Every instinct I’ve honed over centuries tells me to step back, to rebuild the walls she’s somehow managed to breach without even trying. Yet here I am, watching her shoulders shake with exhaustion she’s too stubborn to admit, and all I want is to gather her against my chest and promise her things I have no right to promise. The bond between us pulses like a second heartbeat, insistent and terrifying, making a mockery of every defense I’ve ever built.
We stop by a riverbank as the sky begins its slow descent into dusk, the water running dark and swift between moss-covered stones. Aware of our time constraints, I’ve kept us at a grueling pace that had the horses lathered and snorting, their breath visible in the cooling air. Sam leads the horses downstream now, reins gathered in his calloused hands, murmuring something low and melodic to calm the restless beasts. His voice carries the gentle authority of an alpha, even here in a realm that has no place for wolves. I’m surprised he doesn’t try to take Esme with him, surprised he leaves her alone with me, considering the tension that’s been building between us like a storm front. He doesn’t look back though, just disappears around the bend where the river curves through a stand of silver birches. I guess there’s a first for everything.
Esme is perched on a flat stone near the water’s edge, her arms folded around her ribs like she’s trying to hold herselftogether, prevent whatever’s left inside from spilling out. Her hair is a tumble of silver and white down her back, catching what little light filters through the trees. The trial stole the color from her cheeks, left her skin looking ashen, but didn’t take the steel from her spine. She sits straight-backed despite everything, chin lifted with that quiet defiance I’m beginning to recognize as purely, uniquely hers. She hasn’t complained once, despite being unconscious for most of the ride, draped across Sam’s lap like something precious and broken, but I can see exhaustion in her eyes. The way they’ve gone distant and glassy, like she’s seeing things the rest of us can’t.
I approach without a sound, boots silent on the damp earth, muscles coiled with the hunter’s grace my father drilled into me from childhood. I don’t want to startle her, she’s been jumpy since emerging from the trial, flinching at shadows, but she turns her head before I say a word. Those beautiful stormy eyes find mine like they’ve always known how, like there’s some invisible thread connecting us that I’m only just beginning to understand, and Eidryn help me, I’m already falling. Me. Locke Erron, son of a general, trained to feel nothing, to be nothing but duty and blade and unwavering loyalty. A fallen man.
“You’re still pale,” I say, crouching beside her on the damp stones, close enough to catch the faint scent of magic that clings to her skin, an ozone and rain and wildflowers, and something dangerous. “You should take one of Galin’s elixirs.”
She considers my words for a minute, rolling them around in her mind like she’s testing their weight, their truth. Then she shakes her head, silver hair shifting like liquid mercury. “I thought about it.” Her voice is soft, frayed at the edges like old rope threatening to snap. “Sam said we should hold off. In case I need it later.”
“You might need it now,” I reply, trying my damnedest not to say anything about Sam and what he thinks, about the wayhe hovers over her like she might disappear if he looks away for too long. The words taste bitter on my tongue, jealousy and frustration and something else I don’t want to name.
She shrugs, but even that motion is small, careful, like everything else about her has become fragile as spun glass. “I’m just. . .tired. Bone-deep, soul-deep tired. I think I’ll wait.”
I don’t argue, though every instinct I possess screams at me to push, to demand she take care of herself because someone has to. I just nod, glancing down at the dirt between us, at the way shadows pool in the spaces our bodies create. The silence stretches, comfortable and close and charged with something electric. The kind that only exists between people who’ve already bled in front of each other, who’ve seen each other stripped down to nothing but truth and raw need. This is a level of vulnerability I’ve never been comfortable with, it’s not much but too much at the same time. Like standing on the edge of a cliff and feeling the ground crumble beneath my feet.
She shifts after a moment, turning to face me more fully, and I catch the way moonlight plays across her features, highlights the sharp line of her cheekbones, the soft curve of her mouth. “Can I tell you something?”
“Anything,” I say, and the word comes out a little too enthusiastic for my well-maintained assholery, a little too raw and honest for the mask I usually wear.
Her lashes lower, dark crescents against smooth ebony skin, and when she speaks again, her voice is quieter, more fragile than I’ve ever heard it. “In the cave. . .during the trial. . .I saw things. Horrible things. Visions, I guess. Fears made manifest. Memories twisted into nightmares. Maybe even glimpses of what’s coming, what’s waiting for us at the end of this road.”
