“Yes, sir,” Jimi says.
The captain takes out his keys, but his eyes sharpen as they land on me. “What is your name, soldier?”
I…didn’t think to come up with one. He holds my gaze, and every name I’ve ever heard leaves my head. The captain’s expression shifts. He opens his mouth, and my stomach drops. He’s about to call out an alarm.
Chapter Sixty-Two
Royo
The Northern Pass, Khitan
Day breaks over the snowy horizon, and Aeri is still asleep on my chest. She passed out not long after we got into this sleigh, dead tired from traveling so much. We didn’t get a lot of sleep at the traveler’s inn or the night under the stars. I’m tired, too, but I’ve also never been more awake.
Okay, she’s not exhaustedjustbecause we’ve been traveling. I’ve never felt the kind of bottomless hunger for someone the way I do for her. And I’ve never felt needed the way she needs me.
Aeri looks so sweet in sleep, her breathing soft, but I know what she looks like when she wants me a second and a third time in a night. When she arches back in pleasure. When she clings to me like a vine, shaking and moaning.
Sora glances over at her and then at me. She smiles to herself.
“What?” I ask.
“Oh, nothing.” She grins, shrugging her shoulders. I guess everybody can tell.
I can’t help it—my face breaks into a smile. Sora raises her eyebrows. I don’t think she’s seen me smile more than once since we met. It feels weird on my face, too, but I’m getting used to it.
“You both deserve to be happy,” Sora says.
“Do we?”
Aeri does. But I don’t know if I deserve this—from how good it feels to have her asleep on me to the crackling energy inside my chest. Do I deserve for the sky to seem brighter, the food tastier, the ale colder? I’ve hurt, and I’ve maimed, and I’ve killed for coin. I failed the one girl who relied on me and her father who was kind to me. I think most people would say I don’t deserve shit.
Fear beats in my temples, and my past screams that this won’t last. That I’m only kidding myself. I don’t deserve no one good. I will fuck up again and lose this, lose her forever, because in the end, I don’t deserve to be happy. And then it will be like Lora all over again, and I’ll wish that I’d never met Aeri. I’ll regret our time together because of the lifetime of hurt that follows.
My palms get clammy, and I rub them on my pants. I haven’t been scared like this in my life.
Sora looks at me, tilting her head thoughtfully. “Maybe ‘deserve’ is the wrong word, because that makes it seem like love is a reward. And it’s not.”
“It isn’t?”
“We don’t deserve love any more than we deserve air. It’s just something we need.”
My throat feels dry, and it’s not the cold air from the sleigh. I swallow hard. “But what if it stops?”
She shrugs. “I don’t know. I’ve never stopped.”
That’s right. She had a lover she lost a while ago. She don’t talk about them much, but Seok killed them.
“How do you do it?” I ask.
“Do what?”
“Live. What makes you keep going without them?”
She stares into my eyes, and her expression changes, hardens. “Vengeance. Settling the score is what I have left. I can’t and won’t stop until I get it.”
Sora is real pretty, but something about her face puts a blade of fear deep in my spine.
Ten Hells, these broads are terrifying. And we’re supposed to meet a queen who makes King Joon run for cover.
