The world stilled, held its breath, as his hands swept down her back, tracing the arch of her spine.
A sharp hiss cut through the air, the flush across her cheeks mirroring the rose-stain of her mouth as she jerked back, shaking her head.
“We shouldn’t—”
Words tumbled, as though she needed a reason, any reason, to explain why she had almost kissed him. Why she had wanted it.
Ronan drew back, slowly, carefully, hoping distance might stitch the moment shut before it devoured them both. His hands slipped from her, fingers curling into fists against his knees to stop himself from reaching again.
The bond pulled, a hook buried deep in his chest. He felt it like a cruel reminder that what he wanted most was already his, and yet not his at all.
Her voice still fluttered in the air between them, but he didn’t answer it. Couldn’t. If he opened his mouth, the truth would spill, and he wasn’t sure if it would bind her closer or drive her further away.
Smoke stirred at his knuckles, but he forced it still. Forced himself still. She wouldn’t meet his eyes now, and he didn’t dare ask her to.
When her next words came, they were thin, meant to cut through it. “We’re supposed to hate each other, you know.”
His stare lifted. “I know.”
He meant to swallow the rest, bury them deep. But the pulse of her mended heart hammered so violently, and he couldn’t pretend not to hear it. Not anymore. He couldn’t let the truth slip back into silence.
“But tell me, has it felt like hate?” His thumb traced her lips as her eyes dropped to the gold chain at his neck, then back to his as she swallowed.
Before she could stop it, her hand lifted, fingers brushing along the line of his jaw, her own thumb fixed against the stubble of his cheek. She wanted to close the distance; he could feel it in the way her breath caught.
She held herself back, lips parting on a whisper instead. “Fate is against us. You and I…” She paused, eyes cinched shut like she was fighting something from escaping. At last, she opened them again, the green almost eclipsing the blue entirely. “I’m dangerous, Ronan. Not in the tragic way everyone likes to pretend, but real. Whatever you think you see in me…it doesn’t survive the reality of what I am.”
“You think you’re giving a warning,” he muttered, “yet I hear nothing but fear. And it’s not of what you’ll do to me. But maybe, of what I might already mean to you.”
A sound left her, shaped like a laugh, but he heard the crack in it. “I’m built for endings, and not happy ones. You’ll meet death at my side long before peace.”
He looked at her then, really looked, like she was everything—curse and salvation, ruin and reason.
His chest tightened as he said, “Then let it be so. Because death isn’t what frightens me.”
“Oh,” Verena surged upright, tugging her sleeve up past her elbow. “This is pretty cool.” Her fingers traced the delicate black lines now etched into her right forearm, the glow subtle but vital.
A celestial spiral unfurled, swirling like constellations molded into flesh until it took the shape of a serpent, its eyes burning as if lit with flame.
Ronan shivered, a faint sensation running across his own skin.
“Kind of odd for a blood oath though, no? Is yours the same?” she questioned.
He offered his same arm, letting her lift the cuff of his shirt. Shadows curled there, smoke and thorns twining up his wrist and forearm until they shaped into a flaming heart, its ember glow pulsing hotter beneath her touch.
“Scars often remind us of the worst.” His mouth tilted in the corner as her finger halted in the center of the heart. “I wanted this to remind you of promise. Of hope.”
The tip of her lips curved, eyes catching him with sudden light. “You are a sap, aren’t you? So damn soft between all that smoke and steel.”
The bond flared.
Wisps swirled from Ronan’s palm as every candle in the tent roared to life, flames as black as the space between the stars casting them in shadows.
Verena sighed, her body falling back, sinking deeper into the bed. She had to still be exhausted, Ronan’s magic had knit her flesh back together, but her body would take longer to remember it wasn’t broken.
“Elysian was…visibly furious with you for saving me, by the way,” she voiced, letting her fingers stay drifting along the back of his hand. “Elva noticed. She said he nearly sprouted fangs.”
Smoke shivered around his shoulders. Not quite anger, just acknowledgment. “He has every right to his concern. But I will speak with him. He worries…loudly.”
