Her throat tightened. “I don’t trust you. It’s different.”
“Okay. I can work with that.”
“I would rather you didn’t.”
Blaze guided her to sit on the crate Roman had recently vacated, then hopped up beside her. Their arms brushed warmly and alerted her to the chill in the air.
“Augustus and I were young boys together,” he began. “Lili was there too, of course, and we were inseparable for years and years. Eventually, Augustus and I became…more. One night, deep into our cups and too many months into a dry spell, we?—”
“I don’t need the details of your sex life.”
He grimaced. “Sorry. Of course, you don’t. Anyway, I wanted to see more of the world, and he said he did, too. We planned when and where we’d leave the fleet, and I had no reason to doubt that he was coming.
“When the time came, he balked. He couldn’t see a life on land and begged me to give it another year.” Blaze shifted his weight and released a sigh. “I didn’t see it the same way, and we fought. I called him a coward, among some other truly detestable things.
“In the end, I didn’t love him enough to stay, and he didn’t love me enough to go. I walked away in anger, foolishly believing he’d follow.” He laughed to himself. “I was so fucking sure, and it nearly broke me to watch theAkiassail away with him still aboard.”
But, he’d done the complete opposite for her.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
Blaze knocked their shoulders together. “Don’t you dare apologize. I’m only telling you so you understand—he never loved me the way he loves you. Gods, he was living in a fucking palace when I found you two. That alone told me everything I needed to know.”
“And the kiss?” She may not want to know about their sex life, but she needed to know why this happened. “Did you hope he might come back to you? He’d lived a life on land, so now he must be ready to follow you around the globe?”
His thumb worried at a callus on his palm, as if he could scrape the guilt out through his skin. “A part of me hoped he might, but I knew how it would end. If it helps, he was honest about his feelings for you. Like you said before—he is yours just as much as you are his.”
Blaze sighed, and his gaze rose to the star-spattered sky. “And now we all know where we stand, for better or worse. My only regret is that you got hurt in the process. I really am fond of you—I was from the moment we met.”
Selene nodded. The entire situation hurt more because she’d been just as fond of him. “Thank you for saying that and for being honest with me.”
“Here’s a little more honesty for you, my dear friend”—he took her hand and squeezed—“I’m getting Augustus back to you. I know it might not look like it, but none of us has turned our backs on him. If I thought that, I wouldn’t be here.” Blaze turned her chin up and forced her to look at him. “Believe me?”
Her throat closed. She could only nod.
Blaze kissed her forehead, then pulled her in close. “We’ll get him back, Selene. We just need a little more help.”
For the first time in hours, hope stirred—fragile, but alive—in her chest.
Chapter
Thirty-Nine
Sleep had abandoned Kai hours ago.
She wandered the tunnels, blue fluorescence pulsing faintly in the stone, her thoughts leaping problem to problem like sparks refusing to die.
“Perean came to our doorstep, Kai Silver Wolf. Your destiny is already here.”
Drakaa. Gods. Destiny. A crumbling prison.
Kai had barely grasped that problem when her mother arrived with another.
She’d set Atsadi free.
“My instincts are rarely wrong,”Shadi had said,“and I could say the same for yours, daughter. You know Usti is behind this. With Atsadi free, Usti will react. And when he does, we must be ready.”
Kai couldn’t fault her mother’s logic. Especially not an hour later, when Shadi addressed the full council. She’d revealed everything: Perean’s dead councilmen, the Black Spear informant, the true rot behind the mountain’s unrest.
