9. Kian

Chapter 9

Kian

X avier was right. I was a dick.

It was getting harder and harder to justify my actions, too.

Gritting my teeth, I moved through the inn, the weight of my new pack cutting into my shoulder as I ascended the stairs that had caused Vale to cling to the railing as if her life depended on it. The satchel was full of clothing for the three of us, plus weapons we sorely needed for the trek home. The brownie innkeeper convinced his wife to open the shop next door so I could pick out clothes and supplies, his pile of gold growing bigger and bigger.

It was easy to find them for myself and Xavier, being the same size, I just got two of everything, but when it came to Vale, it was a mission I hadn't expected. Maybe it was the gods punishing me for being an asshole, but every garment I chose, only made me think of her in my arms. Of peeling each layer from her skin, of her sighs in my ear, and moans from my touch.

And I would never have any of that because I'd been nothing but a jerk to her since she'd woken up.

Self-preservation was a fickle bitch sometimes.

I chose a soft indigo dress for her, with long bell sleeves and a matching fur-lined cloak to keep her warm. Whether we shifted or not, her delicate skin would be shielded from the cold. Then I picked up shoes and thick stockings to keep her legs protected from our scales, as well as undergarments and toiletries.

They had been the real challenge, and I'd contemplated the wares for several minutes before I'd been saved by our host. The brownie's magic allowed him to know what his customers needed better than they did, and instead of the leathers I'd wanted for Vale, he'd pulled the dress instead. I'd been tempted to argue with him, but if tomorrow went how it usually did, Vale would want something presentable to wear to the high court.

I may have given her shit the entire ride here, but I wouldn't allow those vultures to embarrass her. It wasn't her fault where she was born, and if she was the one who could break the curse, what did her station in life matter?

Xavier thought we'd lose her immediately, but I knew better. As scared as she was of dragons, she'd still roared like one. She was stronger than all those who'd come before her. And the more I needled her, the more I knew she would fight tooth and nail to survive.

Was she ready? No, she most certainly wasn't.

She was likely the most ill-prepared Luxa to ever grace the kingdom. But something in my gut told me she would survive. I just had to push her a little more. Or maybe I should back off. Let her rest, let her not be so on guard. If she survived the first trial, she'd never have her guard down again.

Striding through the door to our room, I spied a still-filthy Vale pacing behind the privacy partition as Xavier pulled himself from the bath, her tunic stained burgundy from dried blood, her breeches billowing around her legs. I was actually amazed she'd forced him into the tub first, with the scent of her blood in the air, once again proving just how formidable she was.

I'd already washed the toll of the day from my skin, the common baths a workable solution so I didn't have to risk being naked in the same room as Vale. I honestly didn't know how Xavier could stand it. Even filthy and covered in poison, she was still a siren, calling me to my doom.

"Did you get the needle and thread?" she asked, a certain kind of resolve in the line of her shoulders, setting my teeth on edge.

"What about weapons?" Xavier called, donning a towel around his waist.

That was a dumb question, and he knew it. I still had my twin swords, but Xavier had nothing. Of course I would get him weapons.

"Yeah, yeah. I got what you needed. And clothes, toiletries, and weapons . You're welcome."

I didn't need to be that snide, but unfortunate jealousy seeped into my tone, making me a petulant fool. Something had happened while I was gone, and I didn't like it one bit.

She opened her mouth, likely to volley a zinger in retort, but she snapped her jaw shut as her eyes tightened at the edges.

"Thank you," she whispered, and the sound of it had me closing my eyes so I didn't fuck up everything and kiss her right there.

I swore to all the gods and goddesses, it was as if she'd run her fingers down my spine and sighed in my ear. She'd only ever yelled at me, so this soft voice had my balls aching and my cock standing at attention. How could she do that with just two simple words?

This was it. This was why I'd been an asshole all damn day. If she managed to weasel her way into my heart, she'd claim all of me, consume all of me, gobble up my very soul and smile while she did it.

And I'd fucking let her.

My jaw was granite as I offloaded the pack to the floor and knelt, removing items to keep my hands busy or else I'd reach for her, poison be damned.

At the top of the pack lay the suture kit, the curved needle and cordage exactly what we needed to close Xavier's wounds. I didn't hand it to her. She needed to get that poison off her skin first, and the thought of her disrobing only a few feet from me, made me certain I'd done something in a past life to be punished this way.

Carefully, I set it on the bed along with her dress, cloak, and Xavier's leathers. Next to them, I placed a wicked dagger with a jeweled inlay, which I thought she'd like, and a silver hairbrush and comb set.

"What about the Nightwinter berries?" she asked softly, likely trying and failing not to alert Xavier that she was worried. "Could you find any?"

