The words jolted me, but I kept staring straight ahead at the path before us—a tidy switchback that climbed up the grassy slope.With the man I love.I held the words in my mouth but couldn’t imagine actually saying them. The very idea of them felt dangerous, even as part of me warmed to hear the easy affection in Gareth’s voice—the foolish part of me, the part I’d carefully paved over with years of stone, the part that it seemed I could no longer ignore.
“Without any Roses,” I replied. “Solo missions are rare. Too dangerous.”
For a moment, Gareth walked beside me in silence. Then he said quietly, “Don’t do that, Mara.”
“Do what?” I said, even though I knew very well what.
“Push me away.”
“All I did was answer your question.”
He came around to stand in front of me. His jaw was square, andhis eyes were bright with green fire. “I’m not letting you walk away from this, from us. Not after what we shared.”
I moved past him and continued up the path, my heart in knots. “I’m not walking away from anything. I’m answering your question.”
“You’re being deliberately obtuse, and it’s insulting and unkind.”
“I’m just trying to focus on our mission.”
He blew out a sharp breath. “You’re afraid. And you’re letting it control you. You’re letting itwin.”
I stopped abruptly on a square landing of stone and hard-packed sand, upon which stood a simple stone bench.
“Those are my father’s words,” I said, glaring at him.
Gareth cocked an eyebrow. “And I’m not allowed to repeat them?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Whatdoyou mean?”
My frustration left me boiling, and I couldn’t decide where to direct it—at him, or at myself. “I told you this yesterday. Itoldyou this is too dangerous.”
“What’s too dangerous?” Gareth spread his arms wide, as if to encompass the entire island. “This path we’re climbing? The northern seas? The Mist? The war?”
He was baiting me. A challenge glinted in his eyes, and the word he wanted to say hung in the air between us, buzzing against my skin. But I couldn’t say it; all my instincts screamed with panic.
And yet my body swayed toward him, pulled by the echo of his hands on my skin, by how easy it would be to let him—let this overwhelming, relentless yearning—take me somewhere I’d never been. The ache in my chest felt like the pain that accompanied my daydreams of Ivyhill—the home I had lost, the life I’d never had the chance to live. It was the same desperate, hopeful, hopeless feeling:This is a thing I want. This is a thing I can never have.
I drew in a shaky breath, fighting for control of my tongue. Theslopes of Falkeron were not the place for this conversation. “Gareth, I know you think this is all very simple and obvious, and that it’s absurd of me to be afraid, but—”
“Not absurd.” He came to me and took my gloved hands in his. “Just unnecessary. Yesterday I promised I would love you for the rest of my days. Yesterday you agreed to love me too. I know you didn’t say it with your words, but you did with your body, with your every touch.”
“Yesterday I was weak,” I said helplessly. “And I can’t enter the Cloisters, or protect my sisters, or fight a war with all of this whirling about in my head. Which is theproblem, Gareth, can’t you see that?”
“No, that’s not the problem.”
I ripped my hands out of his and stepped back. Thenervehe had to stand there and dictate what we were, what I felt, what I should and shouldn’t be afraid of.
“You spend one night with me,” I said tightly, “and think you understand my feelings better than I do?”
He gave me an unhappy little smile. “I didn’t say that. But I think I understand you better than you give me credit for.”
“You couldn’t possibly.” It was as though someone was yanking the words out of my gut; I couldn’t stop them, even though I knew they were unfair. “You haven’t been through what I have. You had parents, a home, a life.”
Gareth’s face shuttered. “A home I hated and a life I couldn’t wait to escape.”
I pounced on that, desperate to regain my footing. It seemed that I only ever lost my footing around him—a warning sign I’d ignored for weeks and weeks. No longer.
