I suck in a shaky breath, but before I can even say anything, he’s back in front of me. His hands come up to either side of my face and he pulls me to him once again. When he hesitates, I lean into him, giving my tacit consent. This time when he kisses me, it’s a long, searching, and needful embrace, leaving me breathless by the time he finally drags his mouth away from mine.
He leans his forehead against mine. “But youcan’tleave me, Talia,” he whispers. “You can’t. You’re like nobody I’ve ever met before, nobody I ever will meet again. I felt an instant kinship to you even when I knew—knew!—you were off to be married, that first day near the Shattered City. And when I met you as Talia…I was lost. Even when I saw you as Merritt, I knew there would be no warrior I’d rather ride into battle with—I just didn’t fully understand why. Now I do…by the Light, I do. I saw you fight, I saw you rage, I saw you cry—and I saw your eyes when you looked at me, doing everything you could to get me to see Szonja, to understand. I’ve seen—Light,everything—and I still barely know you. So he can’t have you, Talia. He can’t.” He draws in a shuddering breath, his whole body quivering with emotion. “Unless…unless you want it.”
I sense more than hear his mind crashing against the walls of his own prison, and my heart shatters all over again. Tennet and Fortiss aren’t so different after all. They’ve both been broughtup in a world where women have a certain place to occupy, even—especially—if you loved them. Fortiss’s heart is pounding so loudly I can hear it, feel it against my own chest, thudding in a cadence with my own rushing pulse. He wants so desperately to claim me for his own, I know…but even more than that, he wants me to have a choice.
A choice.
That makes him unlike any man I’ve ever met in the Protectorate…and this is who will be our leader. This is a man worth giving everything to, knowing he will pour back into me his energy, his fire…his love.
This is a choice I can easily make.
“Fortiss,” I whisper.
I don’t know if it’s the darkness surrounding us like a second embrace, or simply the fact that we have been here and done this before, but Fortiss and I are suddenly matched action to action, thought to thought. Like lovers who’ve known each other for decades, not weeks, we pull at each other’s clothes, unlacing and untying, shimmying out of tunics and breeches until there is nothing between us but the cool close air of Daggar’s vault.
“No,” Fortiss announces grimly, and I blink, swaying uneasily in the open air as he dives for our discarded clothes.No?Then a second later I hear the telltale scratch of flint and the smell of sulfur—and light leaps high from his cupped hands.
“What are you doing?” I squeak. “I thought you didn’t want anyone to realize we were here.” I stare at him, weirdly flummoxed as he stalks over to a torch and lights it. The thin flame provides more than enough illumination to fill the room.
He turns to me, a new smile creasing his lips as his gaze roams over my body, hot and fierce. “I couldn’t stand another moment without seeing you with my own eyes, Talia. I’ve imagined you for so blighted long.”
We stare at each other for a long moment, and I drink in every disparate image of this beautiful man—his broad chest heaving, his shoulders taut and muscled, his long, sculpted arms, the left now heavily banded. His waist arrows down to narrow hips, and his heavily muscled thighs ripple as he strides back over to me, pulling me to him.
This time he doesn’t ask my permission. I shudder against him as his broad palm slides down my rib cage and rests against my waist, while his other curls around the back of my head and draws me in for a long, lingering kiss.
I press back and give as good as I get, touching him, tasting him, my fingers splaying over his chest, down his rippled abs, circling his hips as he shifts against me. His breath is coming faster now, harder, and he hooks his hand into my breeches and drags them down?—
A door crashes open at the far end of the hallway.
Fortiss and I spring apart like we’ve been lashed with a whip, staring at each other, then at the door, then back at each other. As one, we lurch toward our clothes. It’s a testament to our skill as warriors, how quickly we recover. We move in one timing, with each hard-charging thud of the runner outside coinciding with another article yanked onto our body—breeches, tunic, boots. Whatever we can’t throw on in time is stuffed into pockets, and by the time someone tries the door, we’re dressed.
“The light!” I hiss, but Fortiss doesn’t attempt to snuff out the torch. Instead, he yanks it from the wall, holding it high in one hand as he draws his knife in the other. Then he gestures to me to pull the door wide.
I do and jerk back in utter surprise. “Syril!”
Her eyes snap wide in horror. “Talia—what are you doing here? This is a house ofdeath.”
“But—”
“Follow me—bring the fire!” She turns and hisses something, then throws her torch back up the corridor. Fortiss and I pile in behind her, and only then do I see it.
The hallway is filled with snakes.
Chapter 30
The mass of serpents scatter as Syril’s torch hits the ground, but Fortiss shouts at me—I don’t hear his command, but I don’t need to. I sprint past Syril and scoop up the guttering torch, then jam it into the thickest knot of skrill I can find.
“No!” Syril’s cry of horror is lost in a rushingwhump! of sound as the snakes explode into sparks. Within moments, the entire hallway has become a writhing inferno, but Fortiss doesn’t stop. He races up behind me, and throws his arm around me, another one already clasping Syril close.
With us all tangled up like this, there’s no way he should still be able to move, yet he seems to pick up speed. He shouts out something I can’t quite understand. His voice is low and guttural, but his words do the trick—a hole opens up ahead. We flee through a tunnel of flame and poisonous snakes, around the turns and up the stairs. Once again, I see that Fortiss doesn’t just fight through fire, doesn’t just batter back the danger. He clears paths through chaos, hauling us all along with him. Even when we don’t ask him to.
We finally burstout into one of the main corridors of the castle, and stagger to a halt sucking wind—just in time to hear another warrior’s light feet upon the corridor floor.
“Syril! You’re hurt!”
“Report, Greta.” Syril pulls herself upright, shoving her soot-streaked hair out of her face.
“There’s four recovered from the main floor—no one harmed. Still no sign of Daggar or Nemeth.”
