I slip into the kitchen where Rhonin’s helping Mari clean up the dinner dishes and drag him into the hall, hoping to bypass Zahira and anyone else.
“Get upstairs, change into the formal wear we bought the other day, and meet me at the Emory’s as soon as possible. Say nothing to anyone.”
It’s better if no one knows where we’re going. I just haven’t figured out how I’m going to get past Raina yet.
Rhonin is such a good soldier. He’s curious, but he hurries upstairs without a word.
When I enter the lighthouse, Raina’s dress and torn lace undergarment hang from the newel post by the stairs. I glance the winding staircase and notice that her shoes lie on two different treads, as though she stripped on the way up.
I follow her trail until I reach the loft, where I find her resting on the bed, on her stomach, two books cast aside, dressed in nothing but those tiny red bottoms I need to thank Yaz for and that little gold necklace. She slides a long leg up at an angle, granting me a lovely view.
“Fucking beautiful,” I mutter, drinking in the tantalizing sight before I cross to the bed, longing to push inside her.
But tempting as she is, and as much as I’ve thought about this for weeks, tonight is not the night, and I must tell her so.
I lower my mouth to whisper in her ear, but before I can utter a single syllable, she snores. It’s the sweetest, most delicate sound I’ve ever heard, and I can’t help but smile and laugh silently as I drop my chin to my chest.
So much for making her lose control. I can’t even keep her conscious.
She’s passed out on top of the covers, so I find a blanket in the linen cabinet and gently spread it over her, tugging it up to her shoulders. Her face is turned away from me, her full lips parted and stained red from the wine. Though I want to taste them, I graze the softest kiss over her brow instead. She doesn’t stir, but she does snore again.
I admire her, thinking about all we’ve been through. All we’ve shared. How desperate I feel to keep her safe. How desperate I feel to claim her as mine. Not just when we make love—the claiming that comes with passion—but the kind of claim announced to the world, as though I might lose her if I don’t. Because I care for her, deeper than should be possible.
A pang strikes my chest with all the impact of a fist. Assuredness fills me, followed by a release of pressure, as though some scar tissue that formed over my heart a very long time ago disintegrates. It’s been disappearing little by little since I met Raina, but right now, as I ghost a touch across her cheek and tuck a wayward lock of hair behind her ear, my throat constricts around the swelling emotion inside me, and the web strangling my heart vanishes completely.
Perhaps it’s impossible to give your heart to someone when it’s tethered to your soul by centuries of misery and pain. But regardless of what I face with Admiral Rook and Vexx tonight, there’s a freedom inside me, freedom that I haven’t felt in…
I can’t remember when I felt this way. When everything of meaning or importance narrowed down to one thing. To one person who holds my heart whether she knows it or not.
The truth rises inside me like a growing tide. A truth I can no longer deny to myself, and a truth I can’t keep from her much longer.
“Raina Bloodgood,” I whisper, leaning in to kiss her brow one last time before I leave. “I think I’m falling in love with you.”
IV
ENDINGS
33
RAINA
I wake with a start.
Disoriented and feeling a slight wine headache, I sit up and glance around the dark loft. Night has fully fallen, and I’m alone. The door knocker clangs again. Loudly. Over and over.
I throw on a tunic and leggings and grab the oil lamp that’s barely still burning and hurry to the lighthouse’s main level. When I throw open the door, it’s Hel. She stands beneath the lantern whose flame Dru and Drae haven’t yet extinguished, wearing a frown and a determined expression that I know well.
I wipe my sleepy eyes, set my lamp on a table inside the doorway, and form my own expression. One that says, What’s wrong?
“I saw a man leave Starworth Tor,” she says. “In a horse-drawn cart. I’d just headed upstairs when Alexus escorted him out.”
“Dedrick Terrowin,” I sign. “The smuggler.”
“I heard,” she says. “But Alexus didn’t turn around and head back to the lighthouse when the man left. He came upstairs and went into Rhonin’s room.”
“There is nothing unusual about that,” I sign. “And… were you snooping?”
“Of course I was. Because there is something unusual about it. Alexus was supposed to be with you tonight. I knew it had to take quite the event to drag him away from this lighthouse.”
