He looked around with those erratic, deeply stressed eyes again. “I know what you said, but after what you did… then Evira having to abdicate because of… I mean, I thought you were just holding them off and trying not to freak us out by not revealing that.”
I smiled and told him in my most reassuring and steady tone, the one that always managed to comfort him, “Those two things are not the same. The political setup and complexities don’t compare.”
His amber magic sparked and he cast anauditory reductionspell around us. “How?”
I went to speak, but then he pulled his hand from mine. “No. I’m sorry. Don’t answer that. I’m so sorry. I don’t want you revealing more secrets you shouldn’t. The vibrational tracking was bad enough for you. And the political setup of the Basilisk Kingdom is steeped in secrecy—and for good reason after what happened to your people.”
“Winter—”
He cupped my cheek, so much urgency emanating from him. “It’s okay. Don’t say it.”
“Shh,” I crooned, laying my hand over his on my cheek. “All I was going to say is that you can find assurance and comfort in knowing that I’ve made myself indispensable to the High Empress.”
“Your mother.”
“I suppose that’s what she is also meant to be, yes.”
There was more to it than just making myself indispensable. I’d also made Winter indispensable in their eyes. And my connection to him. Along with Evira and Zayn also.
Suffice to say, my‘mother’wouldn’t challenge me now.
Well, more accurately… she couldn’t.
The way in which I’d had to do that, the only way that had been feasible considering my infraction—at least the way in which they’d initially seen it—just wouldn’t be received well by Winter. Or Zayn. Evira would understand it from a political standpoint. That sort of thing was ingrained in us both, much like the other heirs she’d recruited into Exalt.
I’d done what I’d had to in order to protect us all.
Some truths were just too unsavory to be spoken at certain times, and to certain individuals—this response from Winter being one definitive example of that.
He was deeply on edge.
A great deal of that was because he was trying so hard not to be, to not allow anything to impact him. He was shouldering too much, but he refused to heed caution from the three of us. I believed some of it would taper off once he got a little further along in his training with Sylas. That wouldn’t be long now.
“Okay,” he breathed. “I hear you. I do now you’ve said that. I really do.”
I smiled out at him. “I’m glad, beautiful.”
He nuzzled against my hand.
Then a little moan escaped him and he told me, a lot calmer, “If you were going to leave as I initially thought, I rushed outhere because I needed to… I had to tell you something, especially if you were gonna be away for a while.”
I arched an eyebrow. “What’s that?”
He drew in a steadying breath and eased his hand from mine on my cheek, then grasped my hips, stroking softly. “I… I wanted to say. I mean, I wanted you to know… I…” His gaze locked on mine and there was so much reverence there, so much adoration, that it had my breath catching. “Vax, Iloveyou.”
I went rigid.
The shock of his confession was such that I couldn’t reconcile it.
No one had ever spoken those words to me.
No lover—there hadn’t been anyone before him, then Zayn and Evira.
Not my parents either.
Not once.
No one.
