The mysterious Silas Boon. I hadn't mentioned that Silas had arrived at the cottage after I'd killed Danne. I'd only spoken of what Danne had done to me in the limousine, what he'd attempted to do, as I'd wept within Graysen's arms at the cottage in the small utilitarian bedroom flooded with moonlight and lit with candles, with its chipboard walls and mismatched blankets.

Danne Pelan...

A gentle current of air coursed across the lawns and brought with its innocence a hint of molasses that turned sour and foul and toxic as soon as I inhaled. An ugly miasma.

My heart exploded into a racing gait as fast as the beat of dragonfly wings as the insect hovered over the curled leaf of a lilypad.

My awareness blackened at the fringes, then darkness blanketed it as if a raging tempest had erupted from nowhere, casting darkness over the sky, even though I knew the sun still shone in a sky scored with soft innocent clouds.

I didn't hear what surrounded me...

Sage's worried bark...

Peels of laughter...

The rattle and squeak of bike chains and wheels coasting on grass...

"Shit..." And another soft curse...

All that hollowed out my ears were my rapid hitched gasps. Fear and mindless terror locked every inch of my body rigid and trembling. My thoughts turned in on themselves as a wave of dizziness threw my equilibrium off balance—

Danne brought with him a flashflood of memories. I was no longer standing in Tabitha's garden. I was somewhere else, closed in with rich walnut finishes and the scent of expensive leather. Somewhere that rocked and swayed. Greasy uneasy sensations I couldn't scrape from my skin and mind. My cheekbone forced against curved seating. Carpet burning my knees. Gelatinous flesh. A coppery tang seeping across my tongue...

A voice, calm and sounding as if it were coming from a distance. "He's not here. He can't hurt you."

Fingernails gouging skin. A spike of pain across my hips. The sound of shredding cotton. Heavy weight and a crack of flesh hitting flesh. Heinous laughter and spitting curses...

"You're safe, Nelle. You're standing in my mother's garden, her lawns."

I couldn't breathe. Adrenaline injected my heart like nitrous gas—forcing it into fight or flight. Yet there was a third choice—freeze. I was frozen and trapped inside my head. And Danne was there and I couldn't get him out. I couldn't find a way free from the limousine.

"Nelle, take a breath..."

I scrambled to latch onto the voice, the soothing timbre of it, and followed the thread, inching my way back to awareness, breath by breath.

Slowly, so slowly, like color spreading across a Polaroid, sparking life into a black and white photograph, vivid bright colors stained my surroundings. Sound returned. Every day normal sounds of humming insects and birds flying overhead. A soft breeze rustling leaves. Low conversation and children's joyful laughter.

Graysen stood in front of me, his black eyes wide and flickering with worry. The faint freckles that were normally shadowed by his golden skin were more prominent because he'd paled. And my hand was pressed across his heart, the pulse a gentle rhythm against my palm—this time his heartbeat urged mine to follow its pattern—while a large warm hand covered my own. His other hand cupped my cheek and my fingers gripped his wrist like I was drowning and I'd grabbed hold of him to save me.

"Take another breath—slow and steady."

I followed his instructions. Took a breath, then another, until the shaking in my limbs subsided, the panic seeped away, and my heartbeat matched his.

I was in Tabitha's gardens.

Danne wasn't here.

He could never hurt me again.

My mouth was dry as paper when I croaked, "That's not how twenty questions works. You need to ask me yes and no questions."

Something like relief relaxed his features. His thumb gently brushed across my cheekbone slick with sweat. "We don't need to do this."

I wet my lips with the tip of my tongue. "No. There's a lot I want to ask."

But even though I wanted to stay out here for a bit longer, to haunt the Heart of the Keep with its knowledge, most of me wanted to retreat to a place I knew well, where I knew where my exits were, a place I could recenter myself. I loathed myself for asking. "I want to go back to the tower."

He nodded. Dappled light danced across his forehead from the sun poking through the leafy embrace of the shrubs we were tucked away beneath.

Letting go of his wrist, he withdrew his hands, dropping them to his sides. But I lingered, keeping my fingers spread across the curve of his chest, the soft t-shirt and warmth from his body heating my palm. I opened my mouth to thank him, but I couldn't push out what I wanted to say.

His blacks warily scanned my grays.

I gently squeezed my fingertips across his heart, speaking to him in the only way I could at that moment. His gaze softened as he curved one side of his mouth up.

