“I don’t want to lie to you,” she said quickly. “I want to be honest.”
“Then tell me.”
“I’ve been practicing piloting the hovercraft,” she admitted. “As a back-up plan.”
His nostrils flared, his jaw tensing. But he took a deep breath in and held it, waiting for her to continue.
“You wouldn’t tell me what you had planned for me,” she said. “When I suspected you would still deliver me to theMevirax, I decided that it wouldn’t hurt to know how to fly it just in case I needed to use it.”
“Then why did you fly itthisspan?” he rasped.
“Because you still haven’t told me anything,” she whispered. He went silent. “Even now, everything still seems so uncertain.”
“Last night,” he started, “do you remember what you asked me?”
Erin frowned but nodded. “If you would ask me to stay. Here on Luxiria.”
“Can you envision yourself living here?” he asked. “With me?”
“Here?” she asked. “In this place?”
He nodded.
“I still don’t have an answer,” she whispered, realizing it was the truth.
His jaw tightened.
“Do you?” she asked quietly. “Have your answer, I mean.”
He didn’t say anything for a long time. When he spoke, he said, “When I saw you in the hovercraft, I have never felt such fear. Though it was two separate kinds of fear. One for you and one for myself.”
Her brow furrowed.
“For you because it is dangerous. I learned how to pilot thexrellexaxduring warrior training. For ten rotations, I mastered it. It is deceptively difficult to pilot them. If anything had happened to you—”
He stopped before he finished, his eyes closing. Erin held her breath, feeling a little ashamed now.
“But you are unharmed,” he said, looking back at her. “By your own skill and perhaps the Fates’ protection also. For that, I am endlessly thankful.”
She wanted to tell him that she’d barely traveled anywhere on the hovercraft. Only up and then down the tunnel shaft, and she’d taken a small circle around the opening. But now she understood his fear—it had been ignorant of her to believe she could have navigated the hovercraft back to the Golden City with little training or knowledge of how to operate it. It had been foolish and Jaxor had been frightened just thinking of everything that could have gone wrong.
Obviously, he wouldknowwhat could have gone wrong. She didn’t.
“I’m sorry,” she said, running her other hand into his short hair, curling her fingers around the strands. “You’re right, it was foolish of me. It was reckless. I could have gotten hurt.”
He shivered, but she had a feeling it had nothing to do with her touch and everything to do with the lingering fear he felt.
“And the second fear, the one that was perhaps more selfish, was that I would never see you again. That you would leave me and not look back,” he admitted gruffly. “That I had wasted my time with you, a gift from the Fates themselves. That you took my life with you, my purpose.”
“Your purpose?” she whispered, hearing the soft anguish in his voice.
“To protect you, to cherish you, to love you,” he said and her breath hitched, longing bursting through her at his words. Because she wanted those things, didn’t she? Hadn’t she always desired to be loved and to love in return?
“Wouldn’t that be my purpose too?” she whispered quietly, her heart thudding.
“Rebax?”
“To protect you and cherish you and love you too? To be equal partners in that?”
