Page 128 of A Kingdom of Wild and Power
The contrast made her stomach turn.
He lingered there, fingertips ghosting over damaged flesh, as though he had not been the one to cause it. As though he were studying his own handiwork.
Then, without a word, he rose.
His footsteps retreated across the chamber.
The door shut.
And Ylva remained on the warm stone floor, limbs still bound by magic, staring at the ceiling as tears slid silently into her hair.
She did not make a sound.
She simply cried quietly and helplessly while the room swallowed her whole.
Jealousy can be so destructive.
But it’s almost impossible to control. It is a growing sensation in the pit of your stomach that branches out across the entirety of your soul. Until all you can do, think or believe are the sick and twisted thoughts your mind has conjured. It never is real, these poisonous words that slither into you. But they are there, nonetheless. Twisting you. Breaking you. Until you no longer know what is real and what is not.
Tabitha Wysteria
Dawn smoothed the thin blanket across the narrow cot she had been assigned during her brief stay in this forsaken stretch of desert. The chamber was modest; three cots arranged side by side and a shallow stone basin in the corner where the desert folk washed their faces and feet before prayer. The air still held the faint scent of sand and sun-warmed stone.
She had been made to share the room with Alina and Mareena and had pointedly ignored them the night before, silence wrapped around her like armour. By the time she had woken, their belongings were gone, as though they had never occupied the space at all.
Kai appeared at the archway, which held no door, only a curtain meant to grant the illusion of privacy. He leaned against thecarved stone frame, arms folded across his chest, a slow smile stretching over his face as he watched her.
‘Is something amusing you, commander?’ Dawn asked, folding the blanket with careful precision before placing it neatly at the foot of the bed.
‘I’ve never seen you make a bed before,’ he replied.
Dawn rolled her eyes, though she did not look at him. ‘And that is somehow entertaining to you, is it?’
‘Didn’t think you’d know how.’ He gave a casual shrug, a quiet laugh rumbling in his throat. ‘With all that magic of yours. Thought perhaps you’d simply command the blankets to fold themselves.’
‘It isn’t as though I can use that here,’ Dawn muttered, lowering her voice instinctively. Even the walls in this place felt as though they might be listening. She turned to him then, arching a brow. ‘Are you going to help me, or are you content to stand there looking like an idiot?’
She had not expected him to obey. Kai Blackburn was not a man who followed orders easily, least of all hers. So when he laughed and pushed himself off the archway to join her, finishing the last corners of the bedding with surprising diligence, she faltered.
For a moment, she simply watched him.
He was infuriatingly beautiful.
She had noticed the way eyes followed him through the mountain corridors, how women paused mid-step, conversations faltering as they stared. Partly, perhaps, because he was wyverian and exotic in a land of sand and sun. But that was not all. There was something about Kai, something reckless and bright, something that pulled attention like a flame drew moths.
‘You’re drooling again,’ he said lightly.
Dawn snapped her gaze to his face, narrowing her eyes. ‘I do not drool.’
‘I’m truly not complaining,’ he replied, mischief glinting in his dark eyes. ‘I just wouldn’t want you soaking the bedding I’ve just so carefully folded for you.’
Heat flooded her cheeks before she could stop it. Her attention dropped traitorously to the cot, to the neatly laid sheets.
And for a fleeting, treacherous second, she imagined him there. Stretched out across them. Bare.
‘Are you picturing me naked right now?’ he asked, far too perceptive for her liking.
Dawn hissed under her breath and snatched one of the folded blankets, hurling it at his head. He moved with effortless grace, stepping aside so it fluttered uselessly to the floor.
