I held up a hand and thought for a moment, scrambling for the right way to phrase it. “If the curse is broken, will you and he—” My throat tightened again, and I forced the rest out. “Will both of you still exist?”
His shrug was a lash, a sword cutting deep, delivering avisceral, overwhelming pain that drove me to my knees. I cupped my face, unable to look at him, to see the same fear in his eyes.
Stepping close, he dropped down in front of me and pulled me against his chest. Like over the past nights, he held me.
I didn't sob, but I sure wanted to.
No, I turned my sadness into anger.
“Fuck this curse,” I shrieked, reeling my head back so fast I nearly took out his chin.
He snorted. “Yeah, fuck the curse.” Choking, he wiggled his neck, loosening the knot.
“Don't say a damn thing! Let me do the talking for us both.”
He jerked out a nod, his gaze fixed on my face.
“I'm determined, Lorant.” I stroked his scarred cheek. “No matter what either of you say, I'm not giving up now, tomorrow, or in five weeks.”
He held up four fingers.
“Four weeks?”
He blinked and lifted his other hand to display three more fingers.
Only four weeks and three days, and I was no closer to fixing this than I’d been when I arrived in Evergorne.
“You’re not going to die.” I said it firmly, as if it was a vow. I was surprised that lightning didn't light up the sky.
I struggled to my feet, looking down at him still kneeling in front of me with too much emotion in his dark eyes. It swamped me, lifted me up, and tossed me onto the shore, leaving me bereft.
He was as tortured as me, and I couldn't stand it.
“Up, up.” I tugged on his hands and almost reluctantly, he rose, towering over me, watching me, linking our fingers together. “I don’t know where to start.” The words spilled out before I could stop them. Pieces of information floated around me, but I couldn’t grasp them,let alone fit them together. “I will find a way. Because—” I broke off, my chest tightening again. “There is no choice here. I will not pick between you. That’s what I feel like this is coming to, and I can’t.”
The room felt smaller, every word I spoke crackling with a truth we couldn’t name. Lorant’s eyes were as turbulent as a stormy sea, pulling and thrashing. Rising, he took my hands in his own, and the strength of his grip kept me in place when everything inside me was determined to splinter apart.
His expression shifted, his jaw tightening, his lips parting. I thought he might say something, but he stopped, biting down hard on his lips. His fingers left mine, moving up to cradle my face as if he could hold me together through sheer will alone.
“You're reckless, Wildfire.” His raspy words eased across my skin. “The fates help me, but I need that. I need you.”
He tilted my face upward, his thumbs brushing my cheeks, his touch achingly tender. His forehead pressed against mine, and the world stopped. The curse. The looming weeks left.
The fractured pieces of us balanced on that stillness.
“I need you too.” My voice was breaking far too easily under the pressure of it all. Pain slammed onto my chest like a wave crashing down. “I can’t do this without both of you.”
His fingertips grazed along the side of my neck until they curled around it, like he was holding something impossibly fragile. The pad of his thumb brushed the hollow of my throat in a touch that felt both possessive and tender. Tightening his grip on my neck, he pulled me into him, and his lips fell onto mine with stark desperation.
He claimed my mouth in a way that was both fierce and unyielding, like he was afraid it might be the only chance he’d ever get to kiss me again. I rose onto my toes, tilting my head to sink into the kiss, refusing to let anything hold us apart. I dug myfingers into his forearms, the tension in my grip mirroring the way his lips moved against mine.
There was no hesitation here. No space between us for doubt to seep through. We were heat and desperation and the brutal ache of two people fighting not to come undone. His teeth grazed my bottom lip, pulling a gasp from me, and I answered by tugging him closer, needing him to feel how much his touch meant to me, even when everything felt like it was careening out of control.
He made a low sound in the back of his throat, one that sparked along my skin and filled my chest with something reckless. His hands slid down, gripping my waist as though to steady us both, pulling me against him, the hard planes of his body fitting against mine. It wasn’t enough. I needed more. Needed all of him. I slid my fingers into his hair, tangling them and my soul in the silky strands. His response was a low growl, the kind that reverberated through flesh and bone.
There was something in the way he kissed me, something more than the passion that tangled between us, something that was too fragile to name out loud. He drank from me as if my kisses could somehow replace whatever he thought he’d already lost. I melted into him, breathing against his mouth. Every gasp of air between us felt charged with fire.
I released his hair and scraped my nails down to his shoulders hard enough to make his breathing hitch.
