Page 149 of Commanding Flame and Shield
It was true, if this dynamic was going to work. I couldn’t be more protective of my male mate than I allowed him to be of me. I nodded.
“So…you get anywhere?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think there’s anywhere to get, I’m afraid he’s…convicted. In what he believes. He offered to allow me to read him—he’s that confident in his cause.”
“And…did you?”
I shook my head again, closing the gap to sit beside him on the table. Immediately, August’s warm hand was stroking lazy circles down my back. Leaning into the touch, I nearly purred before a sigh hissed through me. “He’s a condescending, arrogant prick.”
August snorted. “Are you surprised?”
My breath came out in a long sigh. “No. A fool’s hope, I guess, that perhaps he could be reasoned with. I just…God, I hate war. Hate blood and death and pain. This battle, August…”
“I know,” he breathed, and laid back down on the table, motioning for me to join him. I did, carefully curling my body into his side, resting my head against the soft spot between his shoulder and chest.
“Can you show me again, your watermagic.” I giggled at the word. It was cute, the way he viewed our ability to wield elements. He wrapped his base arm tighter around my torso, and shifted his fingers again, freeing a towering lioness from the water in a ferocious leap forward. She prowled across the air in front of us, stalking and gnashing her teeth. “When did you practicethat?”
“All the times you…were out saving the world. Saving callings. I decided to use the time for something fun. If we weren’t training, and you were off fighting demons…I would need to distract my anxiety, so…I did this.” The smile in his voice brought a grin to my own face. I nuzzled into his chest again.
“You were nervous for me?”
“Don’t smile so big when you say that. Of course, I was nervous for you.”
“I’ve been doing this—”
“For three hundred years. I know, I know. But I…you know…cared for you. Despite myself.”
“Despite yourself,” I mocked, pinching his side. The energy of his smile filled the very air I breathed.
“Yes. Despite myself. I tried so hard to convince myself it was something else. Some other…attachment. I didn’t think you would…return the sentiment.”
How, I wanted to ask.
I kissed his chest and set my hand over his heart, feeling it thrum against me through the thin fabric. The scent of him sent heat spiraling through my core, and I hummed. “I’m sorry. If you didn’t realize what you are to me. I can be a bit…preoccupied.” I watched his lioness transform into an enormous flock of birds and dive towards us before spiraling away.
“Your focus, my love, is unparalleled. Confusing as hell…but incredible.”
For a long few minutes, August played with his water creatures, freezing them and unfreezing them, turning them into snow flurries, and melting them back into beasts, and dolphins, wolves, and mice. It was beautiful magic.
Somewhere between our morning run through the grounds of Grayshell, and breakfast with the hierarchy in the hall, my mind turned molten hot. Anxiety, I realized, rippled down my body, bones filling with a deep-seated dread that I couldn’t shake. It didn’t matter that the coven was present, that the visions hadn’t changed. Didn’t seem to matter that August kept that grin on his face, or that Alec swaggered about, talking shit about me slicing down Adrastos. That swirling lava just seemed to tighten in my gut, threatening to bring breakfast back up.
Perhaps it had been a mistake, thinking the clever, handsome Commander might be swayed—might see reason, or value life. Maybe even value me, as he said he did, enough to drop this ridiculous ultimatum. The Renown were notorious for their ruthlessness. I’d sliced down enough of them to know their cruelty. And now my mind reeled with his words, his taunts, his flaunting of his powers, however reserved he’d kept them. I hadn’t even begun to show mine, hoping the flicker of them was enough to keep his ambition remotely at bay. Hoping, and allowing that hope to die, all in the same heartbeats. He'd already seen the magnitude in his visions of course. But I'd seen much of his as well.
August didn’t ask questions when I slipped back into my battle black skintight suit. Didn’t ask questions as I laced up my boots. He just mimicked the motions and stuck to my heel. Just followed me back out into the grounds as I ran, and ran, and ran, as if I could sprint my way away from the visions assaulting my mind.
You’ll see—you’ll both see—thatIam your way out of this.
Because according to the visions, Adrastos told the truth. Lucifer, damn him, was about to either lose control, or free the horsemen. And our coven was at the heart of the thin line of resistance. The thin line of defense of mortality—the thin barrier of hope and redemption for a people determined to damn themselves. But there were those that still fought, tried and tried to be and do good. Tried to be worthy of a sacrifice no one could ever repay. They would suffer when the horsemen came too. It was all there. In the visions. And so, his words bounced within my skull.
We are two sides to the same coin, Alvara of Grayshell. Don’t think for a moment I haven’t considered what it would be like to burn you to dust.
For all intents and purposes, it seemed that we were, indeed, equals. I couldn’t outmaneuver him. Couldn’t seem to outsmart him. And even his gifts seemed rival for my own. The dark shadow to my light.
Anger, white hot and unchecked, seemed to boil against my skin as my mind ran back over both interactions. Over the visions he cast, of our kind ruling over the mortals, degrading them as servants and slavesin exchangefor meager stable survival.
Suffocating pressure seemed to press against my skull, my skin, ache in my bones. I wanted to scream, wanted to thrash that beautiful, arrogant face. Breath hot and ragged, my legs obediently kept firing, kept moving, kept propelling my body forward. Round and round, my mind began to spin. The ground beneath me seemed to tilt, ribs crushing the last of the air from my lungs, and the sky itself began to press down on me. Somehow the ever-spring of Grayshell became sweltering hot, flush rushing through my entire body, sweat soaking the small of my back, the gap between my breasts. My feet skittered to a stop, spraying tiny gravel pebbles in a wave as my momentum abruptly halted. August slid to a standstill beside me.
“Ally?”
