“Darken the shadows,” he replies.
“What?”
“Just for a moment. The show has begun. No one will notice.”
“Alright, but—”
I darken the shadows over us. It would be incredibly obvious to anyone not shadow-born, and the shadow-born would be able to see, but I don’t think Ronan cares.
He places his hand on my cheek and pulls me to his lips, softly and slowly. “Sylvie, I’ve been yours since the day you arrived.”
Then he kisses me deeply, and it’s like nothing I’ve ever felt before, not even with him. It’s the beginning and ending of everything, of everything I am, of everything I came here to do. I’m being reborn on Ronan’s lips. I’ll never be the same again, and it doesn’t matter.
All that matters is us.
When I finally pull away, I take a long moment to look at him before I let go of the shadows. I asked Larus once what being in love felt like. He told me he’d only ever really been in love once, long before he came into our service, but that he knew it when he looked at her and he believed, truly believed, that she was the most wonderful person in the world. That no one else could ever compare to her, and that he felt sorry for every person who didn’t get to know her because they were missing out on the best that the world had to offer.
He said it was pure delusion. He knew it couldn’t be true because everyone must feel that way, and only one person in the world can be the most wonderful, by definition.
And yet, he told me, when you’re in love, you believe it anyway. Even when they annoy you. Even when you hate them. There’s a part of you that keeps on believing that the most wonderful person is still in there, waiting for you to find them again.
That’s what love is.
Looking at him here, looking at Ronan.My Ronan.
I can’t imagine anyone, anything, in the world more wonderful than him.
I force myself to look at the stage when the torchlight of the theatre reaches my eyes again. There are about a dozen people down there in costumes, some ancient warriors, some tree spirits or something else vaguely floral. They sing in the Selarancommon language, but their voices are so exaggerated that it’s difficult for me to understand the words. I’m sure it’s beautiful, or I would think so if I’d paid attention to any of it so far.
“Are you regretting saying you wanted to watch the show?” Ronan mutters without turning.
“Maybe.”
“Would you like to regret it even more?”
He slips his hand over the arm of my chair and grazes his fingertips on my thigh. The dress I’ve borrowed from Quinn has a slit that he’s dangerously close to reaching.
I say a silent thank you to her for making me shave. “Yes,” I whisper back.
His fingers glide over the thin, silky fabric. It’s soft and impossibly smooth on my skin. I feel a prick of realization from him when he finds the overlap in the layers. He spreads the slit in the dress with his thumb and forefinger, and it’s impossible for me not to think of him spreading something else.
That desire is mirrored between us. I press my teeth to my bottom lip to keep from sighing as his hand touches the bare skin of my leg. He rubs little circles there, and then his hand drifts lower.
I shift in my chair to give him better access. I’m wearing nothing under the dress; any of the undergarments that I own would have been visible. The space between my thighs slickens as he moves closer to it. He’ll feel it any moment. All he has to do is drift his hand a little bit lower…
“This part is funny,” he says, moving his hand to my other thigh and skipping the good part altogether. “Pretend to laugh when they laugh.”
“They” being the audience. Thank the gods for the box. No one can see where Ronan’s hand is, but they can certainly see the look on my face in response to it.
I laugh when they laugh, and Ronan tugs my thighs open, forcing me to gasp.
“Good,” he says. “Convincing.”
Gods, I love to hear it.
Then he trails his fingers up once more. I feel the moment his fingers touch the growing wet patch between my legs. The feeling runs from his fingers, up his arm, down his body, and right into his cock, which twitches in his pants. “Sylvie,” he says. “Is this for me?”
“All of it,” I say. I’m spread open obscenely in the chair, the fabric of the dress pushed aside for him. I take his hand and shove it back to the other slit. The one on my body.
