Nes’s finger traced the symbol on the man’s chest. “Not exactly. It was trapped inside the body. I couldn’t smell it until the corpse was close. The scent was so faint.” She pulled her hand back. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“What doesn’t?”
“This, the magic. Magic likes being the one with the strongest willpower. It likes knowing it won. That’s why it doesn’t stay in the dead. There’s no will, no life, to influence in a corpse. So why was there still magic inside this one?”
She stood and he straightened, too, mulling over her words.
“It doesn’t make sense,” she said again.
“We’ll figure it out,” he promised. Then, though it was caked in dirt and remains, he took her hand, ran his thumb over her knuckles.
And this time, she didn’t pull away.
They lit afire to burn the body.
Heart or no heart, he’d said, it was better not to take any chances. It had been dead when it first attacked them. There was a chance it could rise up again. He didn’t care if Nes claimed there wasn’t a drop of magic left inside.
They couldn’t leave until the body burned down to ash. They sat side by side in front of the fire because—though they were burning a corpse and the smell was atrocious—it was still a fire, and they needed the heat. It was freezing tonight.
Nes huddled closer to him, pressing her shoulder against his arm. His eyes wandered to every place they touched. Arms, hips, thighs.
He remembered what it was like to feel her against him. To hold her in his arms as he had when they’d fallen in the ocean. To have her body press against his as she’d done in that small alcove after the brawlhouse.
His body flushed with a heat that had nothing to do with the fire blazing before them. He turned his head back to the flames.
“We need a plan,” he said.
Nes hummed. “I have a plan.”
“Care to share?”
“Don’t you trust me?”
He should say no. She’d tricked him and kept things from him. “No” was the logical answer. But he wasn’t feeling very logical right now.
Nes held her hands out to the fire, fingers spread so wide it looked like the flames swooped between them. He extended his own arm until his palm covered the back of her hand. He folded his fingers in the gaps between hers until the flames could no longer poke through, until he was the only one filling her empty spaces.
“I do,” he whispered.
And, at his words, she curled her fingers around his, gripping him tight. Together they lowered their clasped hands until they sat in her lap. His knuckles skimmed the inside of her thigh.
“Do you trust me?”
She turned toward him then, met his gaze. There was something in her eyes. A cloud he couldn’t quite see through. And he knew any answer to spill from her lips now would be a lie.
“I think—” he started, but she shushed him with a single finger.
Her one finger turned into her whole hand. A hand that cupped his cheek, her thumb caressing the smooth skin there. Her touch was as delicate as a cloud over a blue sky. She leaned closer.
“This doesn’t require thinking, Toran,” she breathed.
Red rose to her cheeks, filling the light spaces between her freckles with color. The blush sent his mind spinning and his heart racing. He’d been wrong. Her lips held no lies tonight.
But he desperately wanted to learn the truths hidden in them. She pulled him toward her, her body a soundless call his own responded to with eager abandon. He’d never felt a need as intense as this. Not even with—
He pushed the thought away. Now was not the time to reminisce. For the first time in a long time, he wanted to be here, in the present, with Nes.
Her hands wound around the back of his neck, pulling him even closer, her fingers tracing words he couldn’t see. He leaned down to her, ready to steal her breath away, but the fingers against his neck froze. Her grip became much less sensual and a lot more like the steel of a set of handcuffs.
