“How old were you?” He shuffled closer, moving to the edge of his seat.
“A hundred and twenty. Around that. An adult.”
He looked as if he wanted to ask how old she was now. If he did, she was going to ask how old he was, and she had the feeling she was going to be shocked. Every elf she had met had been centuries old. How much older than her was he?
When he said nothing, sparing himself an interrogation for now, she took it as a prompt to continue.
She sucked down a breath, dreading thinking about this next part. “I’m still not sure how long they held us captive, shut in those dark cells beneath the mansion. The days blurred and the magic made it hard to keep track of time.”
“Is that why you don’t like the dark?”
She frowned at him, wanting to know how he knew about her fear of the dark. She wanted to curse instead when she recalled tailing him in the fae town and how she had panicked in the alley because it had been dark, allowing him to get the jump on her.
“Let’s just say I’m not a fan of it.” She wanted to leave it at that too, gave him a look that told him to let it go, only he didn’t look as if he would, so she sighed. Maybe it was better he knew. “Imagine being held in pitch darkness, not even a trace of light, your sight stolen from you. Imagine having to listen to those in the cells around you being taken one by one, and you know that eventually they’ll come for you. Imagine how loud your own breathing sounds as you sit there surrounded by black, unable to see a damned thing, not knowing what might be in the room with you. The dark… It brings back bad memories.”
He looked as if he wanted to hold her now. Part of her wanted that too, but she needed to finish telling him what had happened first, knew she wouldn’t feel like continuing if she sank into his arms. She chastised herself. There would be no sinking into his arms.
No matter how much she wanted to do that.
“You mentioned magic. They used spells to hold you?” His violet eyes searched hers.
She nodded. “To make the darkness too dark for us to see. To hold us. To keep us docile. To stop us from having the strength to hurt them whenever they came for one of us.”
She cursed as tears filled her eyes and blinked them away. Hartt didn’t help matters by placing his hand on her knee, that comforting touch only drawing more to the surface as her heart ached. She stared at his hand as she thought about her family, as she struggled to find her voice.
“They killed my mother first.” She choked on the last two words, not strong enough after all. Tears slipped down her cheeks. She dashed them away and closed her eyes so she didn’t have to see the worried look Hartt gave her.
“You don’t have to talk about this. I shouldn’t have asked.” He went to take his hand from her and lean back, but she caught his wrist, holding him firm.
“I do.” She sucked in a breath and blew it out. “I mean, I want to talk about it.”
But it hurt like hell.
All these decades later and it turned out she still couldn’t talk about it without feeling as if it had just happened.
She pulled down another deep breath, seeking calm so she could continue, trying to distance herself from the pain and the rage that still lived inside her heart. She wanted Hartt to know this part of her. She wanted Hartt to know her. Despite how dangerous it felt, how she was sure this would only lead to them growing closer.
Maybe that was what she really wanted.
She wanted to be close to him.
She wanted to be close to someone for the first time in too long.
“You said your mother died. Did she resurrect like you did?” Hartt said, his voice whisper-soft, gentle and soothing.
She clung to his hand, twisted hers and toyed with his fingers, staring at them as she waited until she felt she could speak again without breaking down.
“If a phoenix loses too much blood, we can’t resurrect. Our gift is in our blood. It’s what makes it so appealing to the mages and what makes them so powerful. They… they hold us and drain us, use our blood to give themselves a longer life, to make themselves more powerful.” She pressed the tip of her index finger against his, turned his hand palm up and noticed how he didn’t fight her, just let her do as she wanted.
She stroked her fingers over the calluses on his palm. He had the hands of a warrior. Capable hands. Strong hands. She had no doubt he could kill this witch that was trying to get them to kill each other.
She swirled her finger in a circle in the centre of his palm. “They didn’t care if they killed us. Whenever it happened, they just picked another of us to start… using. They killed my father next, and my brothers tried to tell me to be strong, that our oldest brother would come.”
“He wasn’t taken with you?”
She shook her head. “He was away at the time of the attack. He’d gone to the nearest town for supplies.”
“You think he’s the one who left the note for Grave?”
She nodded this time. “I’m glad he never tried to come to help us. The mages were too strong and would have easily defeated a lone phoenix. He did the right thing in hiring others to attempt a rescue.”
“Have you seen him since you escaped?”
Mackenzie sighed. “No. Our family had a plan. If any of us were taken, we’d go to another place we knew, a safe house. I went there and waited, but my brother never showed up. In the end, I moved on. I was afraid I would be found… and I thought maybe he had tried to rescue us and had been killed. If I could find him…”
Her gaze fell to his hand again and she prodded his fingertip.
“I’ll help,” he said and she lifted her head, her eyes locking with his as she sought the truth in them, needing to see he really meant that. In their violet depths, pain shone, stirring a feeling inside her that said she wasn’t alone—he had lost family too. “If your brother is alive, we’ll find him. Family is important.”
Something she felt deep in her soul.
Being a lone phoenix shifter had been difficult. Her kind had strong connections to their prides and their families, and she had missed it in the decades she had been alone, had felt as if a piece of her was missing.
There were other phoenix prides in the north, in valleys close to where her home had once been, but going to them hadn’t appealed to her.
Not when they hadn’t come to help her family. Her pride.
They had left them in the hands of the mages. Mackenzie drew down a deep breath and purged the anger that wanted to surge through her. She couldn’t hold it against them. Phoenix numbers were so low now that it was important everyone remained safe. If it had been another pride that had been taken, her family wouldn’t have attempted to rescue them.
She was grateful her oldest brother had had the sense to employ others to do the searching for him. Was he still out there somewhere?
“How did you escape?” Hartt lowered his gaze to their hands and turned his in hers, captured her fingers and stroked his thumb across them. “Grave mentioned a fire that scorched the mansion, killing everything.”
He flicked a glance at her, and she could easily read in his eyes what he wouldn’t ask.
“I didn’t kill anyone from my family. There was no one left to kill. It was just me, in a cell, waiting for my turn.” She sighed and clutched his fingers, savoured the soft caress of his thumb along hers and sought a deeper connection with him, one she wasn’t sure how to make happen, but one she desperately needed as that night rolled up on her. “I felt my brother die. I knew I was next. I let rage take me, stoked the pain I felt from losing my family into an inferno, until I was burning inside… a phoenix in spirit but not in body thanks to the spell.”