Will busied himself with setting up their camp, keeping his eyes averted as Aya dried off with a spare shirt and redressed. The silence of the lake no longer felt peaceful. It was heavy with unasked questions and a lingering tension that he tried to shed with a roll of his neck.
It didn’t work. He felt too aware of everything: the cotton shirt clinging to his damp skin, the crunch of the bedroll as he laid it on the shore, the crackle of the fire as he coaxed the flames to catch.
“I’m sorry,” Aya whispered. Will turned from where he was crouched by the wood to find her standing a few paces away, toying with a loose thread on the hem of her shirt.
He pushed himself up, his brow furrowing as he shook his head. “Aya. Youneverhave to apologize for not wanting—”
“Idowant,” Aya cut him off. “I want you so badly I can’tbreathe.”
Will’s breath caught in his chest. Gods, he wanted to go to her. But he forced himself to stay where he was. “I would understand if you didn’t,” he reasoned. “After what they did to you, taking your power from you like that, I would understand if you—”
“It’s not that,” Aya interrupted again, frustration swirling in her tone. She tilted her head back, her teeth digging into her bottom lip as she searched the sky. “It’s not about what they did. It’sme. I…” She trailed off, her hands curling into fists at her side, her knuckles white with the tight grip. She blinked hard as she tucked her chin, her gaze boring into the ground. “You don’t understand.”
He didn’t.
He wanted to help, but he didn’t knowhow. He felt thrust back in time, as if he were once more a scared ten-year-old standing on her doorstep, waiting for her to break and knowing he could do nothing to help her.
In fact…
That’s exactly what she looked like: the Aya from thirteen years ago. The clenched fists. The locked jaw. The tear-lined eyes.
Aya was trying not to fall apart. He just didn’t knowwhy.
After everything they’d been through together, after all they had seen and experienced, what was it that she couldn’t tell him?
“I don’t understand,” Will agreed. He wasn’t so proud that he couldn’t admit that aloud. “Explain it to me?”
He would not leave her like he did then. She was not alone, not this time. Not ever again.
Slowly, he crossed the scant distance between them, stopping just out of reach. A bead of water rolled down her temple, and he resisted the urge to reach out and brush it away as it trailed down her cheek to her jaw.
Will didn’t balk at the storm stirring in her eyes.
“Let me in,” he murmured.
She’d whispered those words to him once, her affinity a tender caress against his shield as she tried to ease his pain. He kept his tucked away. It would be easy to use his power to sense what she was feeling. Godsknew he had done it before. But he wanted her to trust him, to tell him the things she did not think he could handle.
Will extended a hand slowly, his palm cupping her cheek. “It’s just me, Aya,” he assured her. She had already seen every dark corner of him, and she loved him anyway. Chose him, anyway.
She had to know—shehadto know—that it would be the same for him.
“Let me in. Please.”
Aya’s face shuttered, and something in Will’s chest went with it. But then she was sucking in a breath, and when she met his gaze once more, it was with grim determination.
“She threatened to take you from me,” she whispered.
Will cocked his head, confusion pulsing through him as his thumb rubbed a soothing arc across her cheek.
“I’m right here, Aya love.”
But Aya shook her head, her teeth digging into her bottom lip so hard, he expected she’d draw blood. He tugged on that lip with his thumb until she freed it.
“You don’t understand,” she repeated, her voice cracking on the last word. “Evie was going to…to manipulate my mind. She could have made me forget you. Just like…like Andras made Tova…”
Her inhale was so sharp, it sounded painful.
“She could have,” Aya stammered. “I felt it. She could have made it so I never…”
