with just wires swings above us. It’s the only one around as far as I can see. Not a single sound accompanies us. The creepy feeling of the shadow man is long gone, but in its place is a new unsettling eeriness.
“Torben,” I say slowly, and he shifts his attention toward me just as slow. “Are we being watched?”
His long hair flicks around his shoulders as he shakes his head no.
“Only by the City.” His rumbling whisper crawls over my skin as that response fully sinks in.
A rumbling shakes around us, and he grips my wrist quickly, rushing me against his chest as he spins us toward the right. Bricks tumble down, and the weight of his body bears down on me as he shields me.
Just as a building erupts from the mud, cutting off the road we entered through.
I blink at the newly created but rambling shack of a towering, three-story building.
“What...”
