“Planning on doing some cooking? Cutting meat, perhaps?” Wylfrael’s voice cleaved through the air with a deadlier edge than any knife. My head jerked up to find him watching me from the cellar doorway.

Heart in my throat, I switched my knife to my left hand – the hand furthest from him – and hid it behind my back. I was aware of just how stupid that was. It was the action of a child who’d been caught with a cookie before dinner and thought that all evidence would disappear the moment it was out of sight. But that was why I’d wanted the knife in the first fucking place – so that I wouldn’t feel like a powerless child. Not because I was as afraid of Wylfrael as I’d once been, but because I no longer wanted to feel so defenceless and small in a world that wasn’t mine.

“You chose a good one,” Wylfrael said, his voice smooth and cold, like dark ink flowing over crystal. “Very sharp. Will slice through most tissue with ease. Skin. Muscle. Sinew. Even bone.” He came to a stop before me. “Most tissue,” he reiterated. “But not mine, of course.”

He placed something white and fluffy on the counter beside us. He did it slowly, not even looking at me, as if daring me to try to take him out. To see what would happen. I may have been stupid enough to try to hide the knife behind my back, but I didn’t have a death wish. He straightened, his gaze finding me once more, and I knew I’d have to drop it.

“I’d let you keep it,” he said suddenly, surprising me and knocking me off-balance. “Something like this is as useless against me as the other knife I let you have. But unlike that dull little blade,” – his hand shot out, grasping my left arm firmly by the elbow and pulling my hand forward – “this one could do some damage to a Sionnachan. And I will not let that happen.”

“What?” I cried, horrified. “No! I would never hurt Aiko or Shoshen!” The idea was abhorrent. Even though they’d been part of my captivity, the thought of hurting one of them, Jesus Christ, stabbing one of them, made me want to throw up. They were too sweet, too gentle, and I had a sneaking suspicion they didn’t even like that I was being held against my will, but that they were as powerless against Wylfrael as I was. They called him Lord Wylfrael, after all.

As Wylfrael held up my arm between us and the crystal blade of the knife caught the light, I wondered if I was too soft, too kind and sentimental for my own good. Maybe I should have considered hurting Aiko or Shoshen, should have done anything and everything to get out of here – or at least spill some alien blood in the process. Maybe the fact I hadn’t even thought about it when I’d grabbed the knife, hadn’t even considered that I could use it on the Sionnachans, proved how weak I really was. Would compassion like that get me killed?

But I internally rebelled against that line of thinking. In that moment, I made a choice. The choice to hold onto whatever shreds of goodness I could. I wouldn’t let this world, this man, strip my humanity away.

“I wouldn’t hurt them,” I said again, quietly this time, my voice steady and certain. Wylfrael studied my face, his focus boring into me as his hand slid from my elbow to my wrist.

“If you’re a liar, you’re a very good one.”

He squeezed my wrist. With a cry, my fingers snapped open. The knife clattered to the floor between our feet. I didn’t think that Wylfrael had squeezed me particularly hard, especially considering how strong he was, but it had hurt a lot more than expected. Then I remembered the bruise there. Wylfrael appeared to remember it, too, at the exact same moment. His grip eased instantly. He lifted my hand upwards and frowned at the dark splotch on my skin.

“This looks worse than before,” he muttered, shifting his grip so that his fingers and thumb didn’t hide the injury. He was right – like all bad bruises, this one looked a hell of a lot uglier as it started to heal. Though the swelling had faded, the colours were much darker.

“It’s fine,” I said. “It’s healing. We can’t all recover as fast as you.”

He made an unsatisfied “Hmmph” sound deep in his throat, then dropped my hand. He stretched out his fingers, and the knife rose into the air, flying right into his grip. I watched as he set the knife back in its place on the counter. This was the first time I’d seen him use his power to move things without touching them since he’d raised that snow wall.

“How come you’ve never used that kind of power on me?” I thought of all the times he’d grabbed me by my hand or my hair or my shirt. When he was putting that rainbow thing, the web as he’d called it, into my ear, he could have held my entire body in place with his mind and levitated the burning thing, shooting it directly into my ear canal.

“Every stone sky god is naturally inclined to be able to manipulate certain kinds of substances depending on his lineage and homeworld. For me, those substances are things like snow, rock, crystal. Trying to control a creature of flesh and blood would require more energy and would also afford me much less precision.”

He picked up the fluffy thing he’d laid down on the counter. “In short, I’d be as likely to crush you as to control your movements.” He shook out the thing, which I now could see was a garment. “And I’ve already told you, several times now, that I do not plan to kill you.”

“Call me crazy, but reminders like that are helpful when you’re trapped in an alien’s tower,” I retorted.

“Reminders of how I could destroy you in an instant?”

“Reminders that you’re not going to kill me.”

He didn’t respond to that, instead thrusting the garment towards me.

“Put this on.”

“What is it?” I asked. It was too long and floppy to figure out what it even was. It just looked like a blanket to me.

Wylfrael fiddled with something I couldn’t see, then swept the fur behind me, settling it around my shoulders. His knuckles brushed my neck, making me swallow dryly, muscles contracting. The roiling columns of his irises shifted from his fingers to my throat, and a distinct tension entered the area around his mouth and jaw. He withdrew his hands and straightened, having had to bend over quite deeply to make up for the massive height difference between us.

“It’s a cloak,” I said, feeling rather stupid for saying something so obvious out loud. I reached up, feeling the silken ribbon that Wylfrael had tied in a bow at the hollow between my collarbones. The tied ribbon held the cloak closed at my shoulders, the garment flowing downward to pool around my boots in a soft circle of fur. I stroked the bow, slightly amazed that someone with claws and fingers as large as his had managed such a delicate task. The skin of my neck tingled where he’d grazed me, and without thinking, I traced the places he’d touched me. My fingertips ignited the echo of that skimming contact.

Wylfrael observed me silently, then, as if deciding rather suddenly to do it, he bent to me once more, his fingers returning to the area of my neck. My breath snagged, and my palm flattened to my throat in a protective instinct.

But he didn’t touch my skin again. Instead, he felt along the fur gathered around my shoulders, then pulled it upward. A hood framed my face, exceptionally soft fur tickling my temples and cheeks.

And then, silent as the very substances that made up his domain – snow, rock crystal – he stepped away and opened the door.

Clad in the clothing of his world, I went through it.

OceanofPDF.com

OceanofPDF.com

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE Wylfrael

The storm had deposited a significant amount of snow around the castle. The huge pile left behind by my snow wall no longer looked out of place. Other huge drifts, like swells of a frozen sea, or dunes of a far-off desert, undulated over the land.