Her eyes squeeze shut. “Stop avoiding the topic.”
“Hey.” I walk up behind her and gather her into my arms. “I’m sorry.”
She tenses but then relaxes into me and whispers, “Dray, why didn’t you tell me?”
Shame burns through me. “I couldn’t. I thought… I thought I was?—”
A flash of my face buried between her thighs, tongue probing against the mask for more of her sweetness, my fingers thrusting in and out of her tight, silken core. Arousal reignites in my bloodstream with a vengeance. I shut the memory out with a frown. Every ounce of my being aches for her, even without the mask’s magic binding me. These feelings will only intensify when I put it back on.
But without it, I am weak. I am just a man incapable of protecting her. I am nothing.
“Dray, it’s me.” She turns in my arms to face me. “You don’t have to hide from me.”
I meet her gaze and find nothing but compassion. Only for me does she melt like this. Everyone else gets the steely-spined future queen. My resolve wavers.
“I wanted to tell you,” I admit. “Every Gods-damn day, I ached to reveal myself. But the mask… it changed me, Flori. Made me into something I’m not sure I can come back from.”
She cups my cheek. “You’re still you. I see it in your eyes. ”
I lean into her hand, savoring the contact. “Am I? The things I’ve done…”
“We’ve all done things we regret,” she whispers.
Her thumb traces my lower lip, trailing fire in its wake. And when her hand moves lower, down my neck, toward the scars slicing my torso, I struggle to focus.
She’s so beautiful. Somehow she still shines while covered in dirt and torn silken strips. I pluck a twig from her blue hair and tuck the disrupted lock behind her ear.
“These were self inflicted,” she notes, distracted by the thin ridges of scar tissue on my front. “Why?”
I don’t want to answer, but she’ll keep asking. Her tenaciousness is one of the things I love about her.
“It’s how I summon Kasaros,” I confess.
Her eyes clash with mine and flicker with recognition. “You did this all for me, didn’t you? I thought you were dead, but somehow you lived. Because you became the Huntsman.”
A sad smile teases my lips when she feels around the oldest scar—the one the previous Huntsman gave me. I want to capture her hand, but I’m too much of a coward. I want her clever fingers sliding lower, just like they did yesterday. If the mask was on, I’d do exactly that.
“Dray?”
My voice comes out rough. “I think I fell on your blood that day. It wasn’t much, but that and the snow staved off death long enough for me to summon Kasaros. I was desperate to save you.”
“And you did. Again and again.” She circles her arms around my waist and presses her ear against my chest. “You’re the reason I kept being overlooked each year for the Bride Hunt.”
My hands hover behind her head, wanting to press her close. But I can’t. I drop them to my sides and exhale. “And I doomed so many others. It doesn’t erase?—”
“No,” she interrupts, squeezing me tight. “But it matters. You matter.”
“I thought I was protecting you,” I whisper. “By becoming the Huntsman, I could keep you safe. But I was wrong. You almost died healing me.”
Flori steps back to meet my eyes. “You’ve always protected me, Dray. Always watched over me, even when we were children. Now, it’s my turn to protect you.”
There’s no point in arguing with her. I peel her arms from my waist, intending to feed her so we can get moving, but themoment she disengages, her knees buckle. I rush to her aid and hold her up.
“You’re not okay,” I growl. “Little liar.”
The look she slices me is both cheeky and affectionate. I hate the way my chest squeezes at its familiarity, at the sick feeling afterward, because I know I’ll likely never see it again.
Not after today.
