I dropped my hands, embarrassed, only to find him pulling them back.
“I simply askedwhy. I never asked you to stop,” he said, voice lowering to a rasp.
Because I want to lower your shields. Ease the pain from your eyes.My face flushed as I looked at our intertwined hands. At his stern, hungry expression. The way his body seemed to curve around mine, craving closeness. How his lips parted slightly as he searched my face. All my logic—every critical, careful instinct I had—became buried underneath something else. Something I wasn’t familiar with.
“I haven’t held someone like this before,” he murmured, restraint still apparent in his shadowed gaze. “I don’t know how.”
“I don’t know, either,” I breathed. “But I want to.”
“Why?” There was that question again.
Why, indeed.
I grazed his neck with my fingertips, raven hair sweeping over my skin. “You don’t deserve to be alone any longer.”
“So it is because you pity me?” he asked, voice scarcely above a whisper.
I shook my head, irritated that he wasn’t understanding. How could I simplypityhim after all we’d been through? “No, not at all.” I paused, my lip caught between my teeth. “It is because I want you—and I want to keep being with you, even after we wake up. I am yours, if you’ll have me. Wherever our dreams take us.”
We stared at each other for a few breathless, quiet moments. All that could be heard was the deep, hypnoticthrumof the Nocturne in the distance. And he still looked so damnably uncertain, as if he wasn’t sure he even deserved my touch. He was so broken, so deprived of sincerity. I wanted to tear those thoughts from his mind.
“Then that makes you a fool,” he said finally, shaking his head. “A complete and utterfool. You do not want this. This is nothing you should want—”
I grabbed his face and pulled it to mine, kissing him directly on his mocking, irritatingly beautiful mouth.
He pushed away, eyes wide. Shadows still, for once.
Weighing. Measuring.
Then he crashed his lips back to mine. He kissed me thoroughly—darkly. Exactly how I imagined he would prefer it. His lips were cool to the touch, tasting of starlight and velvet shadows. Of a cold breath of night air. I would drown in the taste if I could, every bit as starved for him as he was for me. He curled one hand in my hair while the other was at my spine, drawing me closer.
After a moment, he leaned back. The shadows in his eyes simmered, taunting.
“I’m a monster,” he rasped.
“You’re anything but,” I shot back, shaking my head.
“You saw what I am capable of,” he insisted. “What Idid. I summoned those demons, Esmer. They crawled from the Nocturne as if I were a god bent on destroying the world.”
“The man I met at the Revel didn’t want to destroy the world. He wanted to heal it.” I kissed him again, if only to rip that look of sorrow and dread from his eyes. He could mock, twist, and taunt all he wanted, but his eyes betrayed him. I went on: “You need to surrender. Let go of your guilt, your resentment, your doubt—everything.” I shook my head, shuddering. “If anyone is a monster, it’s me. Everything I’ve done, everyone I’ve hurt—” I cut myself off, a sob threatening to burst from my chest.
Slowly, his eyes softened.
“If I’m not a monster, then neither are you,” he said seriously, searching my face. “You are not responsible for your family’s deaths, nor are you at fault for leaving Elliot behind. You have done everything you could. You are strong, and you are brave. We both did what we could. What we knew.”
“I don’t want to call you ‘Shadow Bringer’ any longer,” I said in a rush, cupping his face. I was so close to breaking, but I held firm. I needed him to understand how I felt. I did not see him as a monster now, but as a man, and I had felt that way for longer than I’d even realized. “It’s not who you are. You have a name, an entire life lived. Friends, family. Years of service to a Realm that once respected you. You aren’t a monster to me, and I want to honor that…Erebus.”
He pulled back, lips a breath from my own. I waited, but he did not correct me.
“Erebus,” I said again, twining a hand through his hair as he shivered. My face burned, knowing I could affect him like that. It was intoxicating. “Can I call you that?”
A pause as we both looked at each other, chests heaving.
“Yes,” he finally breathed. “Yes, you can call me by my name.”
“Good.” I traced a hand across the shadows forming patterns over his exposed chest. His skin was cool to the touch; smooth, flawless, and a pale contrast to his raven hair. “If our shadows can somehow right some of our kingdom’s darkness, then I want to walk with you. Wherever you go, I will go, too. I’m not afraid anymore.”
“Then I will gladly welcome you,” he murmured, lips warming as he brushed them against my temple. “And I won’t be afraid, either.”
