He’s reluctant to pull away, and whines a little when Arthur breaks the kiss and starts touching his shoulders, his arms, his sides. Silently checking Shae over for injuries too, Shae’s pretty sure, but he doesn’t call Arthur out on his hypocrisy. He’s too thrilled and grateful that Arthur’s still here, still with him, to touch him like this. He never wants this to stop.
“Did it work?” Arthur asks, and Shae’s eyes widen.
He broke off the spell and killed Izen without banishing him. All the power Izen granted Shae remains on this plane, still hooked into his soul. He’ll carry this darkness with him the rest of his life.
He should be devastated, but he isn’t.
“It doesn’t matter,” he says, laughing because it’s true. All this work, all this pain and desperate effort, for a failed spell, and he doesn’t care. “No, it didn’t work. I couldn’t banish him in time, so I killed him.”
Arthur exhales sharply and pulls Shae into a tight embrace. “Radiance, Shae. I’m sorry. I couldn’t hold him off long enough.”
Shae melts into him, coasting on the high of Arthur’s proximity, the relentless drum of his heartbeat. “It’s my fault,” he says fiercely. “I waited too long to deal with this, and the array broke. This was a stupid plan. But I’m serious. It doesn’t matter.”
“We’ll find another way,” Arthur says. “There are mage healers in Ostaris, or we could even try to find an Enoran temple in Praia. There has to be another way to help you.”
A wave of affection washes through Shae. He laughs and grabs Arthur’s beautiful face to force him to look at him. “I don’t care.I can live with this power,” he says quietly. “I’ve done it for ten years. And I think I’ve been lying to myself that I’d be okay, and everyone would stop hating me, if I just got rid of it. Nothing’s that simple, right?” He leans in for a brief breath of a kiss, then whispers, “I can live with this power, but I don’t want to live without you.”
Arthur’s breath hitches. He touches Shae’s face, his lips, with trembling, callused fingers. “What a coincidence,” he says, a smile slowly spreading across his face. “I’d say the same to you.” He kisses the corner of Shae’s lips. Then his forehead. Every touch is sweeter than sunlight. Then he pulls back and starts digging around in his belt pouch.
A moment later, Shae is glad he’s already sitting down, because when Arthur looks at him again, he’s holding a ring.
It’s beautiful. Gleaming silver and yellow topaz. Almost as bright as the look in Arthur’s eyes.
“When the hell did you buy that?” Shae says, his voice gone high with shock.
Arthur laughs, low and rich, and Shae wants to sink into the sound forever. “I bought it in Hannick,” he answers, smiling. “It reminded me of you. I thought you could embed a spell in it or something, and I meant to give it to you just as a normal gift.”
“Do you normally give rings to people?” Shae asks. “Wait, inHannick? That was weeks ago! You barely knew me!”
“I knew you enough that I wanted to make you happy,” Arthur says. “And yeah, I realized pretty quickly that this wasn’t a normal gift. So that’s not why I’m giving it to you now.” He swallows, and his smile drops to a more serious expression. “Shae.”
Panicking, Shae covers Arthur’s mouth with both hands. “Before you ask anything of the sort,” he says sternly, “we both need baths, and you need to see a healer. I can’t think about anything in this condition.”
Arthur laughs under his hands. Kisses his palm. “Fair enough. Will you take the ring now anyway?”
Shae feels himself flushing. “Yes,” he says, the warmth tickling through his veins. “Yes, okay.”
He lets Arthur take his left hand, currently bare, and slide the silver band onto his fourth finger. The metal is already warm from Arthur’s touch. It fits perfectly.
The wind whistles around them, carrying the scent of ash and blood and dead flesh. The sky is bright blue above the scattered corpses, and Shae is the happiest he’s ever been.
Then a familiar female voice creaks from behind them. “Moon Mother’s tits, what the fuck is going on here?”
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CHAPTER THIRTY
Arthur
Arthur leaps to his feet in a surge of adrenaline, placing his body between Shae and the voice. He’s utterly drained and his sword is ten feet away, but that doesn’t matter. There’s no way he’s letting anything hurt Shae now.
He thought all the walking corpses had lost their power after Izen fell, but one of them is now getting to her feet. The Riverswords blue streak in her hair is unmistakable—which is bad. Arthur could barely fight off Georgia with his sword, much less without it.
But Georgia doesn’t move any closer after standing. She puts both hands on her hips and looks around. “Fuck,” she says contemplatively. “That was a trip and half.”
Her face is still death-pale, and there’s still a gaping wound in the center of her chest. But her eyes aren’t the same pitch-black as when they fought, and she’s making no move to threaten them.
“Don’t move,” Arthur says, perhaps redundantly, and walks slowly sideways to pick up his sword. He feels better with it in his hand, and better still that Shae follows him, a light hand on the back of his arm.
