And then there were the emotions that caught in my throat whenever her steel-grey eyes held mine. I wanted to help her, to feel the rush that came every time I did something for her that she didn’t expect. She could fool the fire-blasted kingdoms, but I saw thevulnerable fear in her eyes—the uncertainty she hid under a cold, hard wall. She couldn’t hide it when she offered me tea, or when the thought of a debt terrified her, or when she told the tragic story of her upbringing.
And now that I knew her and her weaknesses, I wanted to protect them. I wanted to make her happy.
Killing a couple humans would not make her happy. But how could I convince her of that? She’d barely been willing to let a few horses go. Giving up a vengeance that she’d dreamed about for forty years would be far less likely.
Though—
Without my help, she’d never find them. She’d be mad as cursed flames at me, but if she let go of her vengeance because she had no way to make it happen, she’d be happier in the end.
I would suffer her fury knowing it would eventually bring her more happiness.
“Should we stop for food?” She finally broke the silence.
“We should.” The sun was high, and we’d covered a lot of ground.
She waved at a big table-sized stone about twenty feet off the path, nestled in a copse of trees like the plants had decided to grow around it. “It looks like a convenient place for eating.”
“It does.” I’d been so focused on my own thoughts as we walked that I hadn’t noticed the forest around us now had both the blossoming plums and pockets of pine trees. Both surrounded the stone and protected itfrom the bursts of frosty wind. The stone was cold but not covered in ice. I touched a hand to it, warming it to a comfortable temperature to sit on.
Her eyes lit up. “Still not comfortable with sitting on ice?”
I let myself smile. “Is that a challenge?”
She lifted her chin, but her eyes smiled. “You’d never win. I can handle far colder temperatures than you.”
“Ah,” I said, “but do you enjoy them? I wouldn’t want to sit on the warmest surface I could handle.”
She plucked a handful of pine needles and plum blossoms. “Pine needle tea should help your body continue to adjust to its own demands without the lamp’s magic. I can make more tonight to help you sleep too.”
Was she ignoring my question then? She settled herself on one side of the stone and patted it with her hand. “This is better than cold.”
She answered. A satisfaction at her statement grew across my chest, and I handed her the pack with food and other supplies Maeva thought we’d need. “That seems like a big admission.”
She pulled two mugs out of the pack, dropped the needles and blossoms into one of them, and held her hand over it. “It is. You should—”
Cutting herself off, she lifted her gaze from the cups in front of her to me. A pale pink tinged her cheeks, and she rushed her attention back to her hands. “You should know that it is.” She poured a liquid outof one of the cups into the other, and then set one hand over the top of each cup.
“Oh, no.” I slid closer to her. That blush had grabbed my heart and tugged on me until I sat close enough to touch her. “What were you going to say?”
She didn’t look at me. “I said that admitting you made the stone more comfortable was a big confession.”
I set a hand on one of hers. Warm steam rose up from the cup under her fingers and moistened mine. “You started to say one thing,” I whispered, “and then changed it. What were you going to say first?”
“I…” She lifted her eyes back to mine, and her lip trembled. Literally shook. I wanted to touch it, calm it, and hold her in confidence.
But I could not. I was going to leave her.
Like a flame-cursed, sun-bleeding worm—
“I was going to tell you that you owed me,” she whispered, “for sharing such a big confession out loud.”
My fingers curled around hers. What had convinced her to confess that?
“But then I changed my mind,” she added, her lips tilting into a fragile smile. “There is no debt.”
And with those four words, she ripped my heart in half. She offered me a genuine, vulnerable little piece of herself—one that only came because I’d tricked her into trusting me. That trust was too real, too fragile, too precious. Real pain tore through me as I imagined how hurt she would feel when I betrayed her.
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t push that kind of anguish onto her. It wasn’t worth my freedom.
