Except I don’t do what I promised. I don’t think. About anything.
I just feel.
Chapter 22
Amriel keeps me busy until morning. He shows me all the things he can do with his body, his mouth. Lets me find out what I can do with mine.
Many things, as it turns out.
When he finally falls asleep, he does it draped around me, his arm slung across my waist, his nose buried against the back of my neck. His warmth and solidity lure me into slumber, freeing me of the need for a blanket.
I don’t dream.
When my eyes drift open again, the buttery light of late afternoon slants through the window. I blink away my haze of slumber and wonder how I managed to sleep for an entire day.
I never did such a thing in Aethrolia. Back home, I always rose with the sun, then climbed the hill to the temple while the day was still new.
Which I haven’t done in weeks, now. Instead, I stayed up all night, sharing myself with the king of the fae—body, mind, and soul.
Heat shoots across my cheeks at the memory, but I can’t find it in me to regret. Last night was illuminating. It was everything I never knew was possible. And somehow, I don’t feel less myself because of it, butmore. More me. More Sariah than I’ve ever been.
Amriel mumbles something unintelligible, and I turn in his arms to find his eyes still shut, his hair spread across the pillow, his features slack. And goddess, he looks so innocent like this. So unburdened. The smoothness between his eyebrows, the relaxed curve of his mouth—I don’t think I realized, until this moment, just how much he carries every day. How much his pain must weigh, how I’ve never truly seen him without it.
Not until last night.
My gaze traces over him—the long lines of his body, the scar along his biceps, the way the muscles of his ribcage knit with every rise and fall of his breath.
Something warm and dense rises inside me, blocking off my airway. The longer I look, the more my vision swims at the edges, my lungs bereft of air.
I thought I’d know what to do when I woke up, but I don’t. All I can say with certainty is that what we did last night didn’t feel wrong.
It didn’t feel sinfulat all, and now my lack of guilt inspires a guilt of its own. Who am I, anymore?
I don’t know. I barely recognize myself. I only know that if Amriel woke right now, if he turned those firelit eyes on me and reached for me again, I would let him.
But to my relief, he keeps sleeping, so I ease from his embrace, intent on finding my clothes. The moment my skin separates from his, a cascade of aches and pains pours into me.
I gasp, tensing against the sudden throb in my soles, the twinge in my joints, the deep, pulsating ache between my legs. When I glance back, Amriel curls in on himself, his brow furrowing.
I pause. Reach back and touch him again.
The moment my fingertips grace his skin, the lines of his body ease, painlessness flowing through both of us. I take my hand away, put it back. Again and again, my heart shrinking every time he hunches into a fetal position.
The brand-new feeling inside me now grows claws and teeth. I don’t like him hurting. Ihateit.
But even in sleep, pain eats at him. Chases him. And as I stare down, I want nothing more than to throttle it from existence. To reach backacross the centuries and hurt my great-great-many-times-grandmother the way she’s hurt him.
I withdraw again. Amriel tips onto his stomach, reaching across the bedsheets, seeking me in his sleep. This new angle shows me what last night didn’t—the dagger wound on his back, red and irritated, sewn shut with a line of neat black stitches.
The sight hits me like a punch to the gut.
We spent plenty of time talking last night, but he never once told me he’d had a needle put through his back, over and over. That he’d had to endure yetmorepain because of me.
The nameless force inside me churns, gathering strength. A need, or a wish, or some deep knowledge I don’t yet have words for.
He’s done so much for me. Saved me. Given me last night. Initiated me into a whole new realm of understanding I didn’t know existed.
And now he’sfreeingme. Letting me go home.
