I lean back slowly, careful not to shift the bed too much. My hand brushes her ankle under the covers, and I freeze, watching her lashes flutter. She doesn’t wake. Just sighs, barely audible, and tucks her chin closer to her shoulder.
Gods, she’s small. Not fragile. Never that. But small like a coiled spring, like every inch of her body’s meant to store fury until it explodes. Last night, though… she didn’t explode. She unfurled. Slowly. Carefully. And I watched it happen from the inside, like a man watching winter thaw out from the belly of a mountain.
I reach out. My fingers trace the line of her shoulder, the faint freckles across her collarbone, the pink edge of a scratch I don’t remember giving her. She didn’t flinch last night. Not once. Not when I pulled her against me. Not when I laid her down. Not when I murmured her name into the hollow of her throat like it was a spell.
She wanted that closeness. Needed it.
So did I.
I lower myself beside her, one arm slipping under her neck, the other sliding over her waist. She stirs, but doesn’t wake. Her breath catches for a second, then steadies again. I press a kiss to her shoulder—soft, slow, reverent.
“Zel vi’thar,” I murmur against her skin. The old words. My mother’s tongue. Sacred syllables you don’t just throw around.
Her shoulder twitches beneath my lips, and her eyes open a sliver. Just enough to find me.
She doesn’t speak. Doesn’t ask what I said.
She just smiles. Sleep-drunk and unguarded.
And I feel it. That crack in my ribs, the one I thought was permanent—it fills. Just a little. Just enough.
“Hey,” she says, voice like gravel and honey.
“Hey,” I echo.
She shifts, turning into me. Her palm settles against my chest, right over the scars. Her thumb moves in lazy circles like she’s memorizing them again.
“That thing you said,” she mumbles, eyes still mostly closed. “It wasn’t dirty, was it?”
I laugh—quiet, breathy. “No.”
“Shame.”
She cracks one eye fully open now, and I see the glint there. That spark she always hides behind barbs and bluster. I kiss her again, just under the jaw this time.
My compad buzzes on the nightstand. I ignore it.
She shifts, groaning. “Ugh. If that’s the world, tell it to fuck off.”
I chuckle. “Pretty sure it doesn’t listen to me either.”
She stretches, slow like a cat, and pulls the covers tighter. The light from the cracked window slides across her stomach now, illuminating faint bruises, old scars, the inked trail of a memory she said she’d never explain. I want to ask about it again, but not now. Not like this. She’s open—but not wide open. And I’m not about to push her off the cliff she only just climbed onto.
She reaches for me instead, fingers dragging lazy paths down my chest, over the line of my ribs.
“You still mad at me?” she asks, not looking at my face.
I think about it. Really think.
“No,” I say finally. “Not mad.”
“Hurt?”
“Was.”
“Now?”
“Cautious.”
