It’s a simple touch. But it feels like so much more. Because it’s also an anchor, pulling me back from the abyss I’ve been drowning in for days.
It’s like she’s choosingme.
My breath shudders. Because hell, I think she’s the only person who’s ever wanted me for something other than power, a throne, and what I could offer.
Instead, she wanted what I gave her in the Wandering Wilds, when I let my walls crack, my magic spill out untamed, and my words slip free before duty could freeze over my heart. She wanted what was there before my father’s harshness, cruelty,and madness forced me to bury it all beneath an endless sheet of ice.
She wanted the moments we shared that I’ll never fully remember. That I’ll never actuallyfeel.
I barely register what I’m doing until my forehead is resting against hers, her warmth melting the ice I’ve been wrapping around myself for years.
And she doesn’t flinch. She doesn’t recoil. She doesn’t look at me with the hostility I thought I’d see in her eyes until the end of time.
“I don’t deserve you,” I whisper, and I hate how wrecked I sound.
I hate that she can hear it trembling beneath my skin, and that she can feel it breaking through the ice.
But she doesn’t pull away. She doesn’t contradict me. She juststays.
And that’s worse. So much worse.
Because I don’t know what to do with the fact that I’ll lose her again when we escape these godsforsaken Tides. Therealher, beneath the lead arrow that poisoned her heart.
“You don’t get to decide that,” she whispers, her hands trembling against my chest, my heartbeat racing beneath her touch. “We’ve been through too much for me to lose you. Not to the Tides, not to pain and anger and grief, and definitely not to that empty throne.”
I want to believe her. So badly that I think I might fall apart from it.
But fate has never been kind to me. I learned that lesson as I stared at my mother’s coffin of ice when I was only eight years old.
I don’t realize I’m holding my breath until it finally leaves me in a slow exhale.
“Then promise me you won’t let go. Not now, and not ever,” I say, barely recognizing my own voice. Because it’s raw with something I can’t name, something desperate that’s clawing at the ice that encases my heart, tearing at my soul as it tries to escape.
The words hang between us, the weight of them thick in the air.
Then—
We collide.
I don’t know who moves first. I don’t care.
Because suddenly, she’s in my arms, and I’m inhaling her, consuming her, burning for her.
The kiss is a battle. A war. A devastating crash of past and present, love and rage, heartbreak and want as her hands fist my shirt, her grip desperate and clinging.
I can feel how much she needs this. How much she needsme.I feel it in the way her breath hitches as my fingers tighten on her hips. I feel it in the way her body presses closer, like she’s starving for something, like she’s trying to drown out the future with the only thing we have left—the now.
But she doesn’t realize that she’s the only thing keeping me from sinking, too.
And so, I crush her harder against me, my hands sliding into her hair, pulling her closer as if I can fuse her to my soul. Like I can burn this moment into my bones, so I’ll never lose it again.
“Sapphire,” I whisper against her lips, and the way she shudders against me destroys me. The way her breath catches, and her fingers tighten, like she’s afraid I’ll disappear if she lets go.
But I won’t.
Because I refuse to lose her ever again.
“I’ve missed you,” she breathes, and I kiss her harder, my heart pounding so hard it feels like it’s trying to break free before it freezes over again.
