Lexa
The sun doesn’t rise on the Glade the morning after Chessie’s death. Clouds block the sunlight completely, and it pours.
I take the heavy basket covered in towels from Lis’s hand as we hurry through the city, ducking under awnings to shield ourselves from the spray of the rain. It’s warm. It feels rich and wet, and everywhere we look, children race through puddles, singing and dancing in the face of thunder and lightning that splits the sky into pieces.
“It hasn’t rained like this here in decades,” she says over the pounding rain as the pack house comes into view. “I honestly can’t remember the last time it even sprinkled. It was probably your doing.”
“What?” I whisper, my voice cracking from lack of use. I fell asleep last night curled over Kaleb’s legs, I think. He was my last memory before the world went dark, and my grief swept me into nothingness–a numb, hollow kind of darkness. His hand lay on my hip as he told me about his sister, and… his why.
“You freed the dragon.” Lis grins, clutching my upper right arm in solidarity, but her touch sends a sharp, bright kind of pain bouncing through me. “It’s been trapped down there for so long. It blessed us with rain as a thank you. Think of all the things that can grow now! I might even see grass in my lifetime.”
Her words are a shock to my system. I look at her, taking in her delicate, girlish features. She’s never seen the world outside these walls. She doesn’t know what grass looks like. I can’t imagine.
While we wait for another blinding sheet of rain to sweep across the city, I turn my head to watch the children splashing in the puddles, their mothers standing in doorways smiling and laughing, breathing deeply the air finally, for once, not full of dust.
These people… they shouldn’t live like this.
I follow Lis, weaving between buildings until we reach the pack house. I’m not sure why she wanted me to come run this errand with her, but I suppose I needed to get out of bed eventually. My body is bruised and aching when we step out of the rain and into the warm, dry sanctuary of the pack house, where a small group of women is gathered at its center around a table.
“Any news yet?” Lis excitedly asks the group. She takes the basket from my arms and draws back the towels to reveal two loaves of bread and several tiny outfits.
“The baby came an hour ago,” an older woman says with a wide smile, but her eyes show exhaustion. “Mother and baby are both well.”
“Oh, thank the Goddess,” Lis breathes, moving into the group. Their conversation fades, and the rain takes its place, thundering across the roof like a thousand hammers. I blink and find myself in the arena again, just like that, unable to move and forced to watch Meg grunt against the weight of the sword as she wields it a second time and slices it down on–
A large, warm presence steps behind me, fingers resting just above my hipbone. Kaleb turns me into the kitchen, a curtain flopping closed behind us, cutting me off from the news of a new life while the memories of a stolen one render me absolutely useless.
Kaleb turns to face me, silently twisting my wet hair away from my cheeks. He reaches behind his head and pulls the thin length of leather loose from his hair, tying mine back with it instead. His dark, luscious waves fall over his shoulder, curlier than usual, likely from the rain. Neither of us says a word until I finally find the nerve to ask, “Is Silas all right?”
“I saw him this morning,” he replies, but his voice is tight. “He’s better than I expected, but he’s good at hiding these kinds of things.”
“I want to thank him for being so good to her. How can I?”
“He won’t accept anything. He already knows how you feel.”
I close my eyes as he draws his hands over my bare shoulders, wiping rain from my bruised, aching skin. His touch stops at a particularly nasty bruise, where severe swelling wraps clean around my elbow, and sucks his teeth. “When did this one happen? When you were freeing the dragon?”
I sigh, trying to step from him so he can’t see the pained look on my face when he pokes the skin. “Yes.”
I meet his shrewd gaze. “This is bad, Lexa.”
“I’ll survive without being able to bend my elbow,” I reply hoarsely as tears of agony fill my eyes. I refuse to blink them away, because once they close, I’ll see that moment again, see the flash of light against a cord of metal as it meets Chessie’s body, and I can’t–I can’t–
I yank away from him so aggressively I slam into the worktable. A pitcher of water falls to the ground with a crash, shattering.
Kaleb tries to grab me, but I painfully lift my arms, turning from him, shielding myself.
“Stop,” he commands. “Lexa–”
“Leave me alone,” I beg as tears–hot and acidic–drench my cheeks. I suck in a desperate breath as I fall to pieces, unable to knit myself together again. “Go–go away!”
Lis rushes into the kitchen, wide eyed and pale. “Kaleb?”
“Go away!” I cry out, but Kaleb catches me around the waist, lifting me into the air like I weigh nothing, and scoops me into his arms.
“Go find the healer and then send for Avery and Colin. I need their help,” Kaleb says to Lis, dodging my attempt to rake my nails over his cheek. I scratch his neck instead, but he takes it, barely flinching.
“But Avery and Colin are helping with the pyre–”
“Go,” Kaleb commands, and Lis bolts, disappearing behind the curtain while Kaleb carries me out of the kitchen through the back entrance and into the rain.
Water pelts my face. I spit, blink, trying to clear my mouth and vision from the downpour, trying to rip out of his grasp, but Kaleb is as immovable as ever. He practically kicks in the door on his way into the house and calls out for Chastan, but it’s just us in the house when he pins me to the kitchen table, his forearm pressed over my chest to try to keep me still against its rough surface.
“Calm down–”
I glare at him, but he doesn’t bare his teeth or scowl. His eyes are dark and heavy as he looks down at me while I crumble beneath him, trembling, unable to form a single word.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, the word painfully leaving his lips, carrying a familiar ache that cuts me to the core. “I am so sorry.”
