I really am my father’s child, selfish and evil to the very end.
Mirren’s eyes flare and she makes to move back toward me, but I throw up a hand. My chest is tight, the air around the grove suddenly impossibly thin. “Don’t come near me,” I bite out.
“Why?” she demands, her eyes shining. “What have I done to make you shun me like this?” Her tears brim over, staining her cheeks as she wipes at them furiously.
I dig my nails into my palm, forcing my hand to remain where it is. “Gods, Mirren, please don’t cry—"
“Don’t you dare pity me!” she shouts furiously. “I’m not crying because I’m heartbroken, I’m crying because I’m pissed off!”
I bite back the absurd urge to laugh at both her mastery of foul language and her complete willingness to yell at me. She has never once cowed to me, not when I held her under threat of her life and not one moment since. It fills me like a new breath, to have found someone so equally matched, who will not back away even from the darkest depths. She is always ready for me. As I am for her.
Mirren glares through her tears. “Tell me the truth,” she commands. And then, softer, “you promised to be bare. No more secrets.”
She won’t be afraid, not even if I tell her everything. She will meet the challenge of my life’s mess with a glint in her eye and her head held as high as a queen’s. It’s what terrifies me; that she is too brave and too loyal to ever leave me in order to keep herself safe. She hardly knew me and threw herself back into my father’s camp to save me. It will only be more of the same, more danger and more reasons to risk herself.
“Tell me the truth, Anrai.” My name rings in her mouth, a whisper and a command. “Do you want me?” Her voice cracks with vulnerability and it’s this, more than anything, that forces me to speak. For how could she possibly think I don’t? I’ve been half in love with her since I watched her clock Eulogious in the head with the butt of that gun, curls flying, lips curled in a fierce snarl.
“Yes,” I admit, feeling defeated and victorious at once. It’s useless to pretend otherwise, though the truth changes nothing.
“Then come to me,” she says softly, her words sliding across my spine like a caress.
“I can’t!” I cry out, burying my face in my hands. “Don’t you see, Mirren? I will ruin you. And not because of some stupid prophecy. Just becauseI am me.” The first words I remember my father speaking to me:You are made only to destroy, never to build. Remember that at all costs. Remember when you begin to feel human instead of the weapon that you are. You destroy. You destroy.
All at once, the words pour out of me like an overwrought dam. “I have made so many enemies in my life, Mirren, and they are well deserved. They won’t hesitate to takeeverythingfrom me, and I cannot put you in their path. I won’t.”
I meet her gaze sorrowfully. Her tears have dried, leaving stained tracks down her cheeks. “I’ve spent my entire life with no choices,” she utters, her voice low, “you were the first to show me that I’m capable. That my judgement can be trusted. That my life and how I live it are my own, for better or worse. You would take that from me now?”
I stare at her, the echo of Calloway’s words reverberating between us.Does she not deserve a choice?I trust Mirren with my life, why can I not trust her with her own?
My voice is strangled. “I…I’m afraid of breaking apart if something happened to you because of me. Like whatever is left of my soul will crumble to dust.”
And therein lies the heart of it. My truest fear. Selfish to its very core.
“I will have you safe,” I say to her again, same as the night in the cave.
She steps toward me again, but this time, I don’t flinch. “That isn’t your choice to make,” she says gently. She meets my eyes, the emerald-green cool and soft as the waves of the sea. “I choose how to live. I choose how I feel,” I watch with wide eyes as she runs her hands down my chest, hooking her fingers on the hem of my shirt. I lean down, allowing her to tug it over my head.
“I choose what’s worth dying for and what’s not,” she whispers vehemently. Her fingers trail lightly over the ridged planes of my stomach and a blazing fire rises in their wake. She goes slowly, but her movements are intentional as her palms brush up over my pectorals and finally, achingly, come to rest above my heart. “You are worth it,” she says fiercely.
I shut my eyes against her words and then gasp loudly as her lips meet my scar. I can barely stand it—something as beautiful as her mouth touching the source of all my shame and poison, as if the contact will twist her, too; warp her into something as wretched as I am. But she doesn’t yield. She knows the ugliest parts of me and accepts them as they are.
“You are worth it. I choose it, Anrai,” she whispers into my chest.
I open my eyes and meet her gaze, fire to water, feeling at once acutely aware of my entire being and as though I am floating somewhere above us, somewhere light and airy and warm. I vowed never to take Mirren’s choices away, never to disrespect her intelligence and instincts again. And while I have nothing to offer but danger and destruction, I can at least give her this—choice.
Because in this moment, I know with undying certainty, that my choice will forever be her. Through fire and darkness, storm and blood, I will always choose her.
I pull her to me, broken and reborn at once.
ChapterThirty-Five
Mirren
Anrai isn’t gentle as he pulls me to him, but I don’t want gentle. He’s never treated me like I’m breakable; he saw my strength before I saw it myself and that’s how he touches me now. With a barely leashed passion that matches my own, he kisses me wildly. One hand tangles in my hair and the other circles around the small of my back, finding the bare skin beneath my sweater. The feel of his calloused fingertips on places that have never been touched has me gasping against his lips.
His skin is fevered beneath my palms as I explore his bare chest, finding every bit of his story and committing it to memory; the large slash of a sword that runs parallel to his spine; the puckered hole of an old bullet wound that dents his sinewed shoulder; the gnarled knife wound that shrouds his heart. I follow my hands with my lips, tracing every place the world has hurt him and rewriting them with something beautiful. Because every mark makes uphim,so in spite of the pain, I find myself grateful for each one of them.
As I get to the mark made by my own hand, I look up to find him watching me. His pale eyes burn so brightly, he looks almost feral in the moonlight. It would be frightening if the same feeling wasn’t coursing through me at the same moment, voraciously heated and all encompassing. He holds his breath as I run my lips lightly over the small silvery sliver above his hip. I don’t look away as I flick my tongue across it.
