But what hadIdone? There were lines crossed—moral ones. Intimate ones. The king hadn’t managed to fuck me, but did it matter when he had touched me? When Ilethim kiss me? WhenIhad given up on Nox? My hands fall from his face because,gods, what right do I have to act like we could just have a single moment together after everything?
“Hey,” he whispers, catching my hands and resisting when I try to pull them away. “Please, talk to me, Sunshine. Let me in.” Though he stands tall, he might as well be on his knees for the way he begs me.
I shake my head, chewing on my lower lip as I battle to corral my anger and grief and guilt. But Nox’s affect on me has always been something stronger than I could fight and this is no exception. “I know about Haylee,” I start, forcing myself to look at him, even as his eyes widen like he’s just had a secret exposed. “And I wish I could say that the moment I learned of the betrothal, I knew it was fake. Or that I thought the information was wrong. I wish I could say that there wasn’t a small part of me that always thought the two of you go well together.” My eyes bounce between his as his outline blurs. But he deserves the truth. He should know every wayIhad failed him too. “But I can’t. I doubted you—I doubtedus—and those doubts led medown a path that can never be undone. And it wasn’t because I don’t love you, Nox, because I do. Stars above, do Iloveyou. It was because I hated the thought that you could love someone else. That I would have to exist in a world where you aren’tmineanymore. And I wasn’t strong enough to keep fighting, and I—”
My own tears choke me as the taste of salt stains my lips. And Nox… He looks at me as if I’ve utterly destroyed him. Like I’ve dismantled him piece by piece until he, like me, is only a collection of broken parts.
“I’m sorry,” I breathe through a fractured sob, the words sawing from that hollow place within me. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t be better for you.”
“Gods above, Sunshine, I didnotget betrothed to Haylee. The council tried; they even announced it at my coronation, but there was nothing official between us. Inevertouched her. I do not,could not, want her.Ever. There isonlyyou. There will onlyeverbe you, and if you think there isanythingyou can say that would change my mind, I’m telling you right now that you’re wrong.” I know his words should bring me comfort, but they only amplify the fact that I had done so much worse.
“King Dolian kissed me,” I say, barely louder than a whisper. “Ilethim do it because I needed something from him. A favor.”
“Rhea, don’t take on guilt for something you had no control over.” His voice is so gentle, eyes so full of that regret for me—me—that something within me snaps.
“You’re not listening!” I bark, forcing myself away from him as magic presses at the space between my ribs. “Ilethim! I let him touch me. I let him fill my head with poisonous thoughts about you. Aboutlove.” I undo the clasp of the cloak and throw it to the ground before pulling off my shirt. Standing in the faint candlelight, I undo the laces of my pants, tugging them down just far enough to show Nox the one thing that could never behidden from him. “He changed me forever, and heknowsit.” And now Nox knows it too.
There is a pause, a moment frozen in time, in which Nox inhales sharply at the sight of my scarred hip. I watch the shadows of the room creep towards him, his jaw clenched so tightly that I can see his pulse ticking along it. And then everything explodes. Between one blink and the next, darkness issplatteredagainst the walls and the ceiling, as if Nox threw paint instead of shadows. He claims the distance I created and I hold myself still, preparing for his wrath. It won’t be the same as the king’s, and that knowledge somehow makes it worse because I know Nox’s anger won’t come in the form of barbed words or pounding fists. It’ll come as soft heartbreak. As a declaration that our love is no longer enough.
But, though anger carves deep lines into the center of his forehead, his voice is steady when he says, “Youdidn’t make those choices because they were never really choices to begin with.Hecaged you.Helaid his hands on you.Hemanipulated you because he knew that it was the only way to break you.” My shoulders rock as I cry, the safety of Nox forcing my walls down. “But he didn’t, love. He didn’t break you. Because you’reherenow, and whatever you did, whatever youhadto do to survive that torment, I would never hold against you.” Two fingers gently press beneath my chin, making my eyes meet his. “There is nothing that you could tell me that would erase the way I feel about you, Rhea. Don’t you see? I’m infinitely yours. In this life and every other.”
Breaths rush past my lips, and though I am raw—sliced open and exposed—it’s not nearly as suffocating as it once was. It still hurts, and the memories still linger just beyond the edges of my mind, but inthismoment, there is just Nox and his devotion to me.
“Hear me when I say that, while there are men who believe in the gods and others who worship magic itself, I find my divine holiness in you.Youare the only thing worth believing in.”
Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-Seven: Rhea
Ournextmovementsareslow, like the untangling of snarled threads, as Nox’s words wrap around me. “Tell me what you want,” he says.Pleads. “Grant me the permission to be what you need now so that I can worship you in the way you deserve, Rhea.” He brushes a loose strand of my hair away from my face,fingertips trailing down my cheek. “Let me atone for every way I’ve failed you.Please.”
