Page 188 of Taken By Shadows

He stood a few paces from me, as though he was afraid to come too close. Like I might run off again.

Magic. My magic. Fae witch magic.

None of it made sense.

“What does this mean?” I looked up to Kaed as I wiped away the last of the tears I had finally let loose. I wanted to stand, but I wasn’t sure what parts of me were mine to command.

Kaed didn’t have the answers. I knew that.

“It changes nothing. You are the same person I met. This changes nothing.” But it did. It changed everything. “I should have told you. I should have said something. But I know what it feels like to hope for something and never get it. To miss a part of yourself and wish it could be different.”

I shook my head as he came to stand before me.

“It wasn’t for you to decide that for me. I know you want to protect me.” My eyes lifted until he could read the veracity in them. “Protecting me from myself and from you do seem to be very different challenges.” Reminding him of his words before, I forced the levity into my voice, because it was either that or anger.

Shattered glass reflected in Kaed’s eyes. “I know that. Maybe understanding how I’m meant to protect you is the real challenge.” The corner of his lip pulled up before he let it drop again. “I just didn’t know what to say. If there even was anything to say.”

The mess of emotions inside me were warring for dominance. Anger, rage over what I felt was mine to know. Gratitude for the fact that if I’d never met Kaed my life would have been worlds different. And I knew in my heart, if I’d never met him it wouldn’t have been what I needed. Even if I didn’t understand the thread of why I needed to be near Kaed, I knew I wasn’t about to be parted from him because of my own rushing emotions.

“You couldn’t have known. I don’t blame you. I don’t even know what I feel.” I turned over my hands. Were they different now? Was there something under them trying to break through? I wanted to flex them, to test whatever it was Huxley believed was inside me …

Instead, I balled them into fists. How could there be fae witch magic in me? Kaed’s had been forced into him.

Kaed knelt before me then, his knees landing in a mossy bed. “Imogen”—he took my hands in his—“we weren’t sure. I’ve never seen anything like this.”

The oceans of his eyes weren’t roaring with wildness but crashing against their confines as he looked into mine.

“What if it’s locked in there forever?” Voicing this new fear tore open a vulnerability in me. I never had to worry about having magic. I just didn’t have it. And now everything felt different and somehow the same.

Kaed bundled me to him, and I allowed him to cradle me into his chest. “We’ll find your magic.” He kissed my forehead and then took my face in his hands to look up at him. “I promise you.”

“What if it’s locked in there for a reason …”

He stilled at my words, and only the trees moved, the breeze controlling their limbs like they weren’t their own.

“I don’t believe that,” he said with fervour.

“You can’t know that,” I said, pulling his hands from my face.

But before I could free myself from his touch, he came closer until we were like acolytes on our knees together, praying to each other, not the forgotten gods.

Kaed gripped my wrists with one hand and held them between us. “I said I would protect you. I will.”

“Until the sands of never and forever meet.” I echoed his words from the first night we’d come to these ancient ruins.

A smile pulled at his lips. “Yes.” His free hand moved to the back of my neck, guiding me towards him. “Until the Crown Oaks are ash on the wind.”

Our lips were so close I could taste him.

“I need you, Kaed.”

My body heated, as if wyvern fire ran in my blood, as I finally admitted to myself that I needed him. I didn’t just want him. I needed him. His arms, his embrace. I needed to feel him around me.

More than my magic, I needed him. More than anything else I’d ever wanted, I wanted to feel his lips on me.

Something shattered between us, and Kaed’s lips crashed into mine.

Everything I thought I knew about myself was crumbling like the ruins around me. And new roots were taking hold and breaking through the walls I’d built up around myself my entire life.