She’s reached her limit.
I’ve warned her enough about asking for help that I’m certain she won’t admit it.
I move before I know it, scooping her off Nara’s back and into my arms, bundling the cloak around her body. Her head fits to the crook of my neck, her legs hooked over my left arm.
The momentary heaviness of her body speaks of her relief as she relaxes before she quickly stiffens, as if she’s remembered my rules.
“I can walk,” she gasps, her blue eyes flashing to me, a tension in her body that is of my own making. “I don’t need help.”
“I know.” But I don’t put her back on her feet, carrying her through the arched opening and into the stone garden, every flower and every stem carved from rock. “Consider this an imposition.”
She closes her eyes. “Okay, then. An imposition.”
I carry her along the path, past the carved flowers and to the wooden door that leads into a small compound—a building and another garden behind it concealed within more walls.
Astone oasis I haven’t been able to bring myself to enter for a long time. Not since I ordered everything put back in place.
I’m conscious of Nara’s retreating footfalls behind us. She’ll bring the palace staff so they know where to deliver the food, just as she brought Lilis to me this morning.
Nara is my silent communicator. My constant friend in a world of enemies.
I reach the door. Cracks zigzag through pale-yellow wood, but it looks like one of the staff has mended the cracks at some point, filling the battle scars with shining resin.
I pause there for longer than I intended, testing my heart, the tension in my chest. Pushing against it but somehow unable to move.
In my moment of hesitation, Thyra extends her fingertips toward the shining cracks, her eyes wide open now. “Flowing like tears.”
Dripping down a door that was supposed to represent safety and instead let evil in.
I flinch as a quiet scream comes from far away, deep in my memory. The same thrashing cry the crow mimicked on the battlefield this morning. The cry of a fragile thing whose throat is being crushed?—
A snarl rises to my lips.
I shouldn’t be able to feel this pain.
I shouldn’t be able to remember it.
To remember is dangerous.
I shake myself as hard as I can.
A moment later, I’m aware of Thyra’s hand. Bare. Her sleeve pulled back. Her fingertips brush my skin, her palm a firm weight against my heart. I don’t even know how she got her mitten off, let alone extricated her arm from thecloak bundled around her.
I’ve stood here for longer than I should have, every muscle in my body tense and unable to unwind.
Thyra raises herself upward, her hand slipping behind my neck as she presses her lips to the side of my throat. But not in a kiss.
She hums against my throat.
A soft sound that vibrates through my vocal cords, a tantalizing flush of sensation. Soothing. And agitating.
A need I’ve been fighting for hours hardens my body and now I fight another instinct. The desire to push her up against this door of flowing tears and peel her cloak and armor away from her body…
Instead, I push against the door, making myself unlatch it and move inside.
It’s like stepping into the past.
A white ceiling soars overhead, the walls painted with icy-blue roses and decorated with gold filigree in the shapes of leaves. Wooden chairs with pastel-pink upholstery arc around a table while an ivory chaise lounge rests to the right.