I want to tell him that it’s ironic he feels that way. That aftereverythingI just revealed, he isn’t the one who should carry that guilt, yet I had shown him my biggest fear. I had confessed my darkest shame, and Nox had stared at those ugly, thorny pieces and declared me a flower worth wanting. Had pricked his fingers as he reached for me, jagged edges and all, and it had not turned him away. I wanted to do the same. I wanted to have him.
For the first time in so long, I simplywanted.
But I can’t make the words scrape up my throat, can’t pull them from the pit that’s still very much inside of me. So I gently grip his tunic instead. Giving the consent he wants as I lightly tug him with me into the bathroom. And Nox, as he has always done, understands what I can’t say as he reaches over and turns the shower on, his gaze never leaving mine. Another unhurried dance begins between us—one where we take turns removing clothing as if there are no guards hunting us down or kings and queens desperate to keep us apart. As if I’m not still coated in the imaginary blood of those I killed and Nox isn’t bound by the way his kingdom is turning against him. Because, of course, we are and I am and he is.
Bare in the golden light of the pillar candles lit around us, I fight the urge to cover myself. To hide the space between my hip bones that is more concave. The ribs I can easily count beneath my skin. And the brand…
“You are so beautiful,” Nox murmurs, and if I thought it might be a poor attempt at making me feel better, one glance at him tells me that he’s not just plying me with sweet words. With his lids half closed and his eyes glazed over, Nox doesn’t justlookat me. He studies me, venerates me with the way his entire body leans in my direction as if he’s caught in some invisible orbit. His fingers twitch at his sides as steam begins to curl out fromthe shower, tendrils of it stretching in our direction, yet all is lost to him except for me. It’s silly to feel myself warm beneath his observation. To have my magic rising to meet his, and yet I had been so sure he wouldn’t be able to stomach the mark and, by extension, me. I had felt so lonely, and now—
Drawing in a deep breath, I reach my hand out, and together, we step beneath the hot water. It’s darker in here, shadows that aren’t controlled by Nox or made by me cradling us as the water hits the tops of our heads and travels down our backs. I watch as rivulets drip from the longer strands of Nox’s hair, creating pathways over his forehead and down his nose. Over the curve of his lips, a sight I linger a few breaths longer on. Heat, both foreign and familiar, sparks to life low in my stomach—so abruptly that it nearly makes me gasp as I flick my eyes up to Nox’s. Finding him already looking at me. Patiently meeting me where I’m at as he’s always done.
In truth, that feeling—the longing and attraction and love—that stirs within me is frightening. Does feeling that, here and now, mean I’m trying to absolve myself of everything that came before? Is itselfishto want to just have this moment with him? To find that buried beneath the cold and bitter darkness, there is warmth brimming? That there is a yearning for him that perhaps was never snuffed out as I had thought but only masked?
Is it unforgivable that I want to surrender to it?
“Do you trust me?” The question knocks me from my own head as I blink away water that has gathered on my lashes. The skin at Nox’s chest has taken a slightly pink hue from the hot water, evidence of just how much time he must have been waiting for me to do or sayanythingwhile I had been trying to figure out if I deserved to be temporarily absolved from my sins.
Though the answer to the question is pressing at my lips before I even take my next breath, I still force myself to say it slowly. To make sure Nox knows that my hesitations are notbecause ofhim. “I trust you with my life. With my magic.” I swallow roughly. “With my body and with my heart. There is no part of me that is not yours, Nox.”
For better or worse, I am his.
Reassured by my answer, he nods and reaches past me to grab the new bar of soap resting at the tub’s edge and a clean washcloth next to it.
“When we were separated, I had the hardest time doing things alone that we had once done together,” he admits, giving me the first soapy cloth before grabbing one for himself. My throat constricts as I watch him run his cloth up his arm. “Eating. Sleeping. Training. Even showering. Everything reminded me of you, and doing them alone was admitting you weren’t there. It was admitting that my heart was missing half of itself. And sometimes—” He drags the cloth across his chest—over the ring he had given me when he asked me to marry him—and down the other arm. My grip on my own washcloth tightens, my hands suspended in the air. “Sometimes, I would let my mind wander to dark places. Ones where voices whispered that I wasn’t going to see you again. That my weaknesses had led to you being taken. That they were the cause for your suffering. And something as simple as a shower would turn into me hating myself. First, because you weren’t there. And then, because I was replacing the memory of us doing it together with this new, horrible one.”
I draw my washcloth closer as I turn over what he’s said, startled at the fact that he felt similar to how I did in our time apart. “I was assigned a handmaiden,” I begin, dropping my attention to where the wash cloth meets my forearm. “Her name was Eve, and I’m ashamed to admit I did not like her at first. The king ordered her to bathe me, and I hated the idea that her hands, even as benign as the touch was, would replace yours on my skin. Hated that anyone else would see me undressed andvulnerable because those were things I only wanted to be with you. But she was bound by a blood oath to obey the king, and I was stuck under his influence because of the ring.”
I don’t look back up at Nox, but I see his movements still, the cloth’s path halted over his defined stomach, the muscles perhaps showing a little more easily than before.
