I rolled my eyes, feigning nonchalance even as my stomach turned somersaults. “It’s not me I’m concerned about.”
Lei’s smile grew wolfish. “Is that a challenge, my love?”
I blushed down to my neck. When he called me that, it dragged my mind back to the Reed Flute Caves: the metallic stench of blood in the air, the caress of death down my spine, the coldness in his eyes as he’d butchered and slaughtered. That animal sound of pure, unadulterated rage. Beneath his pretty smiles and arch flirtations lurked a monster in the dark.
“How can you be like this?” I whispered.
He had not released my sword hand. Now he toyed with it, tracing each of my calluses. “Like what?”
“You’re so…flippant.” At the quirk in his lips, I added, “And you keep smiling.”
His answering smile was even more crooked. “Am I not allowed to smile?”
I took a breath, not sure who I was trying to remind here. “Earlier today I saw you murder a dozen men in the time it takes most soldiers to draw their swords. I saw you kill a princess faster than she could scream. And I saw you so thoroughly butcher a man he surely cannot enter the afterlife whole.”
“He betrayed you,” said Lei lowly, the gleam of violence back in his eyes. “I remembered him.”
My voice hitched. “And now here you are, flirting with me as ifyou haven’t a care in the world.”And here I am, I added silently,flirting back as if I’m not to blame for all of this.
And now I wondered who I was truly upset with.
“You’re entitled to your happiness.” He spoke into my mind, and I flinched, forgetting he could do that. At my change in mood, he released me, and I edged away from him, hating this tendency of mine and yet unable to take a different path. When someone offered their love, I returned it with distance. When someone showed me their vulnerabilities, I repaid them with spikes and sharp edges.
“Are you afraid of me?” he asked quietly.
“No,” I said, but I could not meet his gaze. “I just…I’ve never seen anyone kill like that.”
The silence was back, and along with it, the uneven plink of water droplets. I started counting them, hating that sound, hating my inability to communicate. I was a mess of contradictions. I craved intimacy, and yet, when offered it, I found myself unworthy. I wanted affection, and yet, when someone showed me how much they cared, I shrank from that trust, as if it were a collar around my throat. I did not know what I desired anymore.Ihad been the one to come here late at night, to wake him from his rest, to demand his attention, and now I was the one pulling away, trying to hurt him, trying to hide from him. And still there was a part of me that longed to be known, that begged him to forgive me, to understand me, to not let me push him away.
Unable to look at him, I rose to my feet. “I should go,” I said. “It’s late, and you should rest.”
I reached for the doorknob, but before I could open it, he was behind me, caging me in, his arms planted firmly against the door.
“I told you what I am,” he said, his voice a low rasp. “But what I didn’t tell you is this—if they had taken your life today, I would have hunted down every last one of them. I would have scoured theThree Kingdoms for every soul responsible—and I would have given each of them a slow, slow death. And then, once I was finished, I would have followed you to the afterlife. I would have found you, and dragged you back from the hands of Death itself.”
I shook my head, avoiding his gaze. “Have you been drinking again?”
“No,” he answered, sounding, for once, affronted. He sighed, reaching for me. “I meant what I said. I told you, I protect what’s mine.”
Backed against the door, I had no choice but to look up at him. His eyes smoldered, no longer softened by amusement. I recognized that he feigned frivolity to hide the immensity of his feeling. “Don’t wear your insecurities on your sleeve,” he’d once warned me. “Then scoundrels like me can use them all too easily against you.”
His vulnerabilities were not on his sleeve. They were not even in his heart. They were buried so deep within him that they were hibernating seeds planted in the depths of winter. And yet in his eyes now were signs of early life, green seedlings that had emerged from the coldest of seasons.
I rose on the balls of my feet and kissed him on the cheek. I frowned at the bruise beneath his ear, where the hilt of a sword had caught him earlier today. I kissed this too, the soft underside of his jaw, and then the hollow of his throat, which rose and fell beneath my touch.
“You are nothing like the stories say,” I whispered. “You are nothing like I thought you were.”
“And what did you think I was?” The mischievous crook of his smile had returned.
“A handsome yet vain fool.”
“And now?”
“Now I know you’re even more vain than I supposed.”
He laughed as he kissed me, the sound catching low in his throat. “As long as you still find me handsome.”
I deepened the kiss in answer, and he drew us closer together, until I could feel evidence of his want against me. Guiding my arms around his neck, he began to lift me.
