Mariah fell into that kiss with a bleak, wistful moan.
He tasted just as she remembered. All shadowed smoke and moonlit woods. The soft tang of spice melted through her when his tongue met hers, settling into a familiar form of combat.
One she’d missed all too much.
Mariah’s hands slid over his chest, crept up his neck, tangled in his hair. Traces of the haircut she’d given him still lingered;the shorter sides and back, the longer layers on top. It had grown, now brushing the back of his neck and framing his ears and tickling her forehead.
“Mariah,” Andrian groaned into her mouth, and she forgot all about the details of his haircut. Heat spiraled down through her.
She couldn’t get enough of him. She clung to him desperately, as if he were the only thing that kept her feet bound to the earth.
Maybe he was. What did she know?
“I knew you’d come,” Mariah murmured. “I always knew.”
He stiffened again.
His kiss grew less desperate, less claiming. More gentle and reluctant, as if slogging through a snowdrift. Andrian broke from her slowly, pulling back. Their chests heaved in tandem, color staining his cheeks that she knew also flushed her own.
When she met his gaze, his expression was…broken. Pained. Like the last thing he wanted to do was pull away from her, and yet he did it anyway.
With a heart wrenching hesitance, he stepped out of her embrace, dropping his grip on her neck, though his hand trailed down her arm to tangle with her fingers.
As if he was trying to get himself to let go, but his body refused to completely obey.
Mariah searched his gaze again. That’s when she saw it.
The haunted gloom. The absence of his usual fire. Even his shadows were muted, reaching tentative tendrils down his arms to brush like timid fingers against her skin.
Her stomach dropped, fear and fury and vengeance rising in its wake.
He’d been in Khento. Where they’d both spent most of the winter being tormented.
But that had only been at the hands of mortal men. What horrors had Kol, an ageless god, devised for Andrian during his second stay in that cursed castle, no matter how short it had been?
What unmentionable things had Andrian endured because Mariah hadn’t been strong enough to get him out? When she’d had to abandon him there?
He looked physically healthy, but what about the parts of him she couldn’t see?
Andrian’s thumb stroked idly over her palm, pulling her away from her thoughts. He probably didn’t even know he was doing it. That he was seeking a way to ground himself.
Judging by that empty, plagued look shrouding him, she wasn’t surprised.
Andrian swallowed, throat bobbing. “I told you to leave me. I told you not to come back for me. You weren’t supposed to find me.”
Mariah blinked. She took a small step forward, crowding closer into him, tilting up her chin. He didn’t step back, but his nostrils flared, brows furrowing.
“I did leave you, Andrian.” Her voice cracked. “I left you, and I didn’t come back. Butyoudid—you found me.” A sad, small smile pulled at her lips. “Just like I always knew you would.”
She thought that would calm him. That he would feel some sort of reassurance—that she’d done as he asked but had never lost faith that he would make it back to her. That he would always find her.
Instead, his eyes widened. He took a small, stumbling step back. He finally released her hand; it fell loosely to her side.
Where she had expected to see overwhelming joy, she saw nothing but abject horror.
Confusion and fear dropped through her like bricks landing in her stomach. She lurched forward, almost tripping over her feet. “What?—”
“By the fucking goddess! I can’t believe you found us!”
