I can’t figure out his tone, and the defensive part of my brain wants it to be salty, antagonistic. But honestly, it just sounds like a question. I have to clear my throat so I don’t snap at him again. “We can sit.”
He doesn’t wait for me, and he drops onto the top step that leads into the inn. As soon as he does, it invites the question of how close or how farIshould sit, and I hate that my thoughts are so twisted up in deliberation and calculation when everything used to feel so easy.
Wasit easy? Or did I just imagine it was?
Maybe he reads something in my shadowed expression because he sighs. “Tycho,” he says quietly. “Sit. Just sit.”
I don’t know how he always does this, but a note in his voice loosens something inside me, tugging at an old memory. It was the first night we spent together, when every fiber of my being was drawn tighter than a bowstring. He was so patient and so careful in a way that unwound my worries and let me confess all my deeply buried truths.
And just like that, the low, easy timbre of his voice unwinds me now, because I drop to sit on the step beside him. Unexpected emotion swells to fill my chest and clog my throat. I can’t breathe. I can’t speak. I can’tsee. I press the heels of my hands into my eyes and hold my breath, because allowing anything else is going to turn me into a puddle in the dirt.
Eventually, my lungs are screaming, and I let out my breath in a rush. When I do, words fall out of my mouth. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m sorry.” The words are so broken that I can’t even tell if he understands them. I switch to Syssalah anyway. “Jax, I’m so sorry.” Then my voice catches, and I have to hold my breath again. My hands are pressing into my eyes so hard that it hurts, and my insides are clenched so tight I don’t know how my heart is continuing to function.
For a moment there’s nothing but silence, and then I hear him sigh again, a soft sound against the night. But he shifts on the step, and suddenly his hip is against my hip, his thigh against my thigh, his calf against my calf. His hand falls on my knee, and then, to my absolute shock, his head falls against my shoulder.
“Tycho,” he breathes.
It’s too much. The clenching in my chest stops my heart altogether. My lungs refuse to function. But I put a hand over his and hold it there like it’s the only thing anchoring us both to the world.
Then he murmurs, “You’re supposed to be keeping watch.”
Ifanythingcould break through my emotion, it’s that. I swear and jerk my hand away from my eyes, trying to focus.
Jax gives my knee a gentle squeeze, and I feel it all the way through my body. Any hope of focus is gone.
But he lifts his head from my shoulder and lets go, pulling his hand away.
I reach out and snatch it back, winding my fingers around his, pulling his hand to the center of my chest like a treasure.
He doesn’t resist, but I can’t look at him now. A part of me feels as though I’ve taken something that doesn’t belong to me. My eyes are still hot, but I scan the darkness for danger, doing my duty. I hate that I broke down. A familiar belligerence has set up camp in my chest, like I’m waiting for him to jerk away, for that same tension to settle between us.
But he doesn’t jerk away. His hand is so warm within my grip, his fingers loosely wrapped around my own.
I finally turn and look at him, and that’s my undoing. His hair is loose over one shoulder, his hazel- green eyes so dark in the starlight, his face so close.
My breath catches again, and I have to let his hand go so I can give my eyes another frustrated swipe. I swear under my breath. It’s humiliating that he’s so calm and I’m practically . . . dissolving.
“Forgive me,” I say, and it sounds like I’m speaking through gravel. “I didn’t mean to . . .” I search for the right words, but none exist ineitherlanguage. “Ah . . . completely unravel.”
Jax looks out at the night and shakes his head slightly. “I did it plenty while you were gone.”
Well, that just makes me feelworse. “Silver hell, Jax. I’msorry—”
“Stop. I know.” He glances over. “I’m sorry, too.”
“You haven’t done anything to apologize for. It’s me. All me.” As I say the words, I feel the truth of them so deeply. I’m the one who keeps leaving.
Jax says nothing for the longest moment, and he eventually looks at me. His voice is so quiet. “It’s notallyou.”
Something in the words forces me still. Another cool breeze winds down the road, and I almost shiver. That happened the last time we sat in the darkness, so I glance up at the sky, thinking of scravers.
But there’s no dangerous magic here. Just me and Jax and the weight of everything unspoken between us.
I want to grab his hand back and pull it against my heart and leave it that way. But if all my conflict with the king has taught me anything, keeping wounds hidden just lets them deepen and fester until they’re nearly impossible to heal.
“Tell me,” I say softly.
He stares out at the darkness again, his jaw set. His leg is still pressed into mine, and I can feel his sudden tension, the weight of wordsheisn’t ready to say.
