Page 14 of Fire Kissed
I can’t seem to swallow the pain rising in the back of my throat.
“You had it worse where you were before you came to Hell?” I ask softly, looking up at him as he focuses intently on the darkness ahead of us.
“No. It was terrible when I came to Hell. The worst experience of my life. I just didn’t know it could be even worse bringing someone I cared about here.”
His throat bobs hard, and I can’t look away from him. His gaze drops. The intensity of those eyes meets mine with a quake rising up in my chest.
Too many thoughts and emotions fight for control.
I arch into him just as he swiftly leans into me. My lashes flutter even as he shoves me aside and sparks electric through his fist. He lifts his powerful magic into the darkness, and I watch him with stunned confusion.
“Don’t touch her hair again!” he warns the night.
Eerie nerves crawl down my spine as I shake my hair out. I flinch and look around at everything and nothing all at once.
...Something touched my hair?
Torben huffs and storms back to me before I ever find the thing I suddenly don’t want to see. My warrior god tucks me in beneath the weight of his arm and ushers me along like I’m an offended girlfriend instead of a woman who nearly got possessed by a shadow man.
When I release the terrified breath in my lungs, I try my best to act unimpressed.
Or at least like I’m not about to piss myself. Only the passing of the time eases my nerves as we walk on. At some point during the hours of being followed by shadow men and silence, a light halos in the sky in the distance.
“Is—is that the City?” I ask on a cutting whisper.
Torben nods, his gaze shifting to the left and then the right.
“Stay close.”
He’s no longer guiding me, but I check the half a foot of space that now rests between me and him...
“If I were any closer, you’d be carrying me.”
“Don’t tempt me,” he whispers in a sensual but warning tone.
My arm brushes his when I attempt to walk even closer at his side. His attention lingers to the right of us. He’s no longer looking at the new lights that are coming into view just up ahead.
In fact, he’s full-on glaring to the side now.
“What—” I turn to see what he sees. But it’s a mistake. One I was warned of vaguely. It should have been a more serious warning. More fitting. More ominous.
Never acknowledge the shadows.
Don’t give them your attention.
For they will bask in your fear.
The darkness reaches out with a wisping, clawing hand. Long legs like tendrils of smoke rush out of the blackness and into the light. The face of the creature is nothing more than a smudging feature, a gaping mouth like the sky opening up to swallow me whole.
Without a second’s hesitation, I grip Torben’s hand, and it’s me dragging him along now. My legs move faster than I have in all my life. The shifter inside of me startles awake, and a pleased growl rumbles through my chest, despite how hard she’s locked away inside. Her power rattles through my limbs, my sight heightens, and with her aid, I see it.
“The City,” I exhale, my body trembling with speed and power.
The lights flick on one at a time as my vision slowly takes in the towering buildings in the distance. Each one clears within the darkness of the heavy night like a beacon stepping out to be seen. Somehow, I urge myself into an even more rapid, frantic pace.
Mud sloshes against my bare calves. The dampness of my boots slashes against my flesh with every thunderous step I take. In the next second, I feel the mud slouching into my boots, but I ignore the sudden discomfort of it and keep moving.
“Rhys.Rhys!” My body jerks backward, my neck flinging hard from the sudden opposing push and pull of our bodies.
