Willing Sacrifice
Page 7

The green leaves were strange, but somehow oddly familiar.
A flicker of an image formed in her mind. A bright golden light shone down on her, shielded by a canopy of green leaves. She could feel cool grass tickling the backs of her bare knees, hot tears sliding over her temples and a deep, throbbing ache pounding in her cheekbone. Sadness and shame filled her soul, along with a burning need for escape—escape that she knew would never come.
Torr’s hot hand settled on her bare arm, making her flinch and step back out of his reach.
“Settle, child,” came Brenya’s calm voice from the corner of the room. “All is well here and now. You are safe.”
His palm was still outstretched. A look of concern drew his dark eyebrows together, but she saw beyond that to the hurt that her insult had caused him. He looked… betrayed.
“I’m sorry,” she said, unable to look at him. There was too much shame riding her, reminding her of just how weak she was. “I’m a little jumpy sometimes. Just ignore me.”
But he didn’t ignore her. Instead, he stood up from the bed and took both her hands in his.
His touch was gentle, but there was no mistaking his strength. His fingers surrounded hers, both rough and supple. Restraint vibrated through his touch, and it took everything she had not to jerk away. His thumb glided over the back of her hand, sending a familiar shiver racing along her arm.
Shock made her look up at him. Way up.
A little spurt of dizziness hit her, and even that felt familiar. There was something about this man that unsettled her and left her reeling.
She started to pull away, but his grip tightened just enough to tell her wordlessly that he wasn’t ready to let her go.
He cradled her hands against his chest and stared into her eyes. His heart picked up speed, pounding hard and steady against her palms. Vital heat poured into her, forcing her to stifle another shiver. As close as he was, she could smell his skin—a rich mingling of scents she couldn’t name but knew as well as the feel of her own skin.
His scent made a blizzard of feelings erupt in her brain, so thick she couldn’t possibly tell one from another. Pain, sorrow, joy, love, hope—too many emotions for her to do more than groan against the weight of them all.
She swayed on her feet. Torr grabbed her bare shoulders to hold her steady, and the strength of his grip was strangely comforting.
She didn’t like anyone touching her, and yet for some reason this man’s firm grasp didn’t terrify her.
Grace stared up at him, trying to figure out what it was about him that left her so unsettled. She stepped away, rubbing the skin where his fingers had just been. “Do I know you?”
Brenya spoke before he could shake or nod his head. “Torr has never been to Temprocia before.”
She’d saved Grace’s life. She’d nursed her back from the brink of death at great personal cost to herself. Never once had the older woman lied to her. She’d kept plenty of secrets, but had never lied. At least not that Grace knew.
Still, something was going on here—something strange.
“Is that true?” she asked Torr.
He gave Brenya a long, cold stare before finally nodding.
Brenya pushed to her feet, her movements slower than usual. “I must go now. You will be safe with this man. He will not hurt you.”
Grace wasn’t so sure, but she wasn’t about to stop Brenya from getting the rest she needed. Come nightfall, the whole village relied on her to be strong so her magic could keep the Hunters at bay. “I’m fine, Brenya. Go rest. I’ll come check on you when I’m done here.”
As she passed, she spread her fingers at the base of Torr’s thick throat. It looked more like a threat to strangle him than an effort to heal, but Brenya’s ways were often as odd as they were effective.
Her tone was a cold, hard warning. “Injure her in any way—any way—and I will end your world. Do you understand completely?”
Torr nodded again, the simple motion somehow laced with cold fury.
“Good. Then speak again, and choose your words carefully, as if each one were a poisoned blade aimed at your heart.”
“I gave you my word,” he said.
Brenya nodded, as if that was all she needed to hear. Then she shuffled out of the hut, her steps slower than they’d been this morning.
“She’s weak,” said Torr, his deep voice an alien sound to Grace.
There were no men here, and she literally could not remember the last time she’d heard a man speak. She knew she had, just as she knew she’d eaten strange foods that she couldn’t name and had seen objects that didn’t exist here in her new life.
“She nearly killed herself bringing me back from the dead,” said Grace. “She’s been weak ever since.”
Torr stilled to the point that she couldn’t even see his chest move with his breath. His voice was quiet, as if he didn’t want to say the words aloud. “You were dead?”
“I must have been. It’s the only thing that explains why so many of my memories are gone.”
“Is that what Brenya said? That she brought you back from the dead?”
“No, she said she remade me, but I think that’s just her way of saying the same thing. She talks funny sometimes. Not that it really matters exactly what she did to me. I’m alive, and it nearly killed her getting or keeping me that way. I’ve been here four years and she still suffers from what she did for me.”
“Four years? How is that possible?”
“One day after another. Isn’t that the way it works where you’re from?” she asked, teasing in an effort to lighten his mood.
“Of course. That’s it,” he said, as if figuring out a great mystery. “Time moves slower where I’m from. What seems like months to me is years to you.”
“You’re from Athanasia, too?”
He blinked as if surprised that she knew about the other worlds connected to this place. “No. I’m from Earth.”
“That’s where Tori is from.”
Instant recognition lit his face. “Is Tori okay?”
Grace nodded. “She keeps to herself. Hunts a lot. But she seems healthy, if that’s what you mean.”
“Has she hurt anyone?”
Loyalty forced Grace to evade his question. The people Tori had injured had forgiven her, so it was Grace’s job to do the same. Besides, Tori hadn’t willfully injured anyone in a long time, even though it was obvious from the look in her eyes that she’d wanted to.