“I know.” His lips were so close I could almost taste him. “Doesn’t stop the wanting.”
This was foolish. This was dangerous. I could not be reckless right now.
“The wound?—”
“Can wait.”
“Wickett—”
“Do you know what I thought about?” His voice dropped. “When my father’s blade was in me?”
I couldn’t breathe.
“How you taste. What sounds you’d make if I touched you the way I want to.” His hand tightened at my waist. “Whether you’d push me away or pull me closer.”
Words. Find words, Syn.
“Both. Neither. I don’t?—”
“I know.” His mouth inched closer, not quite a kiss, just shared breath and terrible possibilities. “This is as close as we get.”
“It has to be.”
He sighed. “But if we could...”
Neither of us moved. We stayed suspended in that thought, in that space between falling and flying. His hands trembled worse now, definitely not from blood loss.
“If I kiss you—” He started.
“Don’t do it,” I tried to say, but I’m not sure the sound came out.
“If I did, I know I couldn’t stop. That’s the problem,” he whispered, as if he were convincing himself more than me. “This is how every beautiful ruin begins. Most tragedies are born from a kiss that never should have happened.”
He winced.
“If you pass out right now, I’m going to kill you, Wickett Veyne.” I needed a breath. A moment. Several feet of distance. Because even in his delirium, he knew this couldn’t happen.
“Then maybe I’ll wait for you in the Underworld, and we can sort out our eternity there.” He paused, taking a shuddering breath. “If we lived in a world where I could have you?—”
“We don’t.”
“I know.” He pulled back just enough to meet my eyes, and what I saw there, hunger and resignation and something that might have been grief, made my heart break. “We don’t.”
His hands released me with the kind of care usually reserved for broken things. The loss of contact felt like losing a little of myself.
“Let me stitch this.” I stepped back, needing distance, needing air that didn’t taste like him.
He threaded the needle himself, hands steadier now that we weren’t touching, and he was fully medicated. “I’ve got it.”
I shook my head. “You?—”
“Need something to do that isn’t reaching for you.”
My entire heart dropped into my stomach as I did my best to ignore that statement. No good would come from regret.
I watched him work the needle through his own skin with practiced efficiency. No flinch, no hesitation. Just methodical self-repair while I stood close enough to touch, but far enough to pretend I didn’t want to.
“Almost done,” he said, his voice carefully neutral again.