I say nothing, force myself to stillness even as every part of me wants to reach for her, wants to pull her against my chest andpromise her that whatever she saw, I won’t let it touch her. I let her speak, let her unravel in her own time, her own way.
“There was one moment,” she continues, her voice dropping to barely above a whisper, “where I saw you. Bloodied and broken, kneeling in the Great Hall before my father. Your armor was cracked, your weapons gone, and you looked. . .defeated. You said you’d lost me. That I was gone, and then—” Her breath catches, and she has to force the words out. “Then you said you loved me.”
My breath catches, sharp and immediate, like she’s driven a blade between my ribs and twisted. Of all the things I expected her to say, accusations, questions about the bond between us, demands for answers I don’t have. This catches me completely off guard, leaves me reeling.
She looks up at me then, gray eyes searching my face with an intensity that makes me feel exposed, flayed open. There’s nowhere to run, no shield to hide behind, no clever words to deflect. Not when she delivers the next words.
“You said you loved me,” she whispers, and her voice breaks just slightly on the word love, like it’s something foreign on her tongue. “Was it real? Or was it just. . .just something the trial made me see?”
I want to lie. God, how I want to lie, to laugh it off, smirk, say something snide and cutting to throw her off balance, to make her forget this moment ever happened. I want to be the warrior I’ve always been, the one who never shows his hand, never reveals a weakness that could be exploited. Right now, sitting here with her eyes boring into my soul, I can’t. Not with her. Not anymore.
I look away, then back again, caught between the urge to flee and the deeper, more powerful need to stay, to give her this truth even if it destroys me. Honestly, I don’t know where to place my eyes, her face is too beautiful, too open, and looking at her feelslike staring directly into the sun. I give her my truth anyway, the words torn from somewhere deep inside my chest.
“I don’t lie,” I say, my voice rougher than I intended, scraped raw with honesty. “Not in dreams. Not in death. Not to you. Never to you.”
She holds my gaze, and I see the tempest building there in the depths of her eyes, the questions, the hope, the quiet ache that mirrors my own. Then she asks the one thing I wasn’t prepared for, the question that threatens to unravel every carefully constructed wall I’ve built around my heart.
“Could you love me?” Her voice is so gentle, so careful, it nearly shatters me completely. “Not just in some vision born of magic and fear. Not just in a moment of grief and loss. Could you. . .really care for me? Here, now, in this world where everything is complicated and messy and there are no guarantees?”
God, she has no idea what she’s asking. The weight of it, the impossibility of it. Maybe she does. Maybe that’s what makes her so brave, so perfectly, devastatingly her. She’s asking me to lay down my armor, to step out from behind centuries of training and duty and expectation, to just. . .be. Be real. Be vulnerable. Be hers.
I open my mouth, trying to form words that feel adequate to the moment, to the magnitude of what she’s offering. Nothing comes out. My throat has gone dry as sand, my tongue thick and useless. I want to ask her about Sam and the way he looks at her like she hung the stars, about her Tether to Micah and what that means for any future we might try to build. I want to tell her I’m not worthy of her light, that I’m too broken, too damaged by war and duty and a lifetime of emotional repression. For once in my verbose, well-educated life, I am completely, utterly speechless.
She takes my silence for an answer, of course she does, because what else could it mean? I can see her closing herself offto me, pulling back behind those walls she’s building. The light in her eyes dims, replaced by something that looks dangerously close to resignation.
Her shoulders tighten, curling inward like she’s trying to make herself smaller, invisible. Her chin drops, silver hair falling forward to hide her face. She turns her head away, and just like that, I lose her. I can feel her slipping through my fingers like water, like mist, like every other good thing I’ve ever been too afraid to hold onto.
Fuck. That.
I reach for her before I even know I’m doing it, fingers finding the delicate line of her jaw, tilting her face back toward mine with a gentleness that surprises us both. Her breath stutters against my skin, warm and sweet, and electricity flows through my veins from just that simple touch, fire and lightning and something that feels suspiciously like coming home.
My eyes study hers with an intensity that borders on desperation, cataloging every fleck of silver in her irises, every shadow of doubt I need to chase away. She studies me right back, fearless and unflinching, seeing past every mask I’ve ever worn straight down to the raw, unguarded heart of me. No questions now, no doubts. Just truth, hanging in the air between us like a promise.
I kiss her.
