Pendefyre rediscovers his own.
As I move closer, I can feel him retreating. His kisses slowing, his ironclad control supplanting the passion igniting in my very veins. My fingers dig into his shoulders, desperate to keephim, but I cannot. The tighter I try to hold, the faster he slips away. I feel the flames between us doused by harsh reality, the lust extinguished with a grim efficiency that leaves me clammy with cold.
He shutters the bond between us at the same instant his mouth breaks away. For no longer than a heartbeat, he allows his forehead to rest against mine. Then his arms unwind and he takes a purposeful stride backward.
That single step wounds me like a sword strike to the stomach.
He regards me with an expressionless mask—one that is all too familiar. The only sign he’s at all affected by the kiss is in the teeth-grinding tightness of his jaw. The curl of his fists as they drop to his sides. And, perhaps, in the slight tremor in his voice when he speaks.
“The fymandridae have fled home. It’s time we do as well. A storm is rolling in off the sea. We don’t want to be here when it breaks.”
I nod, for lack of a real response.
There is nothing more to say.
There is everything to say.
We walk in silence, our footsteps pulping the salt deposits. The sulfuric pools littered around us are dark now, steaming gray vats that reflect the overcast sky. With each passing moment, the air thickens with the promise of a downpour. By the time we reach Onyx, who is waiting dutifully beneath a scraggly tree exactly where we left him, the clouds are so black and ominous, it will take a miracle to make it back to Caeldera without getting drenched.
I hardly care. The idea of getting back on a horse, riding pressed close to Penn’s chest for the next several hours when I can still taste him like blood in my mouth, while my skin stilltingles from his touch, seems like a torture designed especially for me by the gods. The thought of a slow plod back to his city—back to a future that holds nothing but frigid civility and staunch self-restraint—seems the cruelest twist of fate I can conjure.
I feel, quite suddenly, that the star by which I have guided my life these past months since I came to Dyved has flickered out, leaving me alone in the darkness. My feet cease their approach without any cognizant decision to stop walking.
“Come,” Penn orders flatly, gathering the reins in his hand. “Get on the horse.”
In the distance, thunder rumbles.
I swallow hard. “No.”
“What do you mean,no?”
“Just what I said. I’m not going.”
“I do not have time for this. We need to get back. We’ve been away too long already. I have a meeting with the southern division leaders at dusk.”
“Go, then,” I say, feeling obstinate. “I’ll find my own way.”
Surely there is an inn nearby. A town where I can hire a horse of my own, or beg the aid of a kindly farmer who might let me hitch a ride on his capital-bound cart…Anything, to avoid getting back on Onyx in this moment.
Penn dashes my hopes in an instant. “This stretch of coast is desolate. There’s not a single settlement for leagues.”
Of course. That would be too easy.
“We are a four-hour ride from Caeldera,” he continues flatly. “A full day’s walk.”
I confess, I do not much fancy an hours-long slog through the elements. My obstinance falters, my hope with it. Avoiding his eyes, my own sweep our immediate vicinity for another option. They widen slightly when I spot it on the other side of the pools, practically shimmering in welcome.
I look back at Penn. “I’ll use the portal.”
“Do not be reckless simply to spite me. You have never traveled by portal alone.”
My teeth clench. “And?”
“Must you always be so oppositional?”
The thunder rumbles closer. “You and I have been bickering since the first moment we met. I see no reason to change that now. Not when everything else is to stay the same between us.”
Penn runs his hands through his hair, tousling the sun-streaked strands. “I am not fighting with you about this. Not again.”