Briefly closing my eyes, I took my hand away and flexed the crackling energy from my skin. Drawing in a deep breath, I straightened my spine and nodded to him to lead the way back to the tower. Just as I stepped forward, the soft sole of my foot scuffing through lush grass, he stopped me. His rough-padded fingers latched around my upper arm. I stilled, my gaze wandering over his face, wondering what he wanted to say. He chewed on his bottom lip, the fine skin around his eyes feathering as his eyes narrowed in thought, as if he needed to choose his words carefully. "If you... If you ever need to talk about it..."

My gaze hardened. I didn't want to talk about it.

He spoke softly, but there was steel beneath his tone. "You're strong and brave..."

And going to die. So what was the point?

I cut him off with a wave of my hand, then pushed into motion. He reluctantly let go, his long-legged stride carrying him past as he led me back into the copse of trees a different way from the way we'd come. Sage trotted beside me, kicking up pebbles.

We walked along a longer trail that cut through the trees and their moist, earthy air. Sage nudged my thigh every so often with his muzzle. Graysen pointed out things his mother had planted, or a seating arrangement, and a few magical spots for children. But I'd tuned him out, uncomfortable in my own skin, in the way my dress stuck to my sweat-clammy body and started to chafe. My senses were on high alert. I suppose what happened back there in Tabitha's garden was always going to happen. I'd stupidly expected too much of myself to believe I'd walk away unscathed.

After a while, I began to hear Graysen and became distracted by his gentle probing, breathing easier, mildly intrigued with all the special places Tabitha had created within her gardens, asking a few half-hearted questions and trading knowledge of plants I knew.

It wasn't until we'd made our way back through the gateway and across the cobblestoned inner courtyard to the graceful arched entrance of the tower, that I figured out what he'd done. He'd purposely taken me a longer route back to the tower to give me time to piece myself back together the best I could. I also didn't realize how closely I'd stuck beside him until we'd finished climbing the spiral staircase and my arm brushed up against his. Both of us glanced at one another at the same time—me in surprise, and him not so much.

After we'd left the gardens and traipsed back through the Keep he'd reverted back to his cold indifference, but I'd felt his gaze on me often, a worried stroke of concern sliding across my profile. As I stared at him, there were so many emotions tumbling in his dark eyes. Worry. Rage. And guilt too. It weighed heavier than anything else in his gaze.

He didn't know how to fix this. Fix me.

What Danne had tried to do to me, hadn't been his fault. It wasn't my fault either.

"You're right," I said. "I am strong. I am brave. I am fire and brimstone and I could burn the world down over a slight." My words floated through the shadowed stairwell, but my voice was threaded thinly. I didn't realize I'd been crying either until salty tears ran over the curve of my top lip and slipped across my tongue.

His hand rose tentatively and slowly so as not to scare me. I stared at him wide-eyed, my vision swimming, as he gently caught a tear before it fell, and tenderly wiped the others away, one at a time. "Brave sweet liar," he whispered.

"This thing... I'll survive it, and I'll survive you too."

He tipped his chin up, respect sharpening his eyes. "You do that."

We continued to stare at one another, one breath, one heartbeat too long.

I didn't know what made me do it. Perhaps I just needed to prove to myself that I could do it. That I could touch him. A small part of me was aware of what I had to do to free myself—tame him—and this was simply my way of testing myself.

Stretching up on tippy toes, I reached out to cup his cheek, warmth and the dusting of stubble tickling my soft palm. Silky disheveled hair was featherlight against the back of my fingers.

He went deathly still.

I heard the sharp intake of breath.

Saw the way his eyelashes flared wide.

He didn't blink. He stayed exactly where he remained, staring down at me, perhaps not daring to break this connection either.

His skin was warm beneath my thumb as I swept it across the broad plane of his cheekbone, watching the faint freckles disappear and reappear beneath my moving thumb. Curled my fingers and brushed the backs of them along his jawline. Traced a single fingertip along his full bottom lip, the pulse of his breath whispering against my sensitive flesh. The helpless groan he tried to stifle.

He didn't move. He didn't press back into my touch. He just let me quietly explore him.

I enjoyed the way his throat bobbed beneath my touch as he swallowed thickly. The hollow at the base of his throat too, when I dipped a fingertip into its indentation and then slid along the wyrmfire ink before meeting the ribbed neckline of his tee-shirt.

I wondered what it would be like if I had entered the fortress under completely different circumstances. If, indeed, there was no Alverac or machinations, and I was simply his bride.

