“I’m sorry. I have to pack,” she told him.
He smirked knowingly and took a step back, still holding onto her fingertips. “What can I do?” he asked.
“Nothing, I… Actually, can you get my things from the tub?” she asked of him.
He nodded and disappeared across the room. Her mind wandered in silence as she continued throwing things into the bag, giving no care to anything being folded or taken care of. All she could think about was what her brother would say upon her return, the kind of trouble he would say she was in… she knew it would be a battle between them when she told him she’d actually seen the ships.
“Don’t go back,” Draven said as she buckled one bag closed.
She didn’t look up at him as she turned and grabbed the last of her things from the top of the dresser. “I have to. I am Queen. I have to go back to tell my brother of the ships. There is so much to do. The Nitesh is coming. More ships—”
“Slow down, Drae,” he insisted upon taking her arm.
She sighed and finally paused to face him. “I’m sorry. I just… with everything that’s happened…” Her voice trailed, and she looked down at her packed bag on the bed, the thoughts of what awaited her at Magnice trickling through her subconscious once more.
“You could stay,” he repeated as his fingers touched hers.
She felt her gaze squint. “You’ve said that twice now. You know I can’t,” she told him. “Why don’t you want me to leave?”
“Ah…” he muttered nervously, avoiding her gaze. She watched him swallow hard, and then he took her hand in his. “Because I am in love with you,” he said simply.
Aydra’s heart stopped at the words.
She stared, wide-eyed, and took a step back from his figure as he gazed at her with the most sincere look she’d ever seen on anyone.
“You what?” she managed.
He rubbed the back of his neck nervously, and she watched as an embarrassed smile rose on his lips. “I know. It’s… it came as quite a shock to me as well,” he said, avoiding her gaze. “But… I’ve no other explanation for the feelings I’ve come to have for you. Aydra, I… I can’t get you out of my head.”
His hand left his neck and slapped his thigh defeatedly, as though he were giving up something of great importance. “I can’t stop hearing your voice,” he continued to admit. “Your laugh… I hear it as the lullaby I fall asleep to every night. I dream of seeing your smile, of holding you in my arms. I dream to feel complete again, as I did when you were with me before… And then these last few days… despite everything that’s happened… I’ve never felt as alive as I do when I am with you. Last night… last night, I felt like I was home. As though our worlds were at peace somehow, you shrouded in darkness with me. You are the most stubborn, most infuriating, and yet the smartest, bravest, wildest woman I’ve ever known. You don’t know fear and you love your people and this land with a passion I’m not sure you’re even aware of.” He swallowed hard, and his gaze rested over her once more. “I am unequivocally fallen at your strength and ferocity.”
He reached out for her hands again and took her shocked fingers in his. “I know it’s a lot. And I realize how crazy it sounds, that I could be in love with someone whom I’ve been taught my entire life to see as inferior, as my enemy… Aydra, I know.” His hands squeezed hers, and his weight shifted. “I don’t expect you to feel the same, but I think you’ve felt something and I wanted— Ineeded— you to know.”
She didn’t know what to say.
She didn’t know what her face was doing.
She didn’t know how he could utter the words he’d just said to her.
How could he love her?
Years of bickering and loathing each other. And after two weeks of being with her, a few restless nights, and one battle plan later…he loved her?
“You can’t be serious,” she whispered. “You don’tloveme, Draven. You love the small fraction of myself that you’ve gotten to know here in the Forest. You love the brief carefree moments we shared where I was able to actually be happy—”
“You told me yesterday that you could not stop thinking about me,” he interjected, “that you came here because you wanted to be with me—”
“I’d been drinking,” she managed.
He raised a brow and gave her a sideways stare as though he didn’t believe her. She shifted the weight on her feet and shook her head.
“Draven… You can’t… you can’t love me. Our races are enemies—”
“Is that the only excuse you’ll give me for not being allowed to love you?”
She swallowed hard, her thoughts flickering to the words of her mother and her brother, the words she’d been fed her entire life. Not to trust him. That he was manipulative.
But in her time in the Forest with he and his people had proved differently…
