SWNOVELS Chapter A Rock
And I welcome her with open arms.
“My green fire. I was out here practicing, and someone must’ve seen me…Decided I was a Dread.”
“Couldn’t it be something else?”
“Such as?” She lifted her forearm to quirk a perfectly arched gold brow at him.
“Perhaps how you’re ruling.”
“How am I ruling?” She lurched to a sitting position. Shining blonde hair, a cloud around her golden shoulders.
“I mean no insult.” He lifted a staying hand. “But could it be you aren’t in touch with the needs of the people?”
“My advisors and Charles’ often go and speak to the Nightway people. I am highly in touch, Alazar.” Contempt filled her voice. “What do you know of ruling a realm?”
“Very little.” He admitted, dropping onto his back. “But I know much about discontented people.”
“Oh, do you?” There was a waspish note in her voice that he knew boded ill. “Are you finally going to tell me who you where? What you are?”
He swallowed staring at the leaves above as he searched for a way to tell her.
“I thought not.” She snapped. Rolling to her feet and tossing clothes aside as she searched for hers.
“You’re upset with me?” He turned his head to ask her. Confusion written over his face.
“You never answer.”
“I was going to.”
“No, you weren’t. You enjoy keeping secrets from me. Despite that you know I confide all things to you.”
“You think we’re not close enough?”
“Never as close as I want to be.” She sighed. Yanking on her breeches agitatedly. “You will never be bonded to me as I am to you.”
“Riaura?” His felt as though he’d been slapped. “What do you mean? I’m closer to you then any other living being…”
“Then I am sorry for you.” She snapped. “You must be very lonely. I wished you at least had some family that taught you how to love others and be loved.”
“Riaura!” He cried as she stood and began walking.
He rolled to his feet and the clothes vanished from the ground to materialize around him as he dogged her steps.
“I do have family. I have a twin!”
She gasped in outrage and spun on him. “Even worse!”
His shoulders slumped as he deflated.
“Clearly you do know, and you still choose to withhold it from me! I didn’t even know you had a brother much less a twin! You tell me nothing!” She gestured angrily.
“Riaura! I don’t understand you! What do you want from me?” He demanded. Fists tightening in reaction to her confusing anger.
She spun around and moved face to face with him. “Everything, Alazareth! Everything you are everything you’ll become. Your heart, your thoughts, your moments. I want to be the center of your world as you are mine!”
“You think you aren’t?”
“I think all I get from you is stolen moments in the forest. Why don’t you come to the castle to see me?”
“You’d want me to?”
I always hid out here to give you space. Now you say I’m not close enough?
“Of course, I would! You know I would!”
I don’t.
“Why don’t you offer me something more than dalliances on a moss floor.” She gestured to the ground. “Is that really all I am to you?”
He sputtered gesturing helplessly. “I didn’t start this dalliance!”
“So, I am a dalliance!” She gasped.
“What?” He shook his head in bafflement.
I’m not fast enough for her conversations.
“That’s fine. That’s what this is. We’re just using each other, aye?”
“Please don’t talk like me.”
“I’ll talk how I wish. I will be a queen!”
“Yes, you will.” He dropped his hands to his sides. Back stiffening as he suddenly sensed he’d already lost this pseudo-argument.
She already has all this in her head. Nothing I say is going to dissuade her.
“You won’t even walk in sunshine with me because you don’t wish to be seen with me…Or you’re of darkness…A Dread.”
“What about the day I came to you in the meadow? There was sunshine then.”
“An abandoned meadow where no one would see you. It does make sense. I guess you can…That’s my answer then.” She straightened. Eyes flooding with tears for the first time in many years.
“Don’t, Riaura. Don’t cry.” It came out colder than he’d intended.
I can’t bear to see it. He swallowed a lump in his throat.
“Of course not. My tears are not worthy of a moment’s notice to you.”
No, they’re painful to me.
“That’s not what I was saying!” He cried out but she’d already turned her back and stalked from the woods.
“Bloody Hell!” He swore. Kicking a rock. Impossibly it traveled over the wake and through the trees, crushing a hole through one trunk and embedding in the next.
A distance away a cloaked figure crept close to it. The lush velvet material wisping around her legs as she drew near enough to peer into the tree at where the rock had landed.
She turned her head and her curling dark hair was visible. Eyes bleary now, from being poisoned many years ago. And she had to squint through the trees to even discern the shadowy figures of the two people now stomping off in different directions.
“So, this is what you’ve been hiding, Girl?” Her eyes narrowed on the masculine shadow dissolving into the distance.