Page 496 of Coal Hearts

So wonderfully, horribly beautiful.

The fire in my blood broke into an inferno.

Not thinking. Not feeling. Merely existing in this present, fragile moment, I pushed upright and let the blankets fall away.

I’m burning...

His sharp inhale as his gaze fell to my bruise-colourful breasts made my entire body shiver. He froze where he sat upright, supported by folded pillows, his chin tipped down and face cold.

The room switched from calm rest to savage awareness as we stared at each other.

Goosebumps coated me as he sucked in his bottom lip and bit down.

I couldn’t stop looking at him.

How gorgeous he was holding a book. Reading. How stunning he was strangling a book that wasn’t just a prop but a lifeline.

He’d been reading a while, judging by how many pages existed beneath his thumb.

He held the tale as if it would save him from himself and cursed me for dragging him out of it. This was his meditation. Words were his salvation, and I felt absolutely humbled to know it.

To know him.

I swayed closer.

He stiffened.

A plate covered in crumbs on the bedside table hinted he’d eaten something while I’d been asleep. A sandwich waited on another plate...for me?

How long had I been asleep?

Did it matter?

All that mattered was this.

This man.

This tortured, terrible man who liked to read.

An avenger who’d defended me. A monster who’d mauled me. A ghost, a nightmare, a lonely boy...

I shivered again, flames licking all over my body.

I’d always been drawn to intelligence. Always loved to debate books on history, gemmology, and faith. My parents had given me an entire library on my sixteenth birthday. Titles full of the truths about living and dying and finding a balanced middle way.

The trick to existing was accepting that every facet of life and death was impermanent.

I’d forgotten that in my fight to survive here.

The only law in this world was the law of change. Nothing was permanent. Everything began, endured, and ended.

Eventually, this stolen silent moment of sharing a bed with this terribly gorgeous bookworm would end, and...I mourned it.

I grieved every other moment I’d lived and cursed, valued and unappreciated.

The memory of the caves still haunted me.

The nightmare of dragging Peter still ached in my limbs.