“Also, your negotiation to allow us to not just pass through the Gloomweald but do it quickly was brilliant.” He was still thinking, quite hard. “And your request for information on the Lux Codex, for me, was…thoughtful.” The word looked like it confused him, as if it came from some other language, and he wasn’t sure if he were using it right, and, goodness, that was terribly endearing.
Amma bit her cheek to keep from smiling too broadly. Instead, she just shrugged.
“You were quitethoughtful,” he said again with slightly more confidence. “Well, you are almost always that way, which can be incredibly inconvenient and irritating, but in this case it was useful.”
At that, Amma actually did laugh. “I’m not sure if you’re complimenting or criticizing me.”
“No, I don’t mean to…” Damien shook his head, grinning awkwardly, and there might have been color on his face, but the firelight made it hard to decipher. “What you said today, about infernal arcana and, in turn, about me—I would like to express my gratitude for it. Uh, that is, if that’s what you meant.”
“You mean about magic all being the same when it’s used for good?” There was a hitch in her chest, and she brought her hand to her heart instinctively. “Yes, I meant that, and I meant it about you too.”
Damien’s features had softened, the firelight no longer severe but a gentle glow cast on the side of his face, the other half in shadows. His lips were parted, like he might say something else, but wasn’t sure. She would have liked to kiss those lips, to kiss them and really mean it, and there was a pang in her stomach that told her not to, not like this, not with other intentions.
But he moved toward her, and the space was so narrow between them the decision was almost made for her. “Last night, before the unpleasantness with the elves,” he said, voice throaty, “sharing body heat was wise. Are you still cold?”
Amma swallowed, nodding. He leaned back, holding an arm out, and she lay herself on her side into the hollow he carved out with his body. His hand rested on her back, and Amma held her breath. Damien, blood mage, son of a demon, wascuddlingher.
It was strange, ridiculous, unbelievable, but it was also wonderful. Amma nestled her head onto his shoulder and lay a hand on his chest. Warm, even through the leather, she had the urge to feel his heartbeat, but the armor he hadn’t yet taken off got in the way. She pressed her body against his side a little harder to try and sense it, and his hand around her waist tightened, sliding into the curve of her side. She pulled up a knee, dragging it slowly over his thigh, and for a moment when she closed her eyes, nothing else mattered. The world let her be, her duties back home ceased to exist, and the terrible past and future that waited for her evaporated into nothing, like a curse suddenly broken. All that was left was the night, the warmth, and Damien, who was just a man, after all, holding her.
She wasn’t sure how much time passed, but his chest had begun to rise and fall a little heavier as if he had fallen asleep. She lifted her head to look on his face, turned toward her, eyes closed, black hair falling across it. She waited what felt like an interminable time, she wiggled a bit, testing his grip around her, steady but with the heaviness of a man asleep, and finally she let her gaze travel down his body.
Wasting this opportunity would be ludicrous, and he needn’t know—not now, anyway—that she had taken the scroll. Amma lifted her hand from his chest leathers and moved it down to the small satchel tied to his belt. If she could just quickly wiggle her fingers inside, grab it, and tuck it away, she could settle back to sleep and act as if nothing had happened.
Until they got to Faebarrow.
Amma froze, hand hovering above the satchel. She looked back to his face, lax in the last embers of the firelight, peaceful, asleep. When they reached the city and she ran for it, he could just order her back to him, but if she sought out a guard, of which there were an inordinate amount, she knew they would protect her. They would do anything to see to her protection, in fact, including cutting Damien down where he stood. He spoke of himself as indestructible, and while she didn’t necessarily disbelieve it under most circumstances, enough soldiers, in a strange place, when he wasn’t expecting an attack would not turn out well for him. And in the unlikely event he was taken alive? Well, if certain people got a hold of him, living might be worse than a swift death.
But the whole point of running off to Aszath Koth, of traveling all this way and enduring so much, of leaving her home in the first place, was to steal the Scroll of the Army of the Undead. Yes, there was selfishness in fleeing Faebarrow, and she had considered briefly once she was gone to stay that way, nameless and free beyond the barony’s borders. But there was duty in her quest too, one much greater that compelled her to return even if going back home meant possibly failing and facing retribution for what she had done.
Amma swallowed, arm beginning to ache as it hovered inches away from the thing she needed so desperately she was willing to pay for it with a man’s life. A man on whom she was now lying, so warm, so comforting, so absolutely wonderful, and who had done none of the things to her that other men, men who were lauded as holy heroes, had.
Maybe…maybe there was another way. She could take the scroll and…what? Run? For the first time, he hadn’t used the enchanted word on her before falling asleep. She blinked into the darkness—once she grabbed it, she could flee blindly toward home, to hope he never found her, never followed to Faebarrow and to his death.
That was the wisest and kindest thing to do, surely, but leaving him like this made her heart ache in a way it never had before, not when she had to turn away from what she wanted most years ago, and not even when she had realized her best efforts and her sacrifices had been for naught so recently. This was a deeper ache that made her eyes water and throat burn, but this was also the last opportunity she would get, and so she steadied her shaking hand and tugged on the string to loosen the pouch.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
A hand clamped down on Amma’s wrist, tight and painful. Fingers tensing, she lost the scroll she had just managed to touch, but it hardly mattered when Damien jerked her hand away.
Sitting up, he pulled her with him, and the firelight fell into his face again, highlighting the anger there. The betrayal. “I asked you a question.”
Amma’s mouth opened, but her throat had gone completely dry, no words coming out.
“Sanguinisui, tell me.”
“Stealing from you,” erupted from her chest, burning as it came out in exactly the way the truth should, so painful a tear escaped.
Damien exhaled through his nose, jaw tight, veins in his throat throbbing. He looked away from her into the fire, hand still clenched around her wrist.
“Damien, I’m sorry, I—”
“Sanguinisui, donotspeak, I don’t want to hear your excuses.” He stood, pulling her up, and in two long strides, brought her to where she had laid out her cloak on the other side of the fire. “Stay here for the rest of the night,” he said with a bite. “Do not move, do not hurt yourself or anyone else, and donotcome to me pretending that you are cold or frightened or that you actually—” Damien cut himself off with a sharp inhale, a silhouette against the fire, but she could still see the anger, the disappointment, could feel it coming off of the shadow that loomed around him.
He turned from her and stalked back to where they had been a moment before, together. Amma slid down onto her knees as the spell commanded her to, body so heavy it would have dragged her down even without magic. Her chest heaved with the words he’d barred her from saying, the ones that would apologize, that would try to explain, that would tell him she hadn’t meant to hurt him.
Except that it didn’t matter what her intentions were, only what she had done.
Damien sat, back to the fire, and took up the book once more. He stayed like that for a long time, but did not turn the page. Amma fell onto her side, watching, cold. She could have wrapped the cloak around her but didn’t, and instead just shivered until silent tears came.
