Page 94 of Valour

He froze, two creases forming between his brows under the snow goggles.

“Make me so angry I lose control and use the magic up. Say something misogynistic!”

“Hester—I’m not like that.”

“You are! You threatened to sink my ship, ordered me home, you made decisions without my input. Because I am a woman.”

He removed his snow goggles and pinched the bridge of his nose. “That’s not why. I didn’t say those things because you are a woman.”

She frowned up at him. “Then why?”

He held her shoulders and pinned her gaze. “The lifeboats—I did that because it was urgent, and I couldn’t find you. I honestly tried. I knew it was what you would have done.” His grip tightened. “And I did not want you coming down here because…”

“Because?”

“Because. Hester. I couldn’t imagine a world without you in it. I have lost so many friends to this Godforsaken place, and I couldn’t contemplate the idea that you would come down here and perish on the ice like they did. I am in love with you, and you cannot see⁠—”

Love.

He was in love with her.

The magic in her chest exploded outwards in a shockwave. She hit him so hard in the jaw that he staggered sideways. The wind howling a gale around them, building so strongly it was hard to keep upright. Lightning tracked down some way off, striking the ice again and again. Thunder boomed overhead.

Septimus rubbed at his jaw, working it up and down.

“Of all the patriarchal overprotective bullshit I’ve ever heard, this is the worst! Do you expect me to fall on my knees and thank you?! You followed me down here because you felt sure I would die if you weren’t here to—what? Protect me?”

“Yes,” he ground out. “Now you say it like that⁠—”

“And you risked your crew in hasty, poorly thought-out preparations to chase us? On the pretence of wanting to beat us to it? All because you couldn’t imagine life without me?”

“Yes,” he said, hanging his head, closing his eyes.

Thunder roared, the clouds starting to rotate as Hester panted, the magic spilling out in her rage.

“All because you love me?”

“Yes,” his voice was almost drowned out by the wind, but the admission of guilt was there.

“You love me,” she said. There was a glowing in her chest that wasn’t her magic. The magic was slowly fading to nothing, replaced by something that burned equally brightly. She balled her fists into his coat. “You. Love. Me.”

She pulled him forwards, touching her nose to his. Her gaze lingered on his and then moved down to his mouth.

She stared at his lips as they formed the words, “I love you, Hester.”

She threaded her fingers through his hair, the other hand covering the purple of his jaw, her knuckles a matching shade of violet. “You are—by far—the most infuriating person I’ve ever met,” she said, standing on her toes and shaking with built-up desire.

He set his hands at her hips. “And you are the most infuriating person I’ve ever met.” He pulled her closer, so that all of her lined up with all of him. Time seemed to slow, and Hester tugged the back of his head, gazing into sapphire eyes, blue as the deepest depths of the sea. Eyes she could drown in.

And then his mouth collided with hers. His tongue swept over hers, and Hester could have melted in his arms. She groaned into his mouth as his tongue claimed her, and she pressed her hips to him, a delicious heat coiling between her thighs, driving her wilder and higher with every stroke of his tongue against hers. The brightness in her chest was burning away the pain, the fear, the longing.

Hester pulled away. “Take me back to the tent and fu⁠—”

The dogs started baying, and she laughed. He swept her off her feet, kissing her still as he walked to the sled and set her down. A particularly vicious swipe of wind had all of the clouds streaming westwards, the sun blazing the bright blue sky.

Her magic was spent.

They sped over the ice towards the camp.