“Oooof.” A whoosh of breath left me as I collided with a towering figure. We were pressed up against each other for the briefest of moments before they took a quick step back.
“Are you okay?” Endymion’s familiar voice asked with hands out, eyes scanning me for injuries.
I slid the book shut but didn’t answer him. Not because I wasn’t okay—I was perfectly fine. But at what I beheld. It was Endymion, yes, but not the one I’d shared whispered truths and haunting memories. No, this was the male who’d been forged into a weapon since childhood, clad in scaled warrior leathers, daggers sheathed, the hilt of his sword peeking out over his right shoulder—and although the sight of him was heart-stopping, there was something more to him that I hadn’t noted since solstice. It took a heartbeat or two for me to clue in that my chest hummed in his presence again as if awakened by his very existence, and I somehow knew his powers were at their full, lethal strength.
“Nyleeria?” he said, brows furrowed.
I shook my head. “Sorry. You’re. I’m. No. Yes, I mean. I’m okay.”
Stars, I couldn’t have made it more awkward if I tried.
He looked at me as if burrowing into my soul, making the world fade away like it had last night, and although every facet of my magic craved his mere existence to wrap its comfort around me again, the irrevocably damaged part of me took a small step back.
I looked him over again, understanding what I hadn’t a moment before. “You’re going back, aren’t you?” I’d already known the truth before the words left my lips.
Shadows entered his eyes. “Yes.”
“Why?” I found myself asking as my heart sank to a flurry of emotions I refused to acknowledge.
He glanced over my shoulder, and I became acutely aware of just how busy the intersection was. Stepping past me, he opened a door to what appeared to be a sparsely decorated antechamber that led into some sort of greenery. I slipped past him, doing everything I could to ignore the intoxicating scent of soft leather layeredwith the honeyed resin of an Ancient Forest that emanated from him.
The door clicked behind me as I turned to face him, and my grip instinctively tightened on the book in my arms as the cool mask of the second-in-command stared down at me, as if he needed to distance himself from this conversation. From me.
I hated that side of him. And maybe I was projecting, but it reminded me too much of the façade I’d used when convincing myself that I was okay with Thaddeus pulling from me a second time—or maybe it reminded me of the infinite masks I’d been faced with while living in the human palace.
“Is this the mask you don in the Autumn Court?” I asked, indicating the lethal tool they’d sharpened him to be.
His jaw ticked. “This”—he gestured to himself—"is who I am. And the Autumn Court is where I belong." His tone cold was practiced even.
“Is it?” I challenged, taking a half-step toward him, somehow unable to accept his words as truth, and it had me remembering the moment I’d first laid eyes on him, how I couldn’t reconcilehimwithautumn.
“Yes, it is,” he said, leaving no room for discussion. “Either way, even being tapped, I should’ve returned yesterday. Caius sent word claiming he required my assistance, but I’ve already stayed too long. I am Wymond’s highest-ranking commander, and I belong at his side.”
There was nothing new in what he said, but I found myself frantically grasping for a reason for him to stay, and I wasn’t sure if it was spurred by fear for him or if I feared his absence—that last thought was the more unsettling of the two.
“Aren’t you concerned Wymond will find out you know where I am? That you disobeyed a direct order from him?” I said, voicing a worry I hadn’t allowed myself to admit until that moment.
He stretched his neck to the side and then back, fist clenching at his side. “Why is it I always have to repeat myself before you believeme? I do not fear Wymond.” He accentuated each word, repeating the claim he’d made to me in the aftermath of the na’li attack.
Irrational fear settled over me despite his words, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that he was going into the belly of the beast.
As if reading my thoughts, he softened a fraction. “You understand I was born in the Autumn Court, don’t you,” he said, and I could have sworn a feather-light touch caressed my cheek, although he hadn’t moved.
Knowing there was nothing I could say, nothing I could do to stop his inevitable departure, I took a moment to remind myself that he’d been crafted into a weapon for nearly half a millennium. That he didn’t so much as flinch when Caius, a High Lord, challenged him. Or that he’d single-handedly disposed of his highly trained mercenaries without a lick of magic. And despite him being tapped, his powers had somehow rallied—meeting mine as I decimated the hallway—without so much as a blink. Most importantly, I desperately tried to remind myself that I would anchor to nothing and no one. Not even him.
I lifted my chin. “Well then, you better stay safe, Commander.”
His eyes glittered with mischief as his perfectly carved lips curved into a half-smirk. “Is that an order?”
I pressed my lips together, fighting back the smile. As he stared at me, my magic stirred around a tiny ache in my chest, stealing my smile for real. His own smirk faded as if sensing the shift in me. “Yes,” I said, the word swallowed by the empty room, “It’s an order.”
All traces of humor drained from him as his power called to mine in the strange way it had last night. He stepped closer, the deep scent of him now impossible to ignore. We lingered, stripping each other down to the core of who we were like we’d done on the dance floor.
Eyes locked on mine, he slowly lifted a hand, turning it so the back of his fingertips hovered above my temple. He waited for permission, and the devastating look in his eyes told me thathewanted to be the one who dragged a feather-light touch down the side of my face—not a wisp of his magic. My heart traveled to mythroat, and my power arched into him like a stirring feline. Without a second thought, I nodded, then slid my eyes shut.
My heartbeat galloped at his slight hesitation, then softer than I would’ve ever thought possible, the tips of his fingers brushed against my skin with a featherlight touch.
Eyes shooting open, I slapped his hand away, and before I could register what I was doing, the other hand had abandoned the book to gravity’s mercy before striking the side of his face with my palm. I hadn’t needed the hurt that crossed his features to feel regret. Hands flying over my mouth in shocked horror, I took a step back. Then another.
