She took a final step back and slid down the rough wall to the floor, pulling her knees to her chest. The argument was over. The ground had irrevocably shifted between us, and in the suffocating silence of our cage, a new, terrifying, and fragile alliance was born.
Luzia remained on the floor, her knees drawn up to her chest, a portrait of utter defeat. The fight had been a fire, and now that it was out, the cold was settling in.
My words hung in the air, a promise that felt impossibly large.I can help her.It was true, but it was a truth based on theory and research, not on the grim reality we now faced. Still, it was the only truth I had left to offer. I watched her, and for the first time, I saw past the fierce warrior from the river. I saw a terrified sister who had just lost her only hope. My guilt was a physical weight in my gut.
Apologies were useless. Plans were for the morning. Right now, in this locked room, something else was needed. My hand went instinctively to my neck, my fingers finding the familiar, worn shape beneath my shirt. I had worn it for years, a relic from my grandmother, a superstitious token for an academic who didn’t believe in such things, but I believed in the history it represented.
I crossed the small room in two steps and sank to the floor a short distance from her, careful not to crowd her space. She didn’t flinch, but I could feel her tense. I pulled the thin leather cord over my head.
“Here,” I said, my voice barely a whisper.
I held out theSeolais. She didn’t move, her gaze fixed on the wooden floor.
“This belongs to you,” I said quietly.
Slowly, as if moving through deep water, she lifted her head. Her eyes, red-rimmed and hollowed out, fixed on the pendant.
With a hand that trembled slightly, she reached out. Her cold fingers brushed against mine as she took the medallion. She didn’t look at it closely. She simply closed her fist around it, the metal disappearing into her palm. It was an anchor—a small, solid point in a world that had turned to liquid.
CHAPTER 19
Luzia
His warmth passed through to me, melting my walls of anger and failure. I couldn’t resist him, and since we were alone together, and alive, and now that time no longer mattered because I had failed to get the flower before the full moon, I knew I’d never be allowed back to my people. I was adrift. I needed to have a connection on this land I could trust.
I leaned over and kissed him.
It was not a kiss of forgiveness, not yet. It was a kiss of necessity. A drowning woman’s gasp for air. But the moment my lips met his, the calculation vanished, replaced by a sensation so overwhelming it stole the breath from my lungs. He was hesitant for only a second, a flicker of surprise, before he responded. His mouth was soft, yielding, and it met my desperate pressure with a gentleness that broke something deep inside me.
The fortress I had built around my heart, stone by stone, since my sister first grew sick, began to crumble, not with a crash, but with the slow, silent erosion of a riverbank giving way to a steady current. His hand, which I still held, tightenedaround mine. His other hand came up to my jaw, his thumb stroking the curve of my cheek. The simple, tender gesture was my undoing.
A sound, a choked sob of surrender, escaped my throat. I pulled back slightly, my forehead resting against his, our breath mingling in the small space between us. I opened my eyes. In the dim light, I saw not the bumbling professor I had blamed for everything, but a man whose own exhaustion and fear were etched onto his face, softened now by a look of profound, heart-stopping care. He was looking at me as if I were the only solid thing in a world that had dissolved into chaos. He saw me. Not the warrior, not the guardian of a dying bloodline, but me. Luzia.
“Don’t stop,” I whispered, the words feeling like they were pulled from my very core. It was a plea.
“I won’t,” he whispered, his voice a low, rough promise.
He kissed me again, and this time there was no desperation, only a slow, deliberate exploration. It was a conversation without words. His lips asked questions that mine answered. He tasted of the river, the dust of this room, and a deep, resonant sorrow that mirrored my own. I let go of his hand and brought mine to the back of his neck, my fingers tangling in his hair. I pulled him closer, needing to erase the space and to feel the solid, living heat of him against the cold emptiness that had consumed me.
His hands began to move, tracing the line of my shoulders, the curve of my spine, learning the map of me with a reverence that felt like a prayer. He wasn’t trying to conquer or possess. He was trying to understand. His touch wasn’t hungry—it was patient. It lingered on the old scars on my back, the knotted muscles in my shoulders, not as imperfections but as points of interest, parts of a history he wanted to read.
“You are so strong,” he murmured against my skin, his lips moving from my mouth to my throat, sending shivers down my entire body.
“No,” I managed to say, my voice husky. “Not anymore.”
“Yes, you are,” he insisted, pulling back just enough to look me in the eyes again, his gaze fiery and certain. “You feel everything. That’s where your strength is. Don’t ever let that go.”
No one had ever called my pain a strength. It had always been my burden, my curse.
My own hands grew bolder. I explored the lean, wiry strength of his body, the sharp line of his collarbone, and the surprising firmness of his shoulders. He was a man of books and labs, but the jungle had already started to harden him. Beneath my palms, I could feel his heart hammering a frantic rhythm that matched my own. We were two survivors, speaking the only language that made sense anymore, the language of touch, heat, and life.
His hands traced a slow path from my spine to my waist, his thumbs pressing gently into the hollows of my back before sliding around to my stomach. His touch was a brand through the thin fabric of my camisole. He paused there, his fingers resting just at the hem, a silent question hanging in the charged air between us.
I reached for his shirt buttons and worked them free one by one, my movements unhurried, methodical. The worn cotton parted, revealing a chest that was lean and defined, etched with the hard work of his research and the recent days of flight. He shrugged the shirt from his shoulders, and it pooled at his elbows. I grabbed a handful of my camisole and drew it up and over my head in one smooth motion, letting it fall to the floor beside me. Then his hands were on me, his touch gentle as they slipped behind my back. My bra fell away. The only thing I wore on my torso now was theSeolais. His eyes fixed on it, and a burning heat flooded through me.
The cool, stuffy air of the room touched my bare skin, but it was his eyes that I felt. His gaze was a physical touch, tracing the lines of my collarbones, the curve of my breasts. There was no judgment in his look, only a deep, consuming fascination. There was a moment of shared, clumsy intimacy as we worked at the rest—the rasp of a zipper, the soft rustle of fabric being pushed down and kicked away.
And then there was nothing between us but the hot, heavy air of the room. He reached for me, pulling me flush against him. The first shock of his skin against mine was a lightning strike, a jolt of pure energy that made me gasp. He was all warm, solid muscle and vibrant heat. I pressed myself closer, sighing as his warmth enveloped me, chasing away the last of the chill that had settled in my soul. He was real. This feeling was real.
