Prisoner (The Scarred Mage of Roseward #2) - Sylvia Mercedes Page 0,79
sagging to his breast.
A flitting something in the darkness caught his eye. A flash of red in the candlelight, a shimmer of pale skirts.
Blinking, Soran looked up, his breath trapped in his throat. Was it the Thorn Maiden? No, it couldn’t be. Her bindings would hold for hours yet. Was it Nelle? Was she awake? Holding the candle before him, little caring how the hot wax ran down over his nilarium fingers, he made his way between the work-station tables. Even with the light to guide him, he nearly stumbled over the girl’s prone body.
“Miss Beck?” he whispered and knelt beside her, setting the candle on a flagstone to one side. Its light shimmered on her pale face. Still asleep? Or . . . no. She must be alive—she must be! That flickering image he’d glimpsed must have been her spirit-self hovering close. If she were dead, surely her spirit would have sped on its way by now.
He bowed over her just as he had when he first found her here, pressing his ear to her breast. Her heart beat faintly, a distant pulse but stronger than before. He sat up again with a sigh. Her spirit was close.
“Can you not wake?” he asked, looking around the dark room beyond the gleam of the candle. It felt so empty, but he knew it wasn’t. Almost he thought he heard an answer. Or not heard so much as felt. A faint plucking at his mind. Frustrated. Frightened. Irritable.
It was Nelle. Definitely Nelle.
And she obviously had no idea how to reenter her body on her own.
Well, they’d done this before. If he could get her back to the lighthouse, he should be able to wake her safely enough. He bent to scoop her up, taking care not to cut her with his terrible claws.
In that moment, the howl of the skullars ripped the night.
While freezing terror shot through his veins, Soran lifted his head to stare at the partially open door at the end of the kitchen, not really seeing it. His mind’s eye carried his vision much farther, out to the stony beach, the dark ocean surf, the narrow channel. And the looming nearness of Noxaur’s shores.
He could almost see the hulls of the black boats propped up on the sand, could almost see dark figures work the ropes and rigging.
He could almost see Kyriakos descend the gangplank, his deadly hounds slavering at his heels, eager for the command to hunt, to harry, to destroy.
They would cut off the way to the lighthouse.
Soran couldn’t breathe. His mind went still, the awful stillness of overwhelming horror. There was nowhere safe, nowhere they could run, no place they could hide anywhere on Roseward Isle. They were trapped.
With a snarl he flexed the cruelly sharpened fingers of his left hand, gouging the stone floor. The exhaustion of his recent battle fled in a surge of sudden rage. He wasn’t helpless. Not yet.
He reached for the girl, lifting her into his arms so that her head rested against his shoulder. His claws caught in the soft fabric of her gown, but he took care not to touch or cut her skin. Candlelight flickered across her sleep-softened features.
Sitting back on his heels, he hesitated just for a breath. It felt wrong, what he was about to do. As though . . . as though he took advantage of her.
But the cry of the skullars sounded again. Still distant but drawing nearer. He couldn’t dither a second longer.
Soran bowed his head and shifted his arm, drawing Nelle’s face up to his. Carefully using the back of one clawed finger, he tilted her chin so that her lips parted softly beneath his.
They were icy to the touch. So still, so lifeless. So unlike the softness and warmth he had desperately tried not to imagine over the past excruciating week. But he felt the flutter inside her, a hint of life returning.
He deepened the kiss, gently easing her mouth open. His own mouth felt strange to him, his lips so scarred by the Thorn Maiden’s brutal caresses over the years. Once he’d known exactly what to do, how to pull and tease and tempt with sensuous experience. But that was a different life, a different world. A different man entirely.
And it didn’t matter. All that mattered was waking the girl.
Her body jolted in his arms. A cold hand fluttered and caught the side of his face, fingers digging into his skin and hair.