“My ribs are broken. That’s it. The end. They’re fucking broken, and I’m going to be in pain every fucking time I breathe until they stop being broken. Nothing to do for it. One of them stabbed my lung; it happens. Aside from the excruciating pain, I’m fine now.”
“You were covered in blood,” she reminded him. “Coveredin it, Tate. You have a hole under your eye.”
“Most of that blood wasn’t mine.”
His words sat heavily between them. There had beenso muchblood. There was no way one could lose that much blood and live to tell the tale, she’d thought then, so terrified he would succumb to his wounds in the hospital and die while she was gone.
“Whose was it?” She already knew, she thought, but she desperately needed him to confirm it. “The man by the water? He had teeth like yours. Was it his?”
Tate’s eyes had fluttered shut, his head dropped back against the pillows, as if the conversation exhausted him. “You won’t ever have to worry about him again, Silva.”
“Tellme.”
That hysterical note had returned to her voice, the mere thought of the man she’d dreamed of over and over again braiding her in fear.
Tate’s eyes opened, fixed on her, golden and unblinking,solike her little girl’s. “It was his.”
A shudder moved through her, five years of half-remembered nightmares shaking loose. “What happened to him?” Silva was certain she knew the answer to that as well, but she needed the confirmation if she ever wanted those nightmares to slip free. She listened to the sound of the hamlet waking up, traffic from the resort on the road. Tate’s eyes never moved from hers.
“He’s gone, Silva. You don’t need to worry about him anymore.”
Her exhalation left her winded as he nodded at the dresser across the room. Silva rose woodenly. A watch, a beautiful gold-cased watch. One of his grandfather’s, she could tell immediately from the fine craftsmanship and tiny details. It was spotted in dried blood.We can clean that for him, make it good as new.
Beside the watch was a coin. Her stomach dropped at the sight of it, her hand shaking as she lifted it from the dresser’s polished surface. An elvish coin, large and long out of circulation, minted exclusively for the wedding tradition of dropping a coin into a wishing well to ask for a baby. It was also covered in dried blood.
Silva spun, her eyes wide. She was doing the same thing she had just screamed at him for, making inferences without actually knowing, but she already knew what happened. He had nearly gotten himself killed to retrieve the coin she had thrown into the paper wishing well at that wedding, where the man beside the pool had retrieved it.
Hekilledsomeone. Because of you. He almost died to save you . . . and now he’s trying to send you home to your husband. Because he’s a fucking idiot.
“He’s gone, dove. None of them will be able to find you.” Tate wheezed out a scraping laugh. “Won’t be able to find me, either, without the cunt there to do the fetching.”
The coin spun against the top of the dresser when she dropped it, crossing the room and several strides to perch on the edge of the bed beside him. Silva felt his quick intake of breath when she pressed her mouth to his, heard the slight hiss of pain behind it, but she didn’t care.
She could taste the salt of tears as she kissed him, but she couldn’t tell if they were his or hers. There was a jagged line of stitches near the back of his head, felt as she pushed her fingers through his hair, her hand curling back to not touch the injury. Her teeth were small and unsharp, nothing like his, but she bit his swollen lip anyway, knowinghe’dnever shove her roughly away.
The heat of his mouth was like coming home.
The mere thought made her crumple against him, lips sliding apart as she sobbed at his shoulder.Home. Five years, but now he was home.Are you family? Of course, they were.
“I thought you were going to die.” Saying the words out loud for the first time crystallized them; the fear she’d felt when he’d collapsed before her, nearly ripped away after being gone so long, only made her cry harder.
When her head raised at last, turning her face to his, it was his turn to capture her lips, his turn to kiss her, five years’ worth of urgency in that kiss, heat and hurt, lips and teeth and tongue, leaving her panting when they broke apart again.
Tate was shuddering. Silva remembered belatedly that he could barely breathe as it was.He’s going to wind up asphyxiating and this time, it’ll be your fault.
He leaned in again, so slowly, pressing a soft kiss to the corner of her mouth, to her temple, to her forehead, his eyes closed and his breath ragged as he pressed his forehead to hers.
“You need to go home, Silva.”
Silva opened her eyes. When she pulled back, she could see it in his eyes, that wrong-headed conviction that he was being noble, that he was doing the right thing. He’d killed for her. Fought to get back to her side. He loved her. Told her as much.
And he was still willing to watch her walk out the door for good.
“Didn’t they give you anything to put on that eye? It looks terrible.”
The look he gave her was one of exhaustion. She could tell he wanted to argue, wanted to push the point and make her leave . . . but he didn’t.
“Aye. It fell and rolled under the bed.” Even his voice was pitiful. He gingerly lifted the long device on the bed beside him. “I can’t bend over. All I have is a grabber, so it’s gone forever.” He pulled the trigger on the device, making the mouth open and close like a crocodile.
