Total pages in book: 153
Estimated words: 140462 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 702(@200wpm)___ 562(@250wpm)___ 468(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 140462 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 702(@200wpm)___ 562(@250wpm)___ 468(@300wpm)
Which only shows how low I’ve fallen.
“It’s… not quite what I expected,” Hawk mutters and leans forward, massaging the base of his nose.
“Has the alcohol affected you negatively as well?” I stroke his arm. “It was so noble of you to carry me all the way here despite feeling unwell.”
I freeze when he pushes my hand off him and meets my gaze with his lips in a thin line. “No, it was not the alcohol that affected me. Don’t you remember anything?”
I step back and force my mind back to the fight at the tavern. My memories are jumbled, like torn pieces of paper I can try to arrange into a coherent picture. I freeze, recalling the moment Hawk’s nose started bleeding, and him stumbling against the banister on the stairs.
I run my fingers over the wood separating me from the murky water he surely wants to throw me into.
“Oh, I… um… I wasn’t aware I took so much.” Which is stupid of me, since I can sense him through our bond, and I know how much shadow I used to have for my use. Very little. Hawk’s feels like a full well, but the truth is that it’s not bottomless, and if I take too much, my Dark Companion will be depleted. He will ache, he will be out of breath, he will bleed, and if I choose to take even more, I could crush him.
Did I… lose control and hurt him, on the very same day I vowed to never do such a thing?
Shame is like a spiky ball growing inside my heart. I don’t know what to say and just watch him contemplate the moon.
“Do you care?” Hawk asks.
“Do I care? There’s no one in this world or yours for whom I care more.” Yet I don’t dare touch him, afraid of being rejected again. Memories from the fight now punch me with their intensity. I wasn’t just drunk. I was drunk on power, and I took, took, took, stopping only when there was no one left to fight.
“It didn’t feel like you cared when you summoned giant spikes, tentacles, and broke the floor just to show off in front of your cousin,” Hawk tells me, pinning me to the pier. Is it me, or have the frogs gone silent, eavesdropping on my moment of shame.
Fuck. Tristan. We lost the advantage of making our arrival a surprise.
I take a step back, pretending I’m admiring the smelly algae on the water. “He always teased me about my size, my lack of strength and my faded shadow. Is it really so wrong that I wanted to show him I can best him for once? That his wings are not as impressive as he thinks?”
I flinch when the railing creaks in Hawk’s hands, as if it’s about to break from the strength of his grip, but then he pulls away and kicks it so hard the wooden barrier cracks and falls into the water.
I get the sense it was either that or me.
“So you decided that it’s fine to hurt me just to show him what a shadow you’re now packing?” Hawk growls, and when he glances my way, for a moment I’m certain there’s a red glint in his eyes.
“I can see how it might have sounded that way—”
“It didn’t just sound like it! That’s what you did! Like it was all about you and your petty revenge.”
I swallow, and while I’m sure he won’t feed me to the array of slimy, razor-toothed lizards hiding in the water, I still step farther from the edge of the pier. “We had to escape…” I say weakly, but the truth is I did lose control. I wasn’t paying enough attention to how much I was taking, or how it affected Hawk. In that moment, it was all about presenting my new power to a man who’s belittled me in the past.
Hawk makes a bitter snort and shakes his head. “You told me I won’t be giving anything up, but now that you have me entrapped, turns out you injure me every time you use my shadow? Was this whole Dark Companion thing ever about me, or am I only a convenient attachment to my shadow?” he asks, glaring at me in accusation.
I know it doesn’t look good that I’m spending time thinking about it, because yes, I do love him, but I’d be lying if I claimed his shadow didn’t matter when I chose him. “You and your shadow are part of one whole. There is no one without the other. I cannot tell where you end and it begins. On the night we met, I was as entranced by it as I was by your body and the way you treated me. I… do not wish for you to feel trapped.”