His hand moved to my stomach. “Let me see it.”
I lifted the furs and raised my shift. The black veins were stark against my pale skin.
He hardened. “How bad does it hurt?”
“It throbs.” I touched the rune carefully. “I’m okay. I’m just tired.”
He stood there, bristling.
“Lie down with me,” I whispered.
“I can’t.”
“Please.”
“I don’t want to lie down,” he growled. “I want to go to Skaldir and carve Vaeris open. I need him to suffer.”
“But I need you here. With me.”
A war raged in his eyes. Then he sighed, unclasping his armor. Metal clinked as the shoulder plates came free. Then the cuirass. Each piece vanished into silver puffs of air. Then he ripped off his shirt and sat on the edge of the bed, gripping the mattress.
“Come here.”
He turned, lying down like the sheets were made of needles, and I snuggled closer to him.
“You scared me.”
My chest tightened. “I know.”
His hand found mine. “I can’t keep watching you nearly die.”
“I’m sorry.”
His forehead dropped to mine, and I felt him shake. “I was in Skalgard for so long, I was convinced I’d die there. Whatever I’d been before didn’t exist anymore. I was a weapon that didn’t even care who wielded it.”
My stomach knotted. I knew what it was like to stop caring. To become something numb and hollow just to survive.
“And then you showed up.” He stopped, swallowing hard. “You don’t notice how dark it’s gotten until something finally shines through it. Losing you would destroy me.”
The world seemed to tilt. This warrior who’d survived acentury of torture and killed without hesitation was trembling because ofme.
I’m falling for you.
My throat was too tight, the words trapped behind the fear of admitting how muchhemeant to me.
Not yet. I wasn’t ready.
How could I be? This was Kairos, a male who made me feel protected and exposed. Who could crack me open with a glance and see all the broken parts inside. Who I wanted so badly it felt like hunger, like madness, like something that would destroy me if I let it.
But I’d already let a male ruin me once.
I wanted to wait, to tell him when the world wasn’t burning. When the words weren’t tangled with panic and exhaustion and the echo of nearly dying. I wanted to choose the moment—not have it ripped out of me.
So I tucked my face into the warm hollow of his throat. His hand skimmed down my back, then settled over my hip, holding me against him. Beneath my ribs, the faerie deal rune twinged, a hot, poisonous reminder.
This golden peace couldn’t last.
47
