Kael reached out, brushing a damp strand of hair from her face. “Then we’ll find it.”
She looked at him and something in her expression softened.
Her lip trembled. “I shouldn’t ask . . . gods, but . . . ” She trailed off, visibly struggling.
His hand didn’t leave her cheek.
“Ask,” he said, voice low. “Anything.”
She leaned forward then, resting her forehead against his chest like she couldn’t bear to meet his eyes.
“Will you sleep beside me?” she murmured. “Just for tonight? I don’t want to be alone.”
He exhaled slowly, like the question had loosened something locked deep in his ribs.
“Of course,” he said.
Carefully, he removed his weapons and shifted onto the mattress beside her, settling with a kind of sacred caution. When she curled into him, it was with silent permission. Her cheek pressed to his chest, his arms wound gently around her, stroking her hair lightly in the way he knew brought her comfort. The storm beyond the windows faded to a distant whisper. They fit perfectly together.
She didn’t cry. She didn’t speak again.
She just breathed. Slowly. Shakily.
And Kael held her like a prayer. Scared to breathe too loudly for fear she would cast him out.
For several hours, the room was quiet.
Just the slow inhale and exhale of her breath, the weight of her curled against him, and the whisper of the wind dragging through the curtains.
Kael didn’t sleep. He didn’t even try.
Instead, he lay still, one arm beneath her, the other draped lightly across her waist. Maris had relaxed sometime in the early hours, her body melting against his like she’d finally found a safe place to land. But sleep didn’t offer him the same mercy.
His thoughts wouldn’t let him.
The gods had spoken to her again. A sword buried in the borderlands. Seven days. With the rise of the sun, they would be down to six.
He’d known the clock was ticking, but now he could hear every second of it. Every beat of her heart, pressed to his chest. Every tremble of breath. Every fraction of borrowed time.
The first thread of dawn began to seep through the chamber window. Pale and gold, catching in the waves of her hair where it spilled over his shoulder.
She shifted faintly in her sleep, one hand tightening in the fabric of his tunic. Her lips parted but no sound came.
Kael watched the sunlight climb the wall.
“Kael?” she offered a sleep-blurred murmur against his skin.
His chest ached with the sound of it.
“I’m here my love,” he said, voice low.
She tipped her chin up just enough to meet his eyes. Her lashes were heavy, her face still drawn with the remnants of exhaustion, but there was something else there too.
Reluctant serenity.
Like this one moment was a stolen reprieve from the world that would come tearing down the doors any second.
His fingers moved without thinking, just the lightest touch, tracing the bare line of her spine beneath the thin linen of her nightdress. He followed the curve gently, as if she might vanish if he pressed too hard.