Of course she wouldn't care about sundries when Xavier was still bleeding.

I reached into my breast pocket and dumped the berries in a small basin on the side table. "It's the most I could find. I haven't seen them in a century, but then again, I haven't been looking for them, either."

Why would I need them when I could heal in minutes? But something told me she'd needed them far more than I'd have liked her to.

"You need to get in the bath," I reminded her, kinder this time, even though it would likely kill me to be this close to her naked. "I can close him up."

She stopped pacing, but she didn't stop wringing her hands.

"I told him I would do it. I'm the reason they're there in the first place. He wouldn't have gotten them if I?—"

Perfect. I'd shoved her away so much, now she felt guilty for Xavier's battle wounds. Gods, I was an asshole.

"I shouldn't have said that to you," I admitted, really looking into her eyes for the first time since the mountaintop. "It wasn't your fault. That battle had nothing to do with you or your magic. Had I been smarter about it, I would have ripped off our royal patches before we traipsed through enemy territory. They weren't attacking because of you. They were attacking because of us. None of it was your fault."

In fact, I'd been the one to paint a target on her back. She'd been wearing my coat, the large royal crest on its back a beacon for attack. I'd thought I'd been so kind, but my kindness had nearly gotten her killed. It seemed even when I was trying not to be an asshole, I still was one.

Her smile was bitter, as she shook her head. "That doesn't mean he didn't step in front of those arrows because of me. That he wasn't in the forest because of me. Because he did and he was. I said I would help him, so hand over the damn kit."

No, she'd been in that forest because of me. Because I hadn't kept her safe, because I wanted to stall, because I'd taken a hit with that stupid dragon bolt and nearly gotten us both killed.

Guilt lashed at me like a whip.

Vale reached for the roll of leather, but I snatched it up before she could touch it, holding it out of her grasp. "You have what amounts to poison on your skin," I said gently. "It's hurting you with every passing second. If that's not enough for you, Xavier's not healing like he should because of it. I'm not trying to be an asshole, it's just a fact. He needs stitches, and I need to be the one to do it."

Those searing green eyes seemed to slice right through me, like she was waiting for the next insult. I supposed I deserved that. I'd been needling her all damn day. But this time, I swallowed my pride and said a word that hadn't crossed my lips in a century or more.

" Please , Vale. Let me do this."

The word seemed to take her by surprise, halting her single-minded focus on getting the kit from me. It felt so good, I said it again.

"Please?"

Eyes wide, her lush, full lips parted, and I nearly lost all my will right then. Naturally, Xavier took that moment to appear, a towel around his waist and a robe in his hand. Vale startled before her gaze went anywhere but in his direction.

Oh, yeah. Something had happened.

"Fine. After you stitch him, mash the berries into a paste and coat the wounds. It should help with the pain and help them clot."

Then she turned away from me, giving Xavier a wide berth as she skirted around the screen.

Her shadow drew my gaze, and I watched as she unwound her braid before she peeled off her filthy tunic and breeches. My heart picked up speed, and my cock thickened in my leathers as a fair bit of shame hit me square in the gut. I turned, refusing to subject myself to the torture of her shadow or invade what little privacy she had.

Gritting my teeth, I yanked the rest of the procured items out of my bag and unrolled the suture kit. Then my desire died a cold death when she hissed in pain as she climbed in. Her poor feet had to have been mangled in that damn forest, not that she'd said anything. Squeezing my eyes shut, I tried not to think about the mage with his hand on her throat, how she'd been forced to fight before she even had her full strength. How she'd put her body between a mage and Xavier after he'd been injured.

Jealousy burned hotter in my gut, but I swallowed it down. She needed food and healing and sleep. I'd have to save some of those berries for her, too.

Once she was submerged, she let out a little moan of pleasure, and it took everything in me not to turn around and knock that damn screen out of my way just so I could listen to her do it again. My cock throbbed, my scales shivered, and my dragon roared in my head, but I swallowed it all down.

Mindlessly, I opened the suture kit, focusing on the task at hand before I lost the very last vestiges of my control. And all the while I had to force my dragon back to the depths of my consciousness, his screams for claiming getting harder and harder to ignore.

"Sit down before you fall down," I ordered once Xavier started to sway.

Jaw like granite, he sat on the edge of the bed, his eyes glued to the same damn screen I'd been staring at moments ago. I couldn't do the same—not if I wanted his bleeding to stop. So I settled with listening to the water splash in the tub as I got to work closing the wounds that should have healed almost as soon as he'd gotten them.

"We can't let her go through with this," Xavier whispered, his gaze never leaving the screen, even as I knotted the first stitch and started on the next.

