He doesn’t respond now beyond a faint pulse and shallow breaths.
My head grows heavy on his chest, the heat of him somehow pulsing through me.
That’s when I see it. In the obscurity of night, the marks on his chest pulse and glow faintly… so faintly I strain to see them. Like symbols or glyphs, reminding me of the mark in the field.
I reach out tentatively, touching one luminous swirl. It brightens, parting beneath my fingers, then surging again. Like something that moves through me, settling beneath flesh and bone.
My fingers dip again. This time the light almost wraps around them. Stardust written in flesh. The broad expanse of the Milky Way overhead translated into line and space, shape and swirl.
I’ve lost my mind.
His hand comes up, covering mine, pressing my palm against the glowing symbols. They throb beneath my hand.
“Stay,” he repeats.
I raise my chin slightly, steeling my voice. “You have to promise to stay, too.”
He tries to laugh. It comes out dry. Empty. “Only thing worth staying for.” He works hard to pat my hand. “You.”
I strain to hear the soft-spoken words.
Did I imagine that?
The pressure from his hand fades, his breath barely a thing. Like his lungs won’t fill.
“We have to get you to the hospital.” My voice breaks over the words. “I can’t let you die out here like this.”
But he only pulls me closer, pressing me so tightly against him. I strain to breathe.
His skin cools. Then burns again.
When sleep loosens his grip, my eyes are too heavy to open.
I fade into dreams of dust columns and sidewinders. Whiskey and a restless man caught between two things he can’t reconcile—duty and desire.
Chapter
Thirteen
ELIZA
Dawn’s pink-tipped plumes fan across the sky. Dew cools the grass and brush around us.
Beneath my cheek, Kael’s chest rises and falls. The thud behind his ribs still stutters, but there’s almost a pattern to it again.
The gaudy sun’s rays drown out the shimmering brilliance of the marks that danced over his flesh last night.
Was it all a dream? Or did my fingertips really dance with starlight?
I shift. His arm tightens around me.
“Mine,” slips from his lips.
My pulse quickens. I try again, lifting my head, surveying the pasturelands for signs of Daisy or Tempest. At the edge of the treeline, so far away I have to squint, I make out a black form, tail swishing.
But how to lure a horse that rebels at my touch?
“Stop thinking,” the big man’s chest rumbles. “Sleep.”
