My room was smaller than I expected, but that might have been because Wickett filled most of the space just by existing. He stood slightly inside the door, letting it close softly behind him, the sound muffled by the heavy, red velvet drapes and layers upon layers of linens on the overstuffed bed.
I moved to the opposite wall, running my hand along the emerald wallpaper. Needing distance, needing to think my way past a heart still racing from that look he gave me in the hallway.
There was no easy way to ask this, no subtlety that could be laced within questions I was terrified to hear the answers to. “If I asked you to see reason,” I started, then stopped, trying to find the right words. “Beyond the hunt. Beyond the blood oath and everything we’re supposed to want.” I turned to face him. “Ifwe could break the oath without killing her. Find another way. Would you consider it?”
His jaw tightened. “Syn.”
“IfIasked you to.” My voice came out quieter than intended. “Because it mattered to me. Wouldthatbe enough?”
The silence was so fucking loud I couldn’t breathe through it.
“You’re asking if I’d choose you over everything I was raised to be.” Not a question. A statement of what we both knew I was really asking.
“I’m asking if you’d consider that maybe we’re hunting an innocent person. That maybe there’s more to this than we know.”
Wickett moved further into the room. “Every instinct I have says the Phoenix is dangerous. That she needs to be stopped.” He took a step closer. “That’s what I was raised to believe. What I’ve been trained for my entire life. And that logic isn’t wrong. It doesn’t matter to me if she tried to kill the fury-born. It doesn’t even matter to me if she was framed for the death of the Mistress of Blades. If she burns the world, everything is gone. People without Life Runes die. Cities fall.”
I could hear the lingering word in the way his voice dropped. “But?”
“But nothing I was raised to believe has felt right for a very long time.” Another step. “And the only thing that feels right is you.”
My breath caught in my throat. I was not expecting that.
“You asked if it would be enough.” His hand came up, fingers brushing my jaw with devastating gentleness. “If your asking mattered. And the answer is yes, Syn. If you asked me to walk away from everything I’ve ever known, I’d do it. If you asked me to question every truth I was taught, I’d do that too.” His thumb traced my cheekbone. “Because whatever I thought I knew aboutduty and honor and justice doesn’t compare to what I know now.”
“What do you know now?” I asked, completely swept away in his confession.
“That you make me want to be better than I was made to be.” He stepped closer still, crowding me against the wall. “That nothing in my life has ever felt as real as you in my arms. That I’d turn away from everything I’ve built if it meant keeping you safe.”
“You can’t just?—”
“Can’t what? Tell you the truth?” His other hand found my waist, pulling me against him, reaching for my hand and sliding his fingers over the mark he’d placed on my palm. His promise that my life was his. “You asked for honesty. This is as honest as I know how to be.”
Silas made a sound from the corner, half cough, half gag, the unmistakable noise of a griffin about to hack up something unpleasant.
“Cor Meum,” I whispered, dismissing him.
The griffin huffed his disapproval but shrank to a shadow and vanished.
And then we were alone.
“After this is all over,” Wickett said, “we’ll be free. The oath will be broken one way or another. We won’t have to go back. We could find the witches in Noreya. Build something there.” His forehead pressed against mine, his breath warm against my lips. “Or we could go south to Solaire, where no one knows our names. We could go anywhere, be anything that isn’t this, isn’t hunters and witches and blood oaths forcing us together.”
“You’re talking about running away.”
“I’m talking about choosing you.” His hands tightened on my waist. “Every day. Deliberately. Not because magic forces me to, but because I want to.”
The words should have terrified me. Should have made me push him away, reminded us both why this was impossible. Remind him that the rest of the world was just as brutal as the city we’d found each other in.
Instead, I fisted my hands in his shirt and pulled him closer.
“You can’t promise me forever when we might not survive the next couple of weeks.”
“Then I’ll promise you now.” His mouth was so close to mine I could feel the shape of the words. “Right now, at this moment, you’re the only thing that matters. Not the hunt. Not my father’s legacy. Not whatever destiny everyone thinks we’re supposed to fulfill. Just you.”
He would do it. He was going to let Vitoria walk. For me. For us.
I kissed him like I could make those promises real through sheer force of will. He responded immediately, one hand sliding into my hair, the other pressing against the small of my back.
