Promises of a Deadly Bind {Sequel to Games of a Different Kind}

Chapter 9

Tyros's POV

I wasn't new to girls. I was used to the way they dressed, the way they talked even the way some of them swung their hips from side to side as they walked with that unique confidence of their own body. I was used to the movement of their lips, the curvature of their bodies, even the words they said when they thought I couldn't hear them. 

So, naturally, I thought that I was prepared for Serafina. 

At the start, it was just casting off some careless remarks towards her just to hear her obnoxious responses that screwed up her nose as if I was the last person she would ever want to speak to. She might have said that to me at one point, actually. 

It had been after the rainstorm that I realised. Huddling together in one of my hidey-holes, in between flashes of lightning that lit her up so brightly it was like she was a living jewel, I'd realised exactly how I felt about her. She'd haughtily asked me about whether wild animals prowled the forests around here, trying to hide the fact she was scared.

I might have liked the fact she was scared. It gave me a chance to show off my knowledge: finally an instance where Serafina could not rule the stage with her fancy education. The woods were my territory and my instincts were what kept us alive in here. 

And right now my instincts were bring confused: thrown off balance by the way her hair fell down to her waist in black waves of vitality, cast adrift by the brilliant green of her eyes and untethered by how she danced around the place, every movement of hers a play of fluidity and grace. 

"You always take me the most glamorous of places, Tyros," Serafina tossed back at me, her words alive and vibrant even as they passed her lips. Her hair was tossed over her right shoulder, her left displaying the white curve of her throat. She smiled back at me, her lips red and wide.

"Only the best for you," I replied, the words drawn out: languid and lazy just as she described me in some of her more snappish moments. 

I scooped her hand out of the air and pressed it to my lips: her skin cool to the touch. My fingers gently curved around her wrist, holding on a little longer than necessary. I felt her pulse increase as I held it and dropped it, smiling that I made it grow faster. 

Whatever Serafina said, she fit well into the woods, like some dryad returning to an old home. She was as much a part of this forest as the trees that had grown into the land a decade ago, as the birds that settled heavily on the branches, as the animals that prowled the undergrowth, seen in flashes of fur and teeth.

Serafina wasn't scared of wild animals anymore.

"We could stay out here forever," she said, her voice rich on the crest of dreams. Serafina's hand skimmed the rough, scarred trunk of a tree, the pale skin a startling difference to the earthy brown. Her dress, a simple white shift, trailed on the ground, gathering the edge of the earth. I didn't think she minded anymore.

"Maybe," I replied back, indulging her fantasy. I leaned against an opposing trunk, watching her wonder as she eyed the world she'd never known existed around her. Everyone in our village was taught to avoid the woods: our fear of the unknown was a collective monster lingering in our hearts. Except I'd never listed to the rumours.

When one was practically an outsider, you went where no others did. Hiding behind vines that strung the forest like streamers, making homes for myself in the trees as if I'd been born here along with everyone else. I had my own place in the village, a small shack that I shared with my brother.

Raxis... The word flitted across my mind without permission, invading into my thoughts as it had been doing all too much lately. He had barely been making his way home - though he never called it home. The last time the word had slipped into my speech, his lip had curled in disgust. He thought this village too small a place for someone like him.