Ronan brushed curls from his brow, shadows sunken in the lines of his face. I had never run my fingers through that silk.
“I need her consent,” he said. “Without it, it’s not viable.”
Elva’s face returned to mine, closer, her sea-glass eyes flooding me. “Verena, you stubborn mule, don’t you dare leave me with this lot of savages. Please." Her words trembled. “Please.”
Her begging shattered something inside me. Then rebuilt it. The spark flared, deeper than death itself, reaching upward inside me in recognition. A thread of life tangling with the curse, challenge woven into its fibers.
The world thought it would take me. The gods, the curse, that fucking blade. I had not survived this long to end here. Not like this.
One look at Elva’s face, and just like that death would have to try harder to claim me.
“Okay.” I wasn’t sure the word passed my lips. But it roared in my head, louder than pain, louder than the dark, because she still needed me.
Ronan leaned in, his hand stroking gently over my tangled hair. “A blood oath. I’m going to save you with a blood oath.”
“Okay.” The word rasped out again.
I didn’t care what it meant. My eyes had slid shut, the falling star trapped behind them. I heard the blade kiss his palm, the slice of steel through flesh.
I heard the murmur of words too old for me to understand. Then the press of his hand against mine, hot and wet, our blood intertwining as he forced my fist closed around his.
I never felt the cut he carved into me, but I felteverythingelse.It answered throughout me, a surge beneath blood and bone, beneath the very ether of my being. A tether stitching his soul into mine, rushing like fire, like balance, like a promise I could never undo.
I wanted to gasp at the force of it, at the way my body bent to that bond. But pain flared, searing, stitching, burning, as my wound knit together with each whispered vow.
Elva’s hands flew first to her mouth, then to her throat, clutching the pendant at her neck. “What have you done?”
Ronan’s hand never left me. His fingers drifted tenderly from my temples, down the curve of my cheek. I heard him through the dim like a beacon, somewhere distant like a dream.
Live, he said.Stay with me.
I followed that voice, through the dark, through the ache, into somewhere new. Somewhere remembered.
His forehead pressed to mine, our mingled blood sealing us together, palm to palm.
I’ve got you.
The words thrummed inside me, not carried on breath but inside my skull, inside my being.
I’ll always have you.
And for one fragile, treacherous heartbeat, I let myself believe him.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Ronan
RONAN HAD WATCHED VERENA BURN through the battle of the camp with a ferocity that refused to bow.
To kings, to gods, even to death.
And then he watched that same force be used to heal.
Not herself, but another.
His eyes had lingered on Verena as she wiped endless tears from the young girl’s face, Ford nearly collapsing beside them. Her movements had been soft, impossibly tender, like she wasn’t expecting anyone to be watching.
The girl had clutched Verena’s hand, nestling her cheek against it, unafraid of the monster the world claimed she was. And with all the innocence of grief, she had pressed a kiss into her palm.
