Chapter 33

Dare

The princess wouldn’t have appreciated her current bed. I was sure she was accustomed to far more luxurious surroundings but hey, I was just a peasant.

One of the ancient oaks served as a nicer shelter than I’d owned since our village’s lord burnt down my childhood home. Its gnarled roots transformed into a decent makeshift shelter, something that kept the rain off us even if that meant we had a dozen spiders keeping us company, watching us with tiny eyes shining in the darkness.

She laid there on the moss I’d gathered for her, and whenever one of the spiders came too close, I brushed it away. She could thank me later.

For now, she seemed to be drifting through wild dreams in her unconsciousness. She was even more unmoored from reality than usual.

And, true to Hanna’s usual form, she never stopped talking.

“Tiger,” she murmured. “Should’ve named you so I could call you.”

”Shh,” I whispered, brushing a strand of hair from her forehead. ”Just sleep, Hanna. Get better.”

I was never good at healing magic. I’d given her a potion, but it seemed to be taking so long. Her soul had been injured; she couldn’t just heal.

Maybe that trap would’ve killed someone who had less soul.

Maybe it would’ve killed me.

Her eyelids fluttered like the wings of a trapped moth, fighting to break free. My fingers rose to stroke her forehead again, trying to anchor her here, but I froze.

And then I did reach out, running my palm tenderly over her face. She was unconscious. It didn’t matter.

”Come on, Hanna. You need to survive. I love seeing you suffer every day with Kaelan.” The words slipped out, bitter and twisted, the only way I knew how to say anything these days. But I knew the truth. ”Perhaps I just love seeing you every day.”

I let out a scoff, my gaze fixed on the rise and fall of her chest. ”Though I don”t know why.”

The air around us was heavy with the scent of earth and leaves, as if the whole forest was holding its breath with me, waiting for her to heal enough to wake.

And there I was, sitting beside her, a man caught between hate and something dangerously close to love, unwilling to admit which pulled stronger.

Hanna”s breathing hitched.

”Kaelan,” she breathed out, the name a soft dagger twisting in my gut. My fingers tightened around hers.

“Not Kaelan,” I told her. “No, I’m the one babysitting you today.”

I wanted to shake her awake, demand she explain why his name came so easily to her lips when I was the one keeping vigil.

”Thorne,” she murmured next, voice trailing into the quiet rustle of the forest.

I leaned closer, the words slipping from me before I could swallow them down. ”Do you intend to take my friends from me?”

The question was so childish. There was no one here to witness my weakness, but I still felt embarrassed.

But still. Thorne and Kaelan were the closest thing I had left to family. I didn’t want to be left out.

And more than that… I didn’t want to lose her.

But I had no right to the emotions that pressed against me. My father had despised the royals. He had despised the Isle. Now he was dead, and I was obsessed with a spoiled Isle princess?

Her fingers clutched at my tunic with a sudden ferocity that yanked me from my own brooding thoughts. Hanna”s eyes, wide and wild, searched mine.

”Caer Far.” Her breath hitched, panic wracking her features. She looked as lost and afraid as she had when she had her panic attack, and once again, it made me long to soothe her. ”He”s going there, Dare. It”s where he needs to be.”

”Easy, easy,” I murmured. ”Why Caer Far?”

Why would he want to return to the place he’d left painted with blood, chasing down Hanna while he protected her?

“I don’t know,” she whispered.

“Because it was a dream,” I told her, even though I was troubled by the possibility that this wasn”t. Could she have forged a mental bond with Kaelan? They were married, after all, their souls stitched together by eternal vows.

The thought sent a twitch of horror through me.

I had to collect a spider friend from my sleeve and drop it at the very edge of the root system. With the rain pouring down outside, everything was seeking a dry place.

That mental connection was more permanent than any ceremony could ever be.

It was a bond Kaelan already shared with Thorne, and now he would share it with Hanna. That was it. There were no more mental links to be made. The three of them would be bound together forever, always able to walk into each other’s minds.

Something raw and painful settled in my gut.

There she lay, barely alive, and still so irrevocably his, even in her dreams.

“No. Not a dream.” Her eyes, bright with unshed tears, fixed on mine with a silent plea. Her voice was filled with desperation as she begged, ”Take me to Caer Far.”

Before I could say anything else, she saw something on my face. Her fingers twined desperately into my lapel, as if she were trying to pull herself into my lap. “Dare, I need you. We need you.”

Tears spilled onto her rounded, freckled cheekbones. Her brow creased, and she wasn’t the kind of girl who was pretty when she cried—she was the kind of girl who got a bit blotchy, to be frank, and I’d have told her so.

But somehow still, those tears were my undoing.

“I’ll bring you to Caer Fae. But you have to promise to be eternally grateful, unendingly nice to me, and you are not, under any circumstances, allowed to die.”

She nodded weakly, unable even to hear a joke when she was so focused on her mission. Her grip on my shirt was loosening, as if she were succumbing to the darkness again. The thought left me lonely. Maybe it was best for her to rest while the potion did what work it could. But I didn’t want her bright presence to fade.

I pulled her out of the cover of the tree’s twisted roots and into the soft, warm rain that beat down upon the forest.

With a deep breath, I let the change overtake me. The more I had shifted into this form, the more I felt the sharp pull of transformation. My humanity receded like the tide going out, giving way to the dragon.

I lowered my snout to Hanna, nudging her gently. Carefully, I scooped her up in my talons.

Later, gliding through the air, I could feel her stir in my grasp. She curled up, instinctively seeking comfort. Her cheek nestled onto the curve of a talon that was razor-sharp on the other side. Her face, framed by the unruly strands of bright hair, softened into a smile.

The sight clawed at something deep within me. My chest tightened with an emotion I couldn”t—or wouldn”t—name.

She slept in my talons with so much trust.

Perhaps in her sleep, she thought I was Kaelan. She thought I was Thorne. After all, she had called to them in her sleep.

She would never call my name.

And yet…

She rested her hand on my scales, stroking me in her sleep as if I were her pet.

As if she were home.