“‘Tis all right. I enjoy having ye here. Plus, ye daenae have to answer,” she added, heat rising in her face. “It was a foolish question.”
He faced her fully. For a moment, he said nothing.
The silence stretched. It did not feel empty. Instead, it felt like a scale settling. He lifted one shoulder a fraction, the nearest thing to a shrug he offered since they had returned.
“I trulydaenae ken,” he said.
There was no excuse in his voice or anything that he was hiding anything from her. Erica was even relieved that he was not doing it out of pity. She couldn’t imagine just how devastating that would have been.
She stood before she weighed it. The motion felt simple and impossible at the same time. He turned at the rasp of her feet against the stone floor. They faced each other at arm’s length, close enough to feel the shift in the air.
“Erica,” Alex said, his voice clear. “Ye should be in bed. What are ye doing?”
She should have sat down again, but for some reason, she did not. At this point, she felt like she was being directed by her heart instead of her mind. And right now, in the middle of this chaos, her heart only wanted one thing.
“This,” she whispered.
Then she rose on her tiptoes and kissed him.
It was not bold or hungry. It was soft and unsure, the way a foot would grind in the dark and wait to see if the floor would hold.
Her mouth found his and rested there, the heat settling between them. Salt from the water he had drunk sat faint on his lower lip, and the scent of wool and smoke clung to his shirt.
For a breath, he did nothing. His mouth stayed still under hers. He did not lean in, and he did not step away. Her heart thumped hard in her chest, and a brief wave of heat stung the back of her neck. She nearly stepped back.
But then his hand rose to hover near her waist, as if the choice itself weighed more than his palm could bear. He did not grab her. He did not push her back. The air between his fingers and the fabric felt charged all the same, a promise and a rejection in one.
“Erica,” he said, and now the warning was there. Not sharp. Not cold. He sounded like a man speaking to a line he had drawn for himself long before she ever stood in this room.
She kept her mouth against his a heartbeat longer, steady and light, as if patience could make sense of what no word could fix.
The fear that had chased her from the market still lived somewhere in her bones, but it had stepped aside for this one clear thing, the way his presence had carved noise into order since the yard.
She pulled back enough to see him. His eye was dark and focused. The scar caught the firelight and turned his face into something harder and kinder at once. He held himself like a manwho could end a fight in a breath and had decided not to start one.
She should stop right now and turn around.
She should apologize and say that she didn’t know what came over her, that this was a huge mistake.
She should let him leave.
But she didn’t. She couldn’t. And she didn’t want to.
CHAPTER 21
The kiss burnedlike fire in Alex’s mouth. He stood as rigidly as he could, almost like the sheer force of his will might just manage to stop him if nothing else did.
“Daenae,” he said, voice low. “Daenae.”
“Why?” she asked, her voice a bit hoarse.
Alex swallowed, his throat bobbing. “Ye ken why.”
Her breath caught. “Because ye think the kiss before was a mistake?”
“Aye,” he rasped. “It was.”
She held his gaze. “Have lies ever made anything easier?”
