“Then tell me to leave,” he says, voice thinned to something raw. “Say it and I will go, and I will keep the wolves off your door from far enough away that you can sleep.”
I press my palms to his chest. His heart is a frantic animal under my hands.
“I don’t want you to leave,” I say, and it feels like stripping in winter. “I want you to stay and be the kind of man who doesn’t make me smaller to keep himself safe.”
He flinches like I struck him and then bows his head to my hands, mouth brushing my knuckles with a reverence that makes my eyes sting.
“I am trying,” he says into my skin. “I have been a weapon so long I forgot hands were made to hold as well as to hurt. I left because I was afraid of what staying asked of me. I’m still afraid.”
I close my eyes, because looking at him while he is honest feels like standing in church and I have never been good at kneeling. Tears burn hot and slip anyway. He feels them with his mouth and goes still.
“I waited,” I say, and the words tear coming out. “I waited for you to choose me without making my choice for me. I learned how to be quiet so your mercy could have a name. I spoke toflowers because they were the only things that listened without asking me to be less. I hate you for making me learn that kind of patience.” My voice breaks. “And I love you. I never stopped.”
He makes a sound I’ve never heard, rough as breaking stone. His hands tremble where they hold my waist. “Say it again,” he begs, the proud man gone. “Please. Once.”
“I love you.” The truth lands between us like a blade and a bridge. “And I don’t know how to survive you leaving again.”
There it is. The price.
He lifts his head. The gold haunts the dark of his irises, flicker and retreat, as if wrath itself is listening for its orders.
“I won’t,” he says, and immediately swallows, as if the vow is too big for the mouth of a man who has spent his life promising nothing. “I—” He stops, shakes his head. Tries again. “I will not leave you because I am afraid. If war drags me, I will tell you before it does. If my rage rises, I will lay it at your feet and let you see me ugly rather than walk away and call it protection. If you send me, I go. If you keep me, I stay.”
My hands slide up, frame his jaw. The stubble scrapes my fingertips; he leans into the scrape like he wants to be marked by gentleness for once. The bond swells, fierce and bright, and every bloom in the garden seems to turn our way.
“Then stay,” I say. “Here. Now.”
He closes his eyes, not in refusal—in reverence. He gathers a breath like he’s standing on a cliff and the only way down is the truth.
“If I take you now, it will be because I am starving, and you are not a meal.” His voice is hoarse. “I will earn this. I will earn you. I will not touch you like a drowning man. Not again.”
The heartbreak arrives sharp and clean, a blade sliding between ribs without catching. Lust claws its way up my spine and trembles for a fight. I could beg. I could take. I could pull him down into the grass and let the garden be witness the way it has always wanted to be.
Instead, I put my forehead to his and breathe with him until the want learns rhythm. Until the ache becomes language again.
“Then kiss me like a promise,” I say, “and go before I make us both liars.”
He does. Soft. Devout. His mouth saysI’m sorryandI’m learningandI will be back with my hands empty of excuses. The mark flares so bright it paints the inside of my eyelids gold. A tear slips into the corner of his mouth; he swallows it like communion.
When he pulls back, he keeps his palms on my face like he has to feel the warmth to believe I’m not a fable.
“Next time I touch you,” he whispers, “it will be with a life I can lay at your feet and not be ashamed of.”
“Next time,” I echo, and it tastes like hope and salt and fear.
He steps away first. It hurts in a way that is almost beautiful—like a string drawn tight and plucked, music and pain indistinguishable. He takes two more steps, then stops, as if whatever god watches demons and fae has put a hand on his chest and asked if he means it.
He looks back. For a heartbeat, the old habit flashes—the leaving that pretends to be protection. He chooses different. He bows his head to me, not court-deep, real-deep, and turns into the dark.
The garden exhales. The lilies settle. The moon roses dim. I stand where he left me, body singing and hollow, hands still remembering the breadth of him. The night presses close, full of the sound of what I didn’t let happen.
I sink to the bench when my knees remember gravity. The vine by my shoulder twines higher, curious. I touch the mark and it warms my palm. It hurts. It helps. It won’t be quiet. Neither will I.
“I love you,” I tell the garden, because it has always kept my secrets and broken them to the wind only when I needed them returned as courage. “Do not let me forget what I asked for.”
In the distance, faint as a knuckle against a door, the bond answers—one honest pulse, then another.
The night goes on. I sit in the wreckage of almost and the promise of next time and let both be true. The garden is aflame.
