Page 75 of The Eye of the Fifth
The figure lying on top of a hard bed slowly sat up. Black eyes bore into hers, and darkness swept over her. That invasive, dominant light within her dulled to a faint glow, and somehow she knew that atop that mountain, her physical body had dimmed too.
She beheld the familiar male before her. ‘You… are you… are you real? Is this real?’
The male stood, towering well over a foot above her. His waving black hair hung loose around his shirt-covered shoulders, and his beard was longer and more unkempt than the last time she’d seen him. He was different this time, and not just in appearance.
Though he’d been physically naked the first time she’d encountered him, he was more bare now. There was a wildness to him, an endured sort of abandonment hidden in the soft creases of his square face.
He tilted his head to one side, calm intrigue befalling his beautiful features.
‘Am I imagining you?’ Kyra demanded. She had to know if this was some magic, or if she was just losing her damned mind.
‘No,’ he softly replied.
‘But you know who I am, don’t you?’ Kyra whispered. ‘You’ve said it before.’
‘Because you told me,’ he simply replied. ‘The first time we met you told me because you thought you were going to die. You said it didn’t matter who knew then. Do you not remember?’
She did remember, though up until now she’d believed it to be a hallucination. Her sanity had been clouded by whatever fucking sedative those Union cunts had put in her food.
‘How did we meet that night?’ she demanded. ‘Were you really there, under the Citadel?’
The stranger cocked his head to one side, surveying her. ‘You are projecting to me, just as I projected to you the last time. Just as you are doing now. I admit, I am yet to understand the connection between us. It ought not to be possible, to project directly to a person and not to a place one has been before. And yet… here you stand.’
That accent.
‘You’re Zarynthian,’ she said suddenly.
He became very still. Stoical in his stance. ‘I am,’ he said quietly, but there was no pride in his voice. If anything, he sounded almost sorry about it. He flexed his right fist, and a glint of gold caught her eye.
‘Who are you?’ Kyra asked, heart in her throat, for the emblem etched onto the signet ring on his middle finger was unmistakable. She’d endured enough mind-numbingly boring history classes with Win in her youth to recognize it immediately.
A dragon’s head, cocooned inside a twisted flame.
The stranger fisted both his hands then. A certain darkness shadowed his face. Softly, he said, ‘Why ask, when you already know the answer?’
His eyes, black as night, reflected the jittering flames in the torch bracket. And she knew then, knew who it was she’d unwittingly projected to.
The Prince of Fire watched her, and something in Kyra shivered under that depthless gaze of promised death.
‘You destroyed Phaenon City,’ Kyra whispered. ‘You’re the reason all of those people died.’ Images of the blackened mountainside scolded her mind.
‘I don’t deny it,’ he replied, lips barely moving. His stillness was beginning to unnerve her.
He knew who she was. And he was the son of Empress Azar.
She backed up a step.
Fuck. Fuck-
‘Kyra,’Naal’s voice suddenly echoed all around them.
‘Kyra,’ he repeated, as if tasting her name on his tongue, his eyes slightly widening.
Something within her recoiled with fear. Now he knew her fucking name. There was another part of her though, a part she could not even begin to understand, orwantto understand, that bristled with unexplainable pleasure.
It terrified her far more than that initial fear.
‘Kyra! Come back!’Naal’s voice clattered through her mind again, more urgently this time.
