what’s inside.”
“I never said I refused to open it.”
She stopped pawing through my things and looked up.
I smiled. “You just haven’t asked in the right way yet.”
With a growl, she dropped my shaving kit and savagely grabbed a handful of my hair. “Listen here, asshole. You can act like this is some game all you like—”
“I don’t see it as a game,” I promised, my voice going low as I gazed into her eyes. I’d never been this close to them before. They were stunning. “Whoa. You have little golden flecks in the irises of your brown eyes; did you know that?”
The breath left her lungs. “What?”
“They’re really pretty,” I swore. “But I think I like the dark brown ring around them more. It fades in slowly toward the pupil. It’s like a piece of artwork. And what is that?” I leaned a centimeter closer, squinting as I did. “Is that a single blue dot among the gold and brown in there? It is.” I shook my head in wonder. “So incredible.”
“Stop looking at my eyes,” she hissed, except she didn’t move away like she should, since that would be the most effective way to keep me from seeing what she claimed she didn’t want me to see. She simply stared back into my eyes as heartily as I was staring into hers. Which made me think she really did like me looking at her.
Anticipation roared through her emotion, and it tasted like sweet nectar on my mark.
I licked my lips and leaned toward her. “I think I’d rather die than stop looking at your eyes.”
Her jaw hardened as if she hated what I said, and the grip she had in my hair tightened threateningly. But the eagerness I experienced through the mark spoke otherwise. She wanted this just as much as I did.
“I didn’t get a chance to really taste you when you saved me,” I murmured, my face tipping toward hers, our cheeks almost touching. “I really think we should remedy that.”
“I don’t,” she countered. But she stayed where she was, and her breath quickened.
“Quilla.” I groaned and pressed my brow to hers until our mouths aligned and a single breath separated us.
She made a needy, hungry sound deep in her throat. I closed my eyes and leaned in.
But her lips never touched mine.
“What’s this?”
Her fingers landed on the leather strap around my throat. She must’ve seen the truth there in the flash of surprise as I opened my lashes, because suddenly, she tugged at the thin leather rope, pulling a spear-shaped pendant out from under my tunic and ripping it right off my neck.
“Wait, no!” I grasped her wrist, stopping her.
My heart beat hard in my chest as her gaze met mine. I tried to apologize with my expression, but her features only hardened. She tugged on her hand, and I regretfully loosened my grip, letting her slip free.
She scurried backward; the necklace clutched in her grasp.
I said nothing as the dread sank deep.
Words couldn’t fix what she was about to read.
Chapter 14
Quilla
One thing I could not deny about the High Clifter was how neat his penmanship looked, how easy and detailed his notes read, and how absolutely organized his journal was.
The moment I settled myself in a comfortable spot across the campfire from him, my stomach swirled with excitement. This pendant was the key; I just knew it.
I bit my lip and squinted at the leather strips holding the book closed. No matter how I’d tried to undo the tangle of knots binding them together or how hard I tugged at them, they only became more impossible to loosen. Not even a knife’s blade had been able to break the strips. Ergo, they must be spelled with some kind of magic.
With the necklace’s pendant gripped in one hand, I randomly slotted it into the knot and immediately heard it click open as the leather strips fell away from the book, landing in my lap as if relieved they didn’t have to hug the book so persistently anymore.
I lifted my gaze to send the man a superior glance, but he’d bowed his head and was scrubbing his hands over his face as if agitated.
Humph. Sore loser.
Upon opening the front, the first thing I came across was a collapsed sheet of folded parchment that had been pasted to the inside of the cover. I unfolded it carefully and found a map of the Outer Realms that more than doubled the entire size of the book. As I scanned