He inhaled against her head, and his hands spanned her back as he snuggled against her. “I love you,” he mumbled into her hair.
“You what?” She lifted her head, but his eyes were closed. “Reeve, you don’t mean that.”
He only murmured back a nonsense word followed by a deep, slumberous breath.
All of the lethargy was beaten right out of her by the flailing of her heart against her ribs. What in the realm had she done to make him think she was worthloving?
She stared at his slack face as he fell into a sleep he had just so unfairly ripped away from her. He couldn’t love her, not something so wretched and weak and dark, despite what he’d said about devotion as they pieced together the altar’s mural or when he gazed into her eyes in bed together. She wanted to shake him awake, make him explain, but she was left alone with her thoughts despite the massive arms wrapped around her and the heavy breath falling over her head and the words that had just been spoken dancing through the chamber, and…well, no, she wasn’t alone at all, was she? Men said all sorts of things when they’d yet to get one in bed, and sometimes even more outlandish things while in the act, but he was still there, after, even if he was asleep.
Celeste lay her head down again and nibbled at her lip as she watched his chest languidly expand. She’d known herself when she woke in the temple after the flooded caverns that she loved Reeve, and perhaps she’d known even before that. Perhaps she’d known the moment they met.
Well, no, that certainly wasn’t the case—not when he was trying to kill her—but maybe that was how love worked. Maybe it decided things on its own and just waited for everybody else to catch up.
It didn’t really matter, she supposed, because it was easy with Reeve, even with the awfulness and complications of the realm around them. But certainly he didn’t feel the same. She was temporary, replaceable, and would be a dark spot in his otherwise bright past, not a shadowy future that dragged him down and away from his duty and his dreams. He belonged elsewhere, some uncursed place where the sun shone, and she belonged…
I belong here. As she lay in his arms, she felt no urging in her chest to run or hide and the surrounding space didn’t push her away. In fact, Reeve’s wards fixed to the walls felt like a warm embrace when she walked into the bed chamber, something she had never once truly felt. Just like the warmth of arcana buried into the hairpin he carved her, it was like being welcome as opposed to begrudgingly tolerated, no longer a burden, but belonging.
When Reeve had gone out into the storm to find Eliot, Celeste knew he would be all right—it was just a storm—yet she’d worried it would be the last she’d ever see of him, and then what would she do?
She had worried about that silently while she cleaned up the wounds Charlie had given herself from scrambling around in the dried-out briars looking for the boy. Once the girl was calmer, she had wandered to the back of the temple and the big windows that looked out on the graveyard.
“They don’t remember,” Charlie had said, voice hoarse as she stared through the streaks of rain into the darkness. “They were babies when their families died, so me and Halfridaaretheir family now, but…”
A shock of lightning brightened the stones. Neither flinched.
“But you still remember,” Celeste said quietly at her side.
Charlie nodded. “My sister took care of me after mom and dad got the plague. I was useless. I just cried all the time. But then she got sick and died too.”
Celeste’s gaze roved through the darkness, the faint outline of the graves standing against the shadows, and then there was the mound with no marker.My sister died here too, she thought to say, but was unsure if it would be a comfort.
No more tears fell from Charlie’s eyes. She just gazed out into the darkness. “I promised myself I would be a better sister to Eliot and Willow than I was to Isabelle, but I’m worse.”
Celeste rounded on her. “Youarea good sister, Charlie.”
The girl glared out at the graveyard. “I’m not even really their sister.”
“Yes, youare.” Celeste took her by the shoulders, forcing her to look back. “You love them, don’t you?”
She nodded, dark eyes wide. “But what if—”
“No, nowhat if. You just tell them you love them. Tell them because they need to know, if it’s true.”
“Well, it is,” the girl said as if there were no more obvious truth in the realm.
“Then tell them.”
So Charlie did tell them. She’d stumbled through the words over and over when Eliot was brought back to the temple, and at the inn, she’d hugged a sleepy Willow too and said it again even though the littlest girl didn’t understand why and only giggled back. But it was easier for children because they meant it so differently, so purely. They weren’t tainted by terrible deeds and dark magic.
Celeste lay awake, wrapped in Reeve’s arms for a long time after the memory passed. His words, however, remained buzzing around her brain. Had she tricked him? Was she still just trapping him there in that same bed chamber without dark arcana but with some other evil means? Something so good, it couldn’t love something so dark, but perhaps she’d ruined him after all. Or perhaps…perhaps he’d made her better?
“I love you too,” she whispered even though he couldn’t hear, and it felt so real that she believed whatever it was between them could last at least a little longer. Celeste vowed silently then she would protect the goodness that was inside him, buried her face into his shoulder, and finally fell into a dreamless sleep.
CHAPTER 28
DESTINED TO SUCCUMB
Reeve had never been happier. He’d also never been stickier, nor had he smelled this way, but if he were being honest with himself—which he had to be, theologically speaking—he could absolutely get used to all of it.
