“And it is the right of the worthy to protect whom they will,” Dorian said from behind me. He breathed hard, with strain.
Silence fell. The spectral woman didn’t move—until she did.
“The male speaks true.” With a breath like a chill breeze, she turned away from Faun and her partner. Her footsteps sounded over the stone, and I was vaguely aware of the fae woman crossing the cave’s interior and picking up her bloody spear from beside Faun. She took languid steps with spear in hand back to her horse’s side, and in one motion she was mounted.
The horse’s hooves clopped over the rock. The wolves padded after her. They left the four of us in the cave behind the waterfall.
I remained unseeing on my knees for seconds or minutes—I couldn’t tell how long. Then I dropped onto my back and stared up at the cave ceiling. My eyes drooped, and no matter how many questions I had, no matter how desperate our situation, I couldn’t fight the tiredness sweeping through me. My eyes shut.
A voice sounded above me. Someone was speaking my name.
I opened my eyes to a slender form. Faun. Her shoulder had been bandaged tight with a strip of cloth.
Her eyes scanned my face, lingering longer than necessary. “She’s still breathing,” she said. Not a question. Then, softer, “She’ll live.”
I tried to speak but my throat was hoarse. I forced out: “Dorian?”
“He’ll live, too,” she said above me. “We stopped the bleeding.”
I blinked up at her, and she seemed to hesitate, as if she wanted to say more. Instead she turned, and her form disappeared from my view. Their footsteps echoed as she and her partner left the cave.
It was just Dorian and me. Alone.
They hadn’t killed us. They’d saved us.
“Dorian,” I whispered into the depths of the cave, even though I knew he was somewhere behind me.
I heard his footsteps approach, slow and effortful. Finally he dropped to a seat in front of me. He was a mess; a makeshift bandage crossed his shoulder, and another had been wrapped around his bare chest. His hair was wet, streaked over his bloody face.
He was battered, broken open and dark and beautiful and alive.
He didn’t speak. He just looked at me—really looked at me. Like he couldn’t believe I was still here.
“I thought I’d lost you,” he said at last, quiet under the waterfall.
There he was, the man I’d seen under everything. In slant-glances, in the curl of his fingers when he thought I wasn’t looking. In the dead of night in Thalassa’s hovel, when he’d stared up at me with poisoned eyes like I might have a drop of the gods in me. I’d seen it in the old cottage last night before he’d swept it behind the stony wall of his eyes and mouth.
He’d come for me. He’d found me here. He stared at me just like that—like I was Caelara the nightmother come right down from the sky.
I could get drunk on that stare.
The heat that moved through me wasn’t like before. Not anger, not fear, not anything I’d felt before.
It was desperation. It was want. It wasneed.
I reached out without thinking. My good hand found the clasp of his cloak, and I pulled him toward me. “I’m here.”
“Eury—”
I didn’t let him finish. My mouth closed over his.
His lips were warm, and I tasted the copper of his blood from a cut on his lip. Tangy,him.He went stiff, unmoving—shock and hesitation in every part of him. And then something gave way. He grunted, and his hand slid to the back of my head. The other wrapped around my waist and held me carefully against him.
The moment our tongues met, something inside me cracked. It wasn’t gentle. It was like a dam giving way, water crashing like it had into the cave. My chest tugged inward, then filled too full—so full I could barely breathe. My whole body surged toward him like I’d been waiting for this, needing this for longer than I’d realized.
His mouth was warm against mine, and my fingers dug into the folds of his cloak. There was a pulse in my throat I couldn’t control, a trembling in my stomach like something essential had come unmoored. My whole body wanted to give out, and my skin flushed.
But I didn’t pull away. I leaned in harder. Because gods help me, it felt like coming home. Not to the old one—a new one. A different one. His scent came into my nose, safe and intoxicating.
