He had been waiting for her. For Seraphina.
Far in the distance, murmurs rose and fell. Horses whinnied. So many questions burned on his tongue. Where were they? What happened? All he could recall was the witchfire, the desperate scramble, the arrows…
Aldric tried to speak, but his throat felt like he’d swallowed broken glass. He swallowed, the movement pulling tight against the bandages wrapping his chest.
“Here,” his kirei murmured, pressing a cup to his lips. Cool, clean water rushed down his throat—the most delicious water he had ever drunk.
“Where is Reyla?” It was the first rasp he managed when she pulled the cup away and set it aside once more.
“At the Dawnspire,” Sera explained, another weary smile tugging at her lips. “She is safe, Aldric, don’t worry. Dame Florence is still with her.”
Safe. The word loosened the knot that had been twisting his gut ever since he had first been taken captive. Reyla was safe. He exhaled a long, shuddering breath and let his head fall back against the pillow, looking back at his kirei, drinking in the sight of her like a starving man.
And then he saw it.
It was faint—a thin scar slicing across her left cheekbone. A mar on perfection. A mark that had not been there when he rode away from her that day in Goldreach.
A dangerous heat kindled in his chest, warring with his pain. Aldric lifted his hand. His arm trembled with a weakness that shamed him, but he forced it upward anyway.
As if understanding what he wanted without him even saying, Sera leaned into his touch, making it easier for him to cup her cheek. “Who?” he asked, dragging the calloused pad of his thumb across the scar. “When?”
She closed her eyes, a hint of pain flickering across her features. Shadowed. Fleeting. “Back in Goldreach,” she whispered, “when I was escaping…”
There his kirei hesitated, her eyes opening, her gaze dropping to the blanket covering him. Absentmindedly, she smoothed the fabric across his chest. “It is a long story.”
Aldric swallowed hard, his thumb still resting against her cheek. He should have been there with her. He should have protected her from whatever caused her to hesitate now. “I have time to hear it.”
But she didn’t speak. She just stared at his chest, her expression unreadable. As he watched, her face crumpled a little. Her eyes began to shimmer with the threat of unshed tears.
His throat tightened. Had he done something to upset her? He could still feel it—that strange pressure that now seemed to live in his heart. Not the ache of his wounds nor the burn of the fire. It was deeper. Stranger.
A warmth. A light.
A tether binding him to her that hummed with a quiet, terrifying intensity. It was unlike anything he had ever felt before. What did it mean?
But more importantly: was this what was upsetting his kirei?
…Could she feel it, too?
Finally, she spoke. “You took it with you,” she whispered, reaching her hand out to rest it against his chest, to trace the shape of the sun pendant he still wore beneath the blanket.
A frown tugged at his lips. “Of course,” he rasped. “You gave it to me.”
Her face crumpled even further. A tear slid down his kirei’s scarred cheek.
His chest constricted. That a woman like this could cry over a man like him…
“But I was so cruel to you, Aldric,” she continued, so softly, so bitterly. “I said terrible things. And then.” Her voice cracked. Her lips trembled. “I thought I lost you.”
She thought she had lost him…
Her words cut him to the bone. Her pain swelled to fill the space between them.
“No,” he whispered, shaking his head. He wouldn’t let her carry that guilt with her. He had earned her ire back in Goldreach. He should have told her about the witchblade sooner.
His hand moved to cover hers, to squeeze tight the slender fingers now trembling where they rested atop his sternum. “I lied to you, Sera. I kept the truth from you. You hadeveryreason to be angry with me. Every reason to hate me. Do you hear me?”
She sniffed once and nodded, bowing her head. A strand of hair fell loose from her braid, curtaining her face.
