“It felt like it.” I pulled my hand away, not out of anger, but out of a sudden, sharp need to hide the damage. I tucked my scarred fingers into the folds of my gown. “When I saw her touching you... when I saw you looking at her with trust... it broke something in me. Because it made sense.”
Fenrik went still. “How could that possibly make sense?”
“Because she was beautiful and whole,” I said, my voice cracking. “And I am... this.” I gestured helplessly to my hands, to the invisible weight of the Quieting gift that had defined my entire chaotic existence. “I have spent my life stopping things. Ending things. My magic feels like death, Fenrik. It’s heavy and terrifying.”
I forced myself to meet his eyes. “I wanted to believe the illusions were false. But part of me thought... maybe someone like you couldn’t really want someone like me. Maybe I was a useful instrument to you. A tool to cut out the rot, to be wiped clean and put away when the job was done.”
A low, wounded sound escaped him, half growl, half plea.
He moved faster than I could track, his hands flying up to cup my face, his palms hot against my chilled skin. He forced me tolook at him, tilting my head back until I had nowhere to hide from the intensity of his gaze.
“There is no ‘someone like you,’” he said, his thumb tracing the line of my jaw. “There is onlyyou. The woman who saved my life.”
“I broke your curse,” I said, tears pricking my eyes. “That’s useful. Usefulness isn’t the same as—“
“Stop. You are not your magic, Lysa. You are not what it costs you. You are brave, and kind, and Gods, you are everything I never thought I deserved to find.”
He brushed a tear from my cheek with the pad of his thumb, his touch agonizingly gentle. “You think you are death? I have never felt more alive than I do when you are in the room. You are not a tool. You are the fire in the hearth.”
“The contract is fulfilled,” he said softly. “The debts are paid. The curse is broken. You are free, Lysa. Legal obligations no longer bind us.”
My heart hammered against my ribs.
“So I am asking you,” Fenrik said. “Will you stay? Not because of a contract. Not because you have to save the town or mitigate a disaster. But because you want to? Because you want me?”
I looked down at where I was perched. Straddling a Lord of the Vale on a velvet lounger in broad daylight, surrounded by the wreckage of his ancestral home. My nightgown had ridden up to my thighs, exposing skin that was surely mottled from the biting wind, and my frost-scarred fingers wereclutching his fine shirt. Proper ladies did not sit on men’s laps like that. They certainly didn’t do it while discussing the terms of their eternal devotion.
I shifted, trying to tug the hem of my gown down for modesty’s sake. The movement ground my hips against his, and Fenrik’s eyes went dark, his pupils swallowing the grey until they were nearly black. His hands tightened on my waist, not to push me away, but to hold me where I was.
“Stop moving,” he choked out, his voice sounding like gravel being crushed.
“I’m trying to be decent,” I said, the absurdity of the situation bubbling up alongside the terror of what I was about to say. “My legs are freezing.”
“Just try very hard to ignore the cold,” he muttered, his gaze dropping to where my bare thigh pressed against his trousers. “You are making it difficult to focus on your answer.”
I stopped fidgeting. “I want to,” I said, the words tumbling out. “I choose you, Fenrik. Not the contract. Not the plumbing. You.”
The tension that had held him rigid since I woke up snapped. One of his large hands slid up my spine, fingers splaying across my back to support me, while the other cupped my jaw, his thumb brushing my lower lip.
“Finally,” he breathed.
He closed the distance, capturing my mouth in a kiss that was no where like the frantic, teeth-clashing collision of the study, nor the desperate adrenaline of the ritual chamber. This wasslow, his lips moved over mine, learning the shape of me, coaxing my mouth open with a gentle pressure that melted my bones.
I sighed into his mouth, my body softening, molding against the hard planes of his chest. It was an involuntary sound, a surrender, and I felt the vibration of his answering groan in his throat. Sensation washed over me, the scratch of his unshaven jaw against my chin, the heat of his palm seeping through my gown, the way his tongue swept against mine, tasting me like I was something rare and precious. Through the haze of the kiss, I sensed a shift in the air. A warmth bloomed around us. I pulled back a fraction, breathless, and gasped.
Drifting around us, suspended in the cold winter air, were hundreds of tiny motes of light. Some were the rich, warm gold of my Quieting gift, buoyant as pollen. Others were sharp, brilliant silver, the essence of his Preservation magic. They swirled together in a spiraling dance, gold catching silver, silver wrapping around gold, settling in our hair and dusting our eyelashes.
“Show-off,” I said, staring at a silver speck that landed on his nose.
Fenrik rested his forehead against mine, his breathing ragged. He looked at the drifting lights with a dazed sort of wonder. “That’s not me. That’s us. It’s a form of resonance.” He turned his face, pressing a kiss to my palm, right over the silver scar. “Perfect harmony.”
I shifted again, feeling the hard ridge of his arousal pressing against my thigh, thick through the layers of clothing. A flushthat had nothing to do with the wind heated my cheeks, spreading lower to pool between my legs.
“It seems not everything is that peaceful.”
Fenrik laughed a low sound that vibrated straight through me. “Peace is overrated, Lysa,” he said, biting gently at my earlobe. “The governor valve is gone, remember? And the engine is running very hot.”
twenty-eight