“I want to go home,” I whisper, my lower lip quivering. “I want to go home!”
He leans his forehead against mine, closing his eyes. I whimper past a sob threatening to suffocate me, but his lips brush my cheekbone as he presses another whispered apology to my skin.
I relax involuntarily as his warmth radiates between us–steady and everlasting, like he’s the pillar I’m leaning against, the only thing keeping me upright, and I turn my face to his, our lips only a hair’s breadth apart.
“Let me go,” I say against his mouth, but there’s no fight in my voice.
“No,” he replies just as tiredly, but his lips close over mine, and I close my eyes as… everything I thought I knew about myself, my world, and what matters collides.
I’ve been kissed before. This isn’t my first time. I thought I knew what it should feel like–that fiery, fumbling, shallow kind of passion that’s meant to scratch an itch elsewhere. It’s something that’s supposed to feel like instant satisfaction and then fade into nothing..
This isn’t nothing.
This is… heat. Spine-tingling, brain-numbing warmth.
The pressure of his forearm eases as he reaches for me, caressing my face before pulling away for a single inrush of air. I feel the distance between us like a jolt of electricity, and it leaves me chilled, suddenly panicked at the emptiness left in his wake. He presses gently on my lower lip with his thumb. I open my eyes to slits at the same moment he kisses me again, harder this time, like he needs more to register this is real. Like it didn’t feel real the first time, but this time?
This is… very real.
An involuntary whimpered moan leaves my lips, and they part. He sinks onto the stool beside the table and drags me down into his lap, careful of my limp, swollen elbow. His arm wraps around me, holding me steady, his hand flat on my back, fingers spread wide over my spine, his other hand gliding up my neck to tangle in my hair and tilt my head to the side, and he kisses me again.
I melt. I absolutely thaw in his arms. A myriad of tangled emotions begin to unravel, replaced by a bright, heavy sensation in my chest that floods through the very marrow of my bones until I am completely and utterly at the mercy of his lips, his tongue, and his teeth.
He nibbles on my lower lip, eliciting another breathy moan, and he growls in answer, on the precipice of doing something we both want.
But we’ll both regret.
And we know it.
A door in the depths of the house opens, letting in the thunderous echo of the rain beyond the thick walls, and several indistinguishable footsteps hurry toward us, but he doesn’t pull away. He’s breathless, his body rigid with desire as he holds me to his chest, pressing one last kiss to the corner of my mouth before the tear-blurred figures of Avery, Colin, Lis, and an unfamiliar older woman come into view over his shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” Kaleb whispers against my cheek, clutching me tighter than before.
“For what?”
“For this. Take her arm, and line it up with the shoulder joint–”
I screech as Avery suddenly grabs my horribly swollen and bruised right arm, twisting it painfully at an awkward angle. Kaleb clutches me tightly, preventing me from moving, while the healer and Lis stand just within my horrified line of sight, pale and owl-eyed.
Colin suddenly slams his fist against my elbow, and my vision goes black for several seconds before I careen back to the room, unable to breathe. I black out several more times from the sheer pain of it. Hands touch me, move me. Cool rags are packed around my arm. I wake up again briefly, back in Kaleb’s arms, before closing my eyes to the world and burying my face in his shirt.
Someone pinches my mouth open, drops a foul tasting liquid inside, then pinches my nose and covers my mouth, forcing me to swallow. Everything gets blurry again, but Kaleb’s scent remains, ever present, all-encompassing, the only thing keeping me from slipping back into my nightmares about the arena.
I’m sure hours pass while I slip in and out of lucidity. I already know I was given a healing tonic–something incredibly potent. I’ve taken them before. Hell, Misty has healed more than one broken or dislocated bone in my body over the years. So when I wake to complete–but finally rainless–darkness without a lick of pain, I’m only partly surprised.
I’m just somewhere I don’t recognize.
I slide out of Kaleb’s bed, my toes brushing Kaleb’s floorboards. The door leading out of his room is ajar, light spilling from the hallway, where he’s talking to someone in quiet tones–Avery, I think.
“Silas was adamant that you see him tonight. He’s leaving. He said he had urgent business outside of Pantharas and won’t be back until the end of the games.”
“Did he mention what kind of business?”
“No, but he gave me this.”
I watch the shadows drift in the ray of light creeping toward my toes.
Kaleb exhales deeply, a long, drawn-out sigh. “I’ll do what I can.”
“The girl’s pyre is ready whenever you are. People have already begun to gather.”
“Lexa will light it if that’s what she chooses. She’s resting as it stands.”
“Is she all right?”
“She’ll heal.”
“I mean, with… everything?”
Silence hangs heavy for several aching seconds before Avery’s footsteps descend the stairs, and the floorboards creak as Kaleb turns, opening the door to find me sitting on the side of the bed.
There’s an old standing mirror in the corner of his bedroom, the frame slightly rusted, but it reflects me, then him, as he steps deeper into the room. I know I look like a mess. My hair is tied back with his length of leather, but curls fall around my face, sticking up at odd angles everywhere. I’m wearing one of his shirts, judging by the length, which fits me more like a rather scandalous nightgown, barely covering my upper thighs, but to his credit, he keeps his eyes on my face, searching, inspecting me for irreversible damage.
I won’t say a Goddess-damned thing about the kiss. It was either a distraction–or it meant something to him. And if it’s the latter… how can we possibly go back to despising each other?
He hesitates before extending his hand. The light from the hallway catches a pale, coiled length of hair. It’s a perfect shade of gold.