‘You … have done something to me, Minder,’ Arawn said suddenly. She could hear him swallow. ‘Something I have not felt before. Something … that scares me.’
Her head was on his shoulder now.
She could hear his heart beating against her ear, and suddenly she got a flash of a vision from her dreams. His lips against hers, then brushing her scars.
‘Why?’
He took an unsteady breath. ‘When I found you in the woods, I thought you were dead. And it broke something loose inside of me.’
Ezer released a shaky breath and glanced up at him.
His eyes, the sharp angle of his jaw.
His lips.
‘What sort of something?’ Ezer asked.Because she was lacking words, and he was warm, and every fiber of her body was taut. Like she was a bolt of lightning, ready to explode.
This time, she knew it wasn’t from the winterwine.
She knew it was allher.
‘Something I’m not supposed to feel,’ Arawn said. ‘Something forbidden.’
His hand reached for her chin. He tilted it up gently, slowly, until she met his eyes again.
‘And for the first time, Minder … I am doubting the laws for my matching. I am …’ He sighed. ‘I am not sleeping, because when I do, I think of you.’
Her heart felt like it stopped.
‘When I see you, I feel like I can’t breathe.’
She released a shaky breath.
‘When I am near you … it is an effort to look away.’
‘Why?’ she whispered.
‘Because you are different,’ he said. ‘You are … like nothing I’ve ever encountered before.’
‘And that’s a good thing?’ she whispered.
‘I’m still trying to figure that out,’ he said.
He was shaking beside her, or perhaps that was her too, because suddenly she wanted him. It was like their dance from last night had never ended. Like she was still spinning in his arms.
‘Are you afraid of me, Firemage?’
His breath hitched, and he was looking at her lips now, instead of her eyes. ‘Terrified,’ he whispered.
She wanted him the way her dreams did. She knew it was dangerous, and reckless, and she knew their time was fleeting. He was a rigid, pious, law-abiding Knight, her future king,and she was …
She didn’t know what she was.
A Raphonminder.
One who might die the moment she passed into the Sawteeth.
But in this moment, she didn’t care.
