Page 124 of Commanding Flame and Shield
“I’m sorry about my brother. He’s…impulsive. And petty. And shortsighted.” He reached up towards my cheek with a lover’s familiarity, and I bit back the vile words that danced across my mind. Stay alive. Just stay alive until my strength returned. I flinched away despite myself, when those icy fingers touched my cheekbone. Nothing. No reading. No visions. Just the sting of his flesh against a scrape I hadn’t realized I had. Panic roiled in my gut. Panic and nausea. There had never been a touch that didn’t come with a story.
Adrastos’ eyes narrowed slightly. He hummed. “Interesting.”
I stared down those eyes, just as human as my own. The flicker of the brazier trickled through them, and I studied the light in those irises. Deep brown, like freshly tilled soil, or a dirt road after the rain.
“Are you saying my eyes look like mud?” Amusement twisted his handsome features.
The surprise clearly flashed across my face before I had control of my reaction, as he raised his eyebrows in response.
“I suppose I am. I didn’t mean it that way though. You’re not…what I expected,” I admitted.
“I know,” was his only response. I narrowed my eyes, willing my mind to go blank, to divulge no new information. “Irritating for you, isn’t it? To be wrong?”
“And what, exactly, am I wrong about?” I kept my voice a mask of boredom. Indifference.
“Me. Us. The side you stand on.” He tucked the hair behind my ear, the familiar touch eerie and unsettling. His eyes traced over my face, head cocking to the side slightly as he brought a hand up to brace his jaw.
“What?” I demanded.
Adrastos snorted, shaking his head as his hand came to fiddle with a gold, ruby encrusted hilt on his hip. “You remind me of someone. Couldn’t be though. I’d know her anywhere.” He waved away the topic. “Besides, that was a lifetime or two ago.” He reached for my face again, and I leaned away. “Hold still.” The command in his voice was enough to make me bristle, but I held my ground. He pressed his finger to my face, and I jammed my eyes shut, flinching, as light burst from him. The stinging stopped.
“You…”
“Healed you. Yes.”
“But. Why?”
“You weren’t to be harmed in the first place. Now. Eat. Drink. Heal.” He rose to his feet and turned his back on me to cross the short gap. I wanted to throttle him, leap across the distance and wrap my arms around his throat and strangle him. He snorted another laugh. “You could try, Princess. But I wouldn’t if I were you. You’ll find your strength is…lacking.” He plopped down on the wood chair behind the desk, and rubbed his temples, eyes closed in apparent frustration.
“Stop calling me that,” I growled. He chuckled. Actually chuckled. I should’ve incinerated him the moment he’d jumped into that hallway to save his brother. He gave me a dry smile that told me he was indeed reading every single word that crossed my mind. And yet…mine remained…silent. “What did you do to me?”
He sighed loudly and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Ididn’t do anything. My bouncing baby brother, however, decided to take it upon himself to test out a theory. That, evidently, is even more effective than I’d dreamed it would be.”
I glanced down to the tightness on my arm, where a bandage was indeed stuck to the skin. My glare would have brought lesser men to their knees, but Adrastos met my stare. “Hedruggedme?”
A curt, apologetic nod.
“I would have preferred you get to talk to us first. Would have preferred you had your tools at your disposal so you could, in fact, see that I speak truth.”
“How convenient for you. To be able to spin your webs however you like, and claim I’d find them true if I stood in my power…rather than face it yourself.”
“Oh, trust me,Princess, I have no intention of facing off against you in your full power. I’m ambitious, not suicidal.”
“If you don’t intend to duel, then what do you intend for me? You dared to bring me here. You know who, and what, I am. As it is, I am sitting here at your mercy. So, humor me.”
“I intend for you to see the truth and join our cause towards a better world.”
“A better world?” I huffed a laugh. “I’ve seen the visions of the future you cast. It’s tyrannical, demonic, and delusional.”
He grinned broadly. “The futures I cast to who? Men who seek power?” The words were a drawl. He scoffed. “They see what they want to see.”
“They might see what you tell them to Adrastos, but I see the truth.”
“Well, truth seeker, tell me then. What is my grand plan, as you clearly know it so well?”
“You believe in our superiority to humans. In restoring a structure of nobility toruleover the mortals.”
“I believe in freeing the mortals from expectations they cannot meet.”