How different our lives could have been if this tragedy hadn't happened between our families. If I wasn't a Wychthorn and he wasn't a Crowther. If I wasn't a wyrm and him a tamer.

Would we have met in a normal way like a boy and girl did? Maybe at one of the House Gatherings. Shy smiles and interested glances.

Would we have even been attracted to one another without the chemicals of wyrm and tamer influencing one another?

Would my parents have even entertained the idea of me marrying a Crowther?

This Crowther with his arrogant swagger and tattoos and filthy mouth.

If I had fallen in love with him.

For a moment I truly felt sorry for him.

I'd spoken honestly earlier. I was going to survive. I was going to survive him too. But he wasn't going to survive me. It was a surety that hummed in the depth of my bones.

I drew in a deep breath, closed my eyes, and just let the moment be.

Rolling back onto the flats of my feet, I stepped closer and pressed against him, his body hard and tense beneath my soft curves. A sense of safety draped over me the moment I spread my hands across the swell of his pecs and turned my face into his chest. The smell of cedar smothered me like a cloak and I gulped down great greedy inhales of woodsy scent, not caring whatsoever that it was unique to Graysen, that it was part of what we were to one another. Right this moment I needed to feel at ease, and his scent and presence did that. I didn't want to over-analyze it. I simply wanted to steal some of his strength.

He hesitated.

Not because he didn't want to hold me—, I could feel the need coiled tightly within him—but because he wasn't sure if I'd accept him.

Soft fabric whispered against my lips as I breathed the word, please, while I drifted my hands down his sides to round his back to hug him.

His indecision was almost tangible in the air before he finally wound his arms around my body, holding me to him, letting me melt against him, nuzzle his chest and breathe him in. How long we stayed like that, clinging to one another, I didn't know or care.

When I finally half-pushed myself from his chest, the light slipping through the narrow arrow slits was a deeper shade of gold. His hand had found its place beneath my heavy braid at the nape of my neck, his other arm wrapped around my back, fingers spread across the dip in my spine. I blinked up at him, and his black eyes silently asked if I was okay as he drew his hand away to tuck a stray strand of hair behind my ear. I scrunched my nose in reply, smiling, a small smile but genuine.

There would always be a chip, a shadow of darkness, and moments when I wouldn't be okay, but right now I was ready for what was to come: talking about Silas Boon and taming Graysen Crowther.

Graysen held the door to his rooms open for me to enter. I wanted to change out of my sweat-crisp dress and refresh myself with a shower. So, while he set about giving Sage a hunk of stinky dead chicken out on the balcony, I headed into my bedroom to snatch my silky dressing gown from the back of the door before entering the bathroom.

I might have taken longer in the shower than I normally did, briskly scrubbing my body and washing my hair, sluicing away soap suds, wishing the memory of Danne could disappear down the drain hole as easily as the soapy froth. But, out there on the landing of the tower's staircase, I'd willingly sank into Graysen and let him refortify me with his scent and presence. Our heartbeats had thrummed in unison—a rich vibration of a sweet lullaby that strummed through my blood and whispered across my skin.

The strength I'd stolen from him had settled in my bones and I hummed pleasantly with renewed sharpness. I was strong and brave. I was going to get myself out of here, alive and in one piece.

Flicking off the rainshower heads, I stepped out from the pebbled floor and took a fluffy towel from a chrome shelf. Bending over, I squeezed the excess water from my wet locks and towel-dried them, along with my body.

Catching my distorted reflection in the steam-clouded mirror, I fiddled with the rope around my neck. Interestingly, whatever magic it possessed ensured that it never became waterlogged. The fibers remained dry as if water was repulsed. Which was the only good thing about it, because it was irritating enough having it looped around my neck.

Sighing, I reached for my lotions and oils and moisturized my face and body, then sprayed detangler in my damp hair, combing the locks free of knots. Taming Graysen Crowther was at the forefront of my mind. First I needed to test his tamer aspect. Push it and nudge it and tease it out, to discover just what I was dealing with. As to how, I wasn't exactly sure.

Slipping on my dressing gown and tying the belt around my waist, I drifted out of the bathroom. As Graysen walked over to the kitchen, he stole a quick, assessing glance over his shoulder, scanning my face to make sure I was still okay, before I disappeared into my bedroom.

It wasn't until I'd shut the door and turned around, about to slip off my dressing robe and hang it up, that I realized something felt wrong about the room.