She pulled back just enough to look up at him, her eyes searching his face with an intensity that stripped him bare.
He let her see everything. The fear. The desperation. The absolute certainty that they belonged together. He captured her lips with his, offering the proof that he’d failed to give her with words and actions.
Her response was instant, matching his unspoken declarations with her own tangible confirmation.
“I love you, Skye.” The words came without hesitation, without the careful restraint he’d clung to since that night on the tower. There was no time left for restraint. “I should have told you before. I should have told you in the library when you were falling apart and all I could think about was holding you together. I love you. That’s the truth of it. If you remember nothing else after this moment, remember that.”
“And I loveyou,” she cried. “Andnothingthat happens after this moment can change that.Nothing!”
Noah saw the defiance in her posture along with the raw vulnerability beneath it. The determination in her eyes that mirrored his own.
He pulled back, forcing himself to release her, to think like a protector. He studied her carefully—her tangled hair, her creased gown damp from the moisture that permeated everything, and most of all her green eyes, still sharp and fierce despite what she’d gone through. He saw her strength and imagined the hours she’d spent pacing and raging and refusing to break. “Are you okay? Can you travel?”
“I’m fine. Grateful. Relieved. Terrified for you and your family.” Her fingers tightened on his shirt as a small sob escaped. “If they find you?—”
She pressed her cheek to his. “I love you, Noah.” She said it quietly, fiercely, as if the words themselves were an act of rebellion against everything her father had tried to force upon her. “I think I have since the moment you looked at me in the great hall and I couldn’t understand why I felt as if I already knew you.”
He pulled her tighter to him, held her fiercely as if trying to absorb her words through sheer touch. For the space of a few heartbeats, the world narrowed to the warmth of her cheek against his, the flutter of her breath against his neck.
Then he drew back. “Will you come with me? Not just out of this dungeon, but away from this place. Away from him. Even…away from this world?”
Something fierce blazed in her eyes. “With you? Anywhere. But even if you didn’t want me, I could never stay here. Not now. He’s not a father, he never really tried to be. I’ve only ever been a puppet, a means to another lucrative deal for him.” Her voice, full of pain and anger, hardened. “I’d rather die than be part of his twisted empire.”
“I won’t leave here without you,” he promised, slipping an arm around her to guide her out of the cell. “And the sooner we get out of this pit, the better our chances will be.”
She gripped his arm as fresh fear darkened her face. “Austin said he would come for me at dawn. I think he intends for me to witness your banishment so there is no question what my choices are. He and my father intend to force me into marriage regardless of what I want. Austin said the bargain has been made and there is nothing left to stop him. I’m not just a pawn for my father, it seems. Even for Austin, I’m merely the path to the culmination of everything he wants. The wealth, the power, ultimately my father’s entire empire.”
Cold fury ignited in Noah’s blood. “Austin will not touch you. Not now. Not ever. I swear it!”
She searched his eyes. “I abhor the thought of him. But the reality is, we both have to think of Emily. We could never find happiness or build a life together at her expense. Your responsibility is to her. To your family.”
“Myresponsibilityto my family never leaves my mind.” He took her hands and pressed them to his chest, the way he had that night in the library when he’d asked her to feel the truth in his heartbeat. “I’d lay down my life for them. But you aren’t just a part of my family, Skye, you’re part ofme! You’ve been part of all of us from the moment you opened your heart and chose to help Emily, from the moment you chose truth over a comfortable life. Taran and Finn are down here in this maze right now, risking their lives to find you, for the same reason. Paige made me promise to bring you home. Even Brody wouldn’t hear of leaving without you. They all think of you as family. They love you, too.” His voice roughened. “It’s all of us, leaving together, or none. That’s what we decided. That’s what being family means.”
Skye stared at him, and he watched something shift behind her eyes. The understanding, perhaps for the first time in her life, of what it felt like to truly belong, not merely because she was useful or a means to an end. Not because she could be bartered or controlled or molded into someone’s instrument of power. But because people loved her enough to walk into darkness for her. To fight for her. To refuse to leave her behind.
Her chin trembled. She pressed her lips together to still it and straightened her spine with that quiet steel he’d come to admire more than he could say.
“Then we go,” she whispered. “Together. All of us. Whatever it takes.”
Noah released a breath that felt as if it had been trapped since the moment he’d left her in the library. He kissed her forehead, letting his lips linger just a moment as he memorized the warmth of her. Then he stepped away and reached for his torch.
“Keir, Taran and Finn will be close to the meeting place. We need to hurry before anyone discovers the guards outside Emily’s chamber are missing and give an early warning.”
They turned toward the corridor and froze.
Footsteps. Not one set. Several. And voices—too many voices—low and purposeful, echoed off the stone walls somewhere just beyond the turn.
Not Keir’s. Not Taran’s. Not Finn’s.
Skye heard them too. She huddled against him, her fingernails biting into his skin as she gripped his wrist. Her face had gone pale in the torchlight.
“Someone’s coming.”
Noah’s gaze swept the corridor—the only way out—as both the voices and footsteps grew louder with every passing second.
His pulse pounded in his ears. Had their deception been discovered? Had Taran, Finn, and Keir been captured? Had TheKeeper sent extra guards to watch over Skye? He glanced around the small, confined space.
They had nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide.
