“It’s a scratch?—”
“It’s not.” He’s in front of me now, his hands moving my shirt aside before I can protest, his fingers tracing the wound’s edges with devastating gentleness. “This is deep enough to scar. Deep enough to have been worse.”
“But it wasn’t.” I catch his wrist, still his frantic examination. “Look at me. I’m alive. We’re both alive. The trap failed.”
A low, guttural snarl vibrates through his chest—not a sound of grief, but of a beast ready to rip the throat out of the world for daring to touch its prize. His pupils have thinned to lethal slits, his vision clearly tracking the heat of my blood as if it’s the only thing that exists in the dark.
“If I’d been slower?—”
“You weren’t.”
“If they’d had more soldiers?—”
“They didn’t.”
“If—”
Izan. I tighten my grip on his wrist. “It’s done. We survived. That’s what matters.”
He stares at me for a long moment. I watch him wage war with himself—the dragon’s fury battling the man’s control, neither quite winning. His free hand rises to cup my face, tilts my jaw so he can examine the cut on my cheek.
“I felt it.” The admission emerges barely audible. “When they cornered you. I was three blocks away, and Ifeltit. Knew exactly where you were. Exactly what was happening.”
The words should disturb me. The idea of being so attuned to someone that distance becomes irrelevant, that my fear becomes his knowledge.
Instead, I feel a different truth entirely.
“We fought well.” I keep my voice steady. “Our magic?—”
“Complementary.” He finishes the thought. “Without planning. Without practice.”
“Yes.”
His thumb traces my cheekbone, avoiding the shallow cut with careful precision. “This is what we could be. Equals in violence.”
“I know.”
“Your severance clearing the path for my fire. My fire defending you while you work.” His eyes search my face. “We could take the entire Blood Regent’s network apart.”
He stops. Swallows hard.
I understand what he’s not saying. The word that hovers between us, unspoken but present.
Partnership.
“We should get back to the stronghold.” The practical words are a shield against the intensity of the moment. “I need to clean this wound before it gets infected, and you need to report the ambush to Corveth.”
“Report can wait.” His hand hasn’t left my face. “The wound comes first.”
“Izan—”
“Don’t argue with me. Not about this.” The command carries the weight of absolute conviction. “Not about anything that involves keeping you alive.”
I could fight him on it. Could insist on maintaining some pretense of independence, of separateness, of the carefully constructed walls I’ve built between myself and everyone else.
But standing here in the aftermath of shared violence, with his hand on my face and his fire still warming the air between us, I don’t want to fight.
I don’t want walls.