As much as I wanted to agree with him, I couldn't. The problem was that the longer I thought about it, the more evident it was to me that Vale was exactly who we needed to break the curse. She might not have the experience with magic as the witches who came before her, but she had a heart like no other.

She would make it out alive—I knew it.

"And we're just supposed to, what? Abscond with a witch under our arm and fuck off to parts unknown? Do you honestly think we would get away with that? Idris knows she's alive. He could sense her all the way from Direveil under a mountain of Lumentium . There is no such thing as running, Xavier."

He flinched as I tied another stitch, but there was no way he'd let this go.

"You and I both know he can't leave that castle. We could get away if we needed to. I know you've thought about it more than once. Don't lie to me."

He knew damn well I couldn't. I had thought about it a time or two when I got low—when I thought this would never end. Dreamt of flying fast and far across the sea, if only to catch a glimpse of what was out there.

"Well, aren't you ready to burn it all down. Let's say she is the one. By taking her, you would be condemning every person with magic to a slow, agonizing death. I don't want her to die either, but everything in me is screaming that she is the one."

He shook his head, likely ready to beat me senseless. "But what if she's not? I don't think you understand. She is?—"

"Important?" I growled, cutting him off. "Trust me, I know."

"Then how in good conscience could we take her there? How could we sit idly by while she b?—"

Fighting off the urge to put my fist in his face, I tied off another stitch. When I moved to the next wound, he hissed, my needle placement not nearly as kind as it should have been. "She. Won't. You didn't see her on that mountaintop. You didn't see how fierce she was. Bloody and dying and still she screamed at me like she wasn't afraid but like she was a dragon herself. She's going to make it."

She had to. I didn't think I'd survive if she didn't.

Xavier's shoulders drooped, and all I scented in the room was his sorrow. "If she does, you and I both know she'll never be ours."

But I knew that already.

"She can hear him," he admitted, and the statement seemed to be ripped from his very soul. "I didn't realize how fucking selfish I was until she told me that. On the mountaintop he told her we were coming. He told her to stay strong. I think we both know what that means."

If he had stabbed me in the gut it would have hurt less. But then again Idris wasn't the only one who could speak inside her head. "I don't think he's alone in that one," I muttered, tying off another stitch. "I'm almost certain she understood me when I told her to stop screaming at me."

Xavier's jaw clenched, and I could almost smell his jealousy.

"Because she can hear both of you," he began, his tone measured as if he had to keep it under lock and key, or else he would throw a punch in my face, "then there's a possibility that she could be far more powerful than either of us can even comprehend."

"Exactly. Meaning she will survive this."

His fists clenched as he swiveled to stare at me, nearly knocking the needle out of my hand. That mattered less than the slitted pupil in his eyes or the scales climbing up his neck. He got to his feet, not giving that first shit about the still-bleeding wounds at his back.

"But will she survive the second? Or the third? She stood in front of me, not knowing whether she would live or die, Kian. I can't let her walk into a slaughter. I just can't do it."

And as much as I wanted to agree with him, I just couldn't. "Out of the two of us, I wouldn't have figured you for a fan of high treason."

"Remember when I told you she would never be ours? If we let her walk in there, I'll be right."

I swallowed, knowing he was right, but… "And if we don't let her walk in there, she's as good as dead, anyway."

His scales started climbing down his arms, over his torso, his body vibrating with rage. I followed his gaze through the top of the screen at the little witch. Her back was to us, her wet hair over her shoulder as she scrubbed at her skin, the flesh pink.

But he wasn't looking at the suds.

No, his eyes were glued to the same damn thing mine were. Thick scars crisscrossed over her whole back, the white color of them telling of their age. Some were jagged as if a whip had ripped her flesh wide. A few were thin, almost surgical. Those had been done with a blade. And at the center of it all, resting between her shoulder blades, was a symbol in old Festian branded into her skin—a symbol that hadn't been used in the kingdom for hundreds of years.

Maybe more.

A long time ago it was used to shun the worst of us, the ones cursed by the gods, the ones with too much magic, too much power, and too much dark knowledge. Over the years it became a punishment for minor crimes, a shame that seemed to follow the bloodline, meant to ostracize and condemn. Once branded, those with the mark rarely survived for long.

Once Idris became king, he deemed the punishment barbaric and put an end to it.

But the leader of the Perder Lucem was nothing like Idris, and for whatever crime she'd committed, he'd labeled her a heretic.

I didn't have to ask her who it was that had whipped and cut and branded her skin. I knew it was the same man who'd stabbed her, who'd tied her to a stake and left her as bait to burn.

Arden.

"I take it back," I growled, the shift threatening to take me over. "Treason it is."

Because there was no way I would let her walk in there knowing what was to come.

Not her.

Not ever.