He gave me a soft smile, his black hair sticking to his forehead and cheeks. “At least we know the bombs work.”
“But now we have less of them.”
“We’ll figure it out,” he whispered. “Don’t give up, little thief.”
A corner of my mouth quirked. “Never.”
He finished my leg, which was already throbbing less. Then he pulled me to my feet, a conflict raging in his eyes. His jaw flexed as if he were the one in pain.
I cupped his bristly cheek in my hand. “What’s wrong?”
His brow furrowed, and he gently folded me into his arms. “When he hit you...” he murmured into my neck. “When he held his knife to your face... I would’ve done anything to save you, Kiera.”
He pulled back enough to stare deeply into my eyes. “I could say I would burn this world for you, but the truth is,Iwould burn for you. To keep that beautiful heart beating, I would burn until I was nothing but ash and a name on your lips.”
My heart beat wildly as if trying to escape my chest. Was he saying what I thought he was saying?
He loves me. Surely he must love me as I love him.
But I didn’t just love him.
I trusted him. The words he spoke. The fervor behind them. That anguish didn’t stem from a promise to my mother, but from something deeper.
He had bared his heart to me over and over. And each time had sealed tiny shards of my broken trust back together.
But had I healed his shattered trust in me?
I tried to speak, but no words came out. I licked my lips and tried again. “Aiden, I?—”
“We found the shackle key,” Ruru announced as he burst into the tent, holding a rusty key aloft. His eyes widened when he found us embracing. “Oops. I’ll, uh... be out here.”
“No, Ruru,” I said quickly. “I’ll take it.” Aiden probably hated still being shackled.
Ruru handed it to me and disappeared.
Aiden smirked and lifted one of his cuffed wrists. “Would you like to free me a second time, little thief?”
I smiled back at him. “And I didn’t even have to steal the key this time.”
“No. Just everything else.”
I inhaled sharply, gazing up at him. The way he said it, soft and deep, was far different from the way he’d said it right before he’d kissed me, drunk and bitter. Now those words held a treasure mine of emotions and meanings.
I unchained his wrists and handed him the key for his ankles. But instead of releasing his shackles, he kneeled down and inserted the key into mine.
His fingers grazed the inside of my ankle as he unlocked one, then the other. Chills raced along my skin.
I made a small noise in the back of my throat. He looked up at me, those green eyes practically glowing in the soft light.
I wanted a thousand things in this moment. And all of them included him.
But we were running out of time.
“We won’t have shackles for the last leg of the journey,” I rasped, gesturing at the broken, discarded chains. “We won’t look like true prisoners.”
Clenching his jaw, he bent to unlock his ankle cuffs. They sprang open. “We’ll just have to hope they don’t notice. Or don’t care.”
Several other problems crowded my mind. We didn’t have Shayn or our papers. We’d used some of our supplies. And this delay with Korvin could make us late.
