Fine fingers of moonslight glance off his prone body. Blayze’s head is tipped back, his gilded throat bared, all traces of suspicion and roughness erased. I take in the sweep of his bronzed lashes, the full bow of his lips. Despite the pain, his face is softer in sleep, almost boyish. I’m glimpsing the Clanschief as he must have been before the hardships of the Necropole and his father’s cruelty whittled him into something sharp and craggy. My gaze snags on his torc. I trace the twisted metal collar with my finger – that strange draw making me find reasons to touch him, even in my anger. I replaced it as soon as Tansy pronounced his condition stable, concealing his brand. No one else commented on it, appeared to notice. But then, to an untrained eye, it’s just one of many livid scars after the lightning strike. The others aren’t as familiar – as fixated – with brandmarkings as I am.
Why didn’t he tell me?
All this time, Blayze knew and never breathed a word. Allowed me to think myself alone. An aberration. A freak.
Now all those pained looks make sense. Only, it’s not just me who disgusts him – he hates himself too. A pair: as opposite, as star-crossed, as two people can be, yet irrevocably bound together. Perhaps the last two Branded left in Arcelia.
If he ever wakes up – when he wakes up – Blayze has a lot of explaining to do.
My gaze strays again to the window. Guilt tugs low at my belly. Who am I to talk? I’m keeping secrets too; I’m in no position to lecture anyone about honesty.
A bead of sweat trickles down the thick column of Blayze’s neck, tracing a languorous path towards his collarbone, and suddenly I’m all too aware of the proximity of his supine body, stripped to the waist because of the fever. The squirming sensation I’ve felt in his presence ever since our first meeting intensifies. My pulse leaps as I allow my gaze to trail down his sculpted chest, to take in the older scars that lattice his shoulders and the tops of his arms, the newer ones from the lightning strike, dipping lower still, hovering on the chiselled planes of his lower abdomen…
I snap my focus back to his face, blood pooling my cheeks. Stars above, what’s wrong with me?
And then it all makes sense. Not just his pained looks and inhuman strength, his surviving the lightning strike and having an emberwing bound to him, whatever it was he did to the starshine I conjured when we fled Galtair. But the draw I feel – the draw I’ve always felt towards him – it isn’t desire, it’s this. Only this. Kinship. Relief blooms, rapid as a moonflower. We’re bound by shared magic; that’s the reason I’m so jittery around him.
Danger!
A gasp catches in my throat as my brandsong’s warnings shift from whisper to growl. I turn back to the window, heart galloping, but everything remains still. No sign of Arden. No sign of the wolves.
Danger!
I turn my attention back to Blayze, shivering as my brandsong growls again.
Don’t let the warnings be for him.
Blayze whimpers. I take up the earthen vessel at my feet and unstop it. Lavender and peppermint perfume the air as I pour a few drops of the oil onto my fingers and trace slow circles on his temples, mimicking the ministrations I’ve watched Maris and Tansy perform to soothe Blayze back to sleep.
His muscles unclench, his breathing turns less ragged, but then a deeper, half-stifled moan tears from his lips, contorting his face again. He arches his back, fisting his hands so the corded muscles of his arms strain. I reach for his shoulder but before I can touch him, his hand circles my wrist. His skin is hot and clammy, his grip urgent and bruising. He draws me towards him.
He mumbles something that might be my name. His coppery lashes flutter open, and our eyes lock. I’m drowning in molten honey; his gaze is its own kind of brand. Heavy-lidded, bright with fever, pupils blown wide.
I should fetch Tansy so she can examine him, but his iron grip circling my wrist stays my feet. So too does the warmth of his chest, searing through my shirt, and the gentle thud of his heart, slow and steady compared to mine, which skitters like the beat of moon-moth wings.
His rasped breaths are soft against my face, still sweetened from the poppy elixir. His free hand reaches for me. A shiver licks my spine as his fingers graze my jaw, lingering over the sensitive skin by my earlobe. I should pull back, but I don’t. I don’t move at all. The amber musk of his skin is making me light-headed, weak-kneed. The cabin narrows to his smell, his scorching touch, as some strange, aching want pulses through me.
I want him closer; I want his lips on mine; I want…
His fingers tighten around my wrist, and I don’t think of resisting. I melt into him instead.
His lips are soft, but his kiss is anything but gentle. There’s desperation behind it as his mouth catches mine. His tongue parts my lips and sweeps in, claiming me. Strong fingers rake my hair, tugging me closer. It’s too much, and not nearly enough. My hand slips to his shoulder. I clutch him to me, deepen the kiss. Strong arms circle me, crushing his body so flush against me I can’t breathe. Heat surges, burning away all my doubts, obliterating everything but the feel of him. The cabin dissolves completely; there’s only his arms, his warmth, the blunting sweetness of the poppy filling my mouth as our tongues swirl in a fevered joust. My hands slide down, nails digging into his hips. My body driven by primal impulses, yielding now to his strange gravitational pull. I need Blayze closer still. I need more. I… I must press against him too hard – an anguished moan dies on his lips. He swears as he tears himself away. Eyes rolling back, he collapses on the furs.
Lost once more to pain and fever.
I straighten so fast my spine cracks, smooth my rumpled shirt and hair with tremulous fingers, and glance up towards the sleeping platform. Stars! What if someone saw? Guilt sinks its teeth into my gut again as I strain to hear something beyond the pounding of my own heart. All’s still. I heave a deep sigh of relief. No one saw, and Blayze likely won’t remember any part of it.
It will be like it never happened.
He’s thrashing again, mumbling incoherently, lashing his head back and forth on the furs. With shaking fingers, I spill a few more drops of the peppermint oil and continue massaging his temples. I try not to think about the thrill of his mouth capturing mine, the warmth of his velvet-soft lips, the thrust and swirl of his tongue. I try not to compare the longing that’s been kindling inside me for moonscycles, catching aflame tonight like a comet burning a star-bright path through the night sky, with the marmoreal chill when Astrophel first kissed me at Thawtide. I try to pretend it meant nothing. I repeat the mantra to myself, inventing excuses for my behaviour till his groans subside and Blayze sinks once more into drugged torpor.
It meant nothing. A moment of weakness – of madness.
It meant nothing. Some strange kink of our brands.
It meant nothing. An involuntary physical response. Blind lust.
It meant nothing…
