The screams of the dying.
Lev’s garbled moan. Open, unseeing eyes.
“Hours after the battle was over, they were attacked. In the dark of night. Tidescursed cowards,” she spits. Her tears soak the fabric of my sleeve. “Everything was incinerated. No survivors.”
Skies damn me to the ends of the earth. Lightning burn me to ash. Mayah doesn’t know she’s cocooned in the arms of her friends’ murderer.
I swallow hard, drawing her closer, though I know I should push her away and confess. If she despised me before, she’d try to kill me now without a second thought. Maybe I want her to.
“I—I’m sorry” is all I can utter.
“It’s all right. There’s no healing this,” she says softly. “Some wounds never close. No matter how many times you pass your glowing hands over them.”
Sleep weighs on her lids, each blink lasting longer until she eventually falls asleep.
I remain awake, though. Guilt wrenches my chest, each shallow breath sawing through my lungs. I’d never regrettedmy actions that night. Tundrayn has waged war on Arbinj for decades before my birth. They broke treaty after treaty. They killed my friend. I believed my actions to be justified—brutal, but justified.
Until now.
I’d judged Mayah for her one-sided beliefs about Arbinj, but I’ve been guilty of the same. Lev’s death left a festering wound in my heart that never healed. I never considered that I left an identical wound in someone else’s heart, leagues across the realm.
Mayah shifts in my arms, her brow smooth in her sleep. Something sharp claws at my lungs. She sleeps so easily in the arms of a monster.
Chapter Nine
Softfingerstracemystubbled jaw, a butterfly kiss pressed to the corner of my mouth. Hesitant. Tentative. Hands skate down my neck. A gentle breath huffed against my collarbone.
Squinted gaze—breathtaking blue awaits me.
“Zevayr,” she whispers. Her legs tangle with mine, each movement growing bolder. “Touch me.”
Skies know I’ve wanted to. But I can’t. I shouldn’t.
Knowing eyes flicker, then a soft hand tugs mine.
The rapid beat of her heart beneath my palm. Shallow, heaving breaths.
She guides me lower. Her energy signature thrums with anticipation.
A gentle squeeze of her hip, and then—
“You killed them.” Her voice is icy. My gaze snaps up—cold hatred.
She wrenches in my arms, flinging herself back. “You killed them!”
“I—”
My eyes flutter open.
Breathtaking blue. My breath escapes me.
But there’s no hatred—just heat.
Shit. My hand is gripping her hip, the other arm beneath her, possessively splayed across her back.
She stiffens. I jerk back.
“Sorry.” I clear the sleep lingering in my throat. “I overslept.”
