Her own eyes widened.
Because there it was again.
Love.
She reached behind her and opened the door to the catacombs. The cold and the darkness poured out. But she laced her fingers through the front of Arawn’s cloak, met his eyes, and pulled him with her over the threshold.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked.
‘I’m taking you some place private,’ she said as she shut the door behind them, bathing them both in darkness.
He was raising a pale brow, the way he always did when he looked at her. Like she was a question he’d happily spend his life trying to answer.
‘So you can kill me?’ he asked, and she could practically hear him smile.
‘No,’ Ezer said. ‘So I can kiss you.’
She pulled him down to her. And when their lips met, the cold was gone, and there was only fire in its place.
They reached the edge of themselves in the darkness, and when the hunger rose, and the space between them was still too much to bear …
‘I don’t know how—’ Ezer whispered against his lips.
‘Neither do I,’ Arawn whispered back.
So, they learned together.
And it was beautiful.
And fleeting.
And the choice was theirs to make.
She had no dreams in Arawn’s arms.
There was no labyrinth, no whispering wind.
She found only warmth and silence.
They stayed together in the darkness, until the rumbling of the battle subsided. The floor was their bed. His body, her blanket, and when sleep was hard to come by…
She told him everything. The book, the labyrinth, the secret of her mother. Ervos’s manipulation.
‘What if we’ve been wrong the whole time?’ Ezer asked him.
She couldn’t see him, but she could feel him all around her. The way his fingers ran up and down her spine, tracing the shape of her. Testing the feel of her skin on his. ‘In what way?’
‘What if the gods are not alone?’ Ezer said. ‘What if the Acolyte is some other sort of god? Some deeper power, intent on punishing the Five for locking the Sacred in a lifetime of laws they cannot measure up to? What if … this entire time, we’ve been fighting for the wrong side?’
His fingers paused at the small of her back.
‘What you speak of …’ he whispered. ‘It’s dangerous, Ezer.’
‘I know it is,’ Ezer said. ‘But so isthis.’
Her head was against his chest, her ear pressed just over his heartso she could hear the way it beat steadily … and how it quickened when she ran her own hands across his skin. ‘I’m just wondering.What if?’
‘I wish I knew,’ he said. ‘But that is the point of faith. To question. To struggle to understand what is right and what is wrong, and in the end, all we have to trust is our soul.’
