“And what word do you have for me,” she whispered.
He regarded her for a long moment before bringing a hand to his chest. Before tapping it against his sternum. Once. Twice. The sign formine.
Her breath caught. Leaning in close, he pressed a kiss to the pulse beneath her ear. Her body arched instantly into his, like they were strung all together. Twin marionettes, their strings hopelessly twisted. A creature who walked with the dead and a woman who drew them close. He would never not be caught in her orbit.
“Mine,” he said aloud. The word came out serrated.
“Mine.” It felt so good to finally say it. His hands slid around her back, and then she was flush against him, her hands twisting in the curls at the nape of his neck, her mouth seeking his in the dark. They met in a collision of teeth and tongues, moving together until he thought he’d fall apart with the wanting.
“Colton.” She spoke his name into his mouth. She spoke it into the core of him. She left careful kisses along the pinched stigmata of his smile. She undid him with a single word, the way she’d undone the pressing dead. “Please.”
There were impressions of him everywhere. In the mattress, in the impossible knot of sheets, in the bruising way his fingers bit into her spine.
There was no sweetness in it. No careful ministrations, no whisper-quiet handling of blown-glass Delaney, liable to break. His grip was a vise, hard and grasping.
She’d commanded the dead with a word, commanded Colton Price with a word. Colton Price, who was something more than human, who answered to nothing and no one, who could peel back the edges of the sky like a god.
She’d been searching the shadows all her life, and now here he was, her name curling out of him in a whimper, and in this singular moment he felt like the answer to every question she’d ever had.
The horizon outside the window was a soft, burgeoning gray. For once, Colton had no sense of time. The minutes evaded him, abandoned him. Left him blissfully alone. He forgot, for a midnight, the speeding rush of seconds. The irreversible loss of moments. There was only Lane. There was only the feel of her curled into him, the room sinking into a whiteout haze. The sun rose and rose. In sheaves of bullion yellow and burnished gray. In pinpricks of gold that plumed, blister bright, over the tops of the neighboring buildings. He buried his face in the place where Lane’s neck met her shoulder and shut his eyes.
Her fingers stayed twisted in his hair, nails scraping over his scalp in a way that made him impossibly tired. His limbs were weighted, his eyes heavy lidded.
Mine, rang the refrain in his head.Mine, mine.
He couldn’t recall if it had stayed in his head or if he’d babbled it into her skin like an idiot.
He didn’t care. He’d rendered himself untouchable, severing ties with Liam’s mirror, giving Lane the shard of bone. He’d rid himself of collateral and in doing so made himself a target. The Apostle wouldn’t want an errand boy he couldn’t control.
The rising sun speared the room in swaths of too-bright gold, turning the lines of Lane indistinct. Like she was some strange, spectral thing. Like she might flicker out completely beneath the dawn.
“I love you,” he said, half-asleep already.
He heard the intake of her breath. Felt the still of her finger against his clavicle. He didn’t care. He didn’t care if it scared her. She’d asked for truths. This was one of them. His most carefully guarded confession. And, anyway, he’d already given it to her. Caught up in the snow. Saying goodbye to his ghosts.
He was so close to unconsciousness that he barely heard her ask, “How did you do it?”
“Hmm?”
“How did you survive the ice?”
He was distinctly aware of her running a fingertip over the ink along his ribs.Non omnis moriar.Ink he’d never wanted. Ink he’d gotten in a dark room full of cloaked figures, lanterns igniting the artist’s work in a bold slash of sickly yellow. Heralded by the rush of Latin, the chanting of the Priory. Promises made. Vows exchanged.
“Pledge, and you’ll see your brother again.”
“Pledge, and I’ll teach you how to cheat death.”
“Colton.” Her hand was cool on his brow. He didn’t understand how she was so cold when he was all fever. She smoothed his curls out of his eyes. “Don’t sleep.”
Another command, soft though it was. His lids fluttered, and he saw her sun-spangled before him, her hair falling around her face in a silvery curtain. And then there was black again. Black, and the slow-sinking into sleep.
“You’re beautiful,” he murmured.
“You’re insufferable.” She prodded him with an ice-cold toe. “Tell me. How did you survive?”
The creeping day was working its way through his lids in spikes of red. He pulled the sheets over his head. His voice was a muffle, half dreaming already.
“What makes you so sure I did?”